From Retail Validators to Wall Street: The Institutional Staking Shift with Laszlo Szabo of Kiln

Laszlo Szabo, co-founder and CEO of Kiln, joins The Smart Economy Podcast to explore how staking has evolved into institutional infrastructure and how on-chain vaults, DeFi, and tokenized RWAs are beginning to intersect. Szabo explains why staking often grows during bear markets, how institutions approach on-chain yield, and how Kiln’s Railnet initiative is aimed at connecting DeFi protocols with tokenized assets.

In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski sits down with Laszlo Szabo, co-founder and CEO of Kiln, an institutional staking and on-chain yield platform powering validator infrastructure for exchanges, custodians, wallets, and asset managers across the crypto ecosystem.

Szabo shares how staking evolved from early retail validator activity into critical infrastructure for institutions exploring on-chain yield. The conversation examines how staking behaves across market cycles, why institutions increasingly view staking as foundational infrastructure, and how validator operations scale securely across multiple networks.

What you’ll learn:

Why staking can continue growing during bear markets
How institutional staking infrastructure differs from retail validators
Why stablecoin and Bitcoin yield markets may be expanding
How tokenized RWAs are entering on-chain finance
What on-chain vaults are and how they resemble asset management funds
How Railnet is aimed at connecting DeFi protocols and tokenized assets
Why validator infrastructure matters for institutional security

Laszlo Szabo is the co-founder and CEO of Kiln, an institutional staking and on-chain yield platform supporting exchanges, custodians, wallets, and asset managers globally. Kiln provides validator infrastructure, staking access, and DeFi integrations across multiple blockchain networks. Prior to founding Kiln, Szabo worked in technology recruitment and began exploring crypto during Ethereum’s early ecosystem growth, eventually building infrastructure designed to meet the reliability, security, and compliance expectations of institutional participants.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/wFjYO1B2mqU

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