Matthew Fisher leads institutional and protocol business development at Katana, a DeFi-first blockchain incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR. He focuses on institutional onboarding, liquidity partnerships, and go-to-market programmes that convert onchain revenue into sustainable, risk-adjusted yield.
Before joining Katana, Matt worked in DeFi business development at Polygon Labs and served as Head of Business Development at Buttonwood. He helped launch multiple DeFi primitives, including liquidation-free lending markets and yield-bearing token infrastructure. He previously worked at the Diem Association and is an advisor, mentor, and angel investor across the blockchain space.
We recently spoke with Matthew Fisher, Head of Institutional and Protocol Business Development at Katana, about the trade-offs of horizontal scaling and why specialised chains are better suited to institutional capital.
Read more about Katana’s strategy for building durable, productive liquidity in the interview below.
You’ve worked across Polygon’s ecosystem and now operate within a more verticalised environment. What trade-offs do teams underestimate when moving from general-purpose chains to specialised ones?
On general-purpose chains, speed is the primary benefit. You can deploy new apps and assets instantly. However, the ecosystem inevitably drifts toward redundancy, often resulting in five versions of every protocol. This fragmentation creates uneven risk standards and significant operational overhead, which is particularly challenging for institutions.
In a vertically integrated environment like Katana, we take a deliberate approach. We identify the primitives that matter most, such as credit, swaps, perps, and yield, and coordinate them to ensure the ecosystem compounds value.
The trade-off is discipline. We say “no” frequently and invest heavily in risk management and liquidity design upfront. We judge success by tangible outcomes, such as productive TVL, rather than market sentiment. When executed correctly, the chain functions as a coherent, efficient economic engine.
How did your previous experiences with Polygon and Buttonwood shape the way you think about liquidity, incentives, and market structure today?
At Polygon, before the pivot to becoming a payments-first chain, you saw the full spectrum of builders, users, institutions, creators, and the real-world expectations they bring. It reinforced that markets do not scale on innovation alone. They scale when participation is repeatable, risk is legible, and the experience is consistent.
At Buttonwood, working on DeFi primitives makes you realise that incentives are not just marketing. They are a market structure. If incentives push liquidity into shallow pools or encourage short-term farming behaviour, you create fragility and waste money on those incentives.
If incentives reinforce the assets and venues where activity is actually happening, you get depth, tighter spreads, and more stable rates. This is a more efficient use of incentives and a better utilisation of capital on the chain. Today at Katana, we are hyper-focused on designing incentives and partnerships that convert early growth into durability.
Liquidity partnerships are a core part of your role. How do you evaluate whether a protocol integration strengthens Katana’s flywheel?
Good integration is determined by whether it improves the chain’s unit economics and user outcomes. We ask whether it deepens liquidity for the assets we care about most. We also evaluate whether it improves market efficiency by tightening spreads, stabilising borrowing rates, and improving execution for size.
Finally, we assess whether the partner commits to the long term through product effort, liquidity support, and distribution. If so, it strengthens the flywheel. Better yields and execution attract more liquidity, which in turn attracts more activity. This generates more revenue, which we reinvest to strengthen the system.
From an institutional perspective, what breaks when capital is deployed on horizontal blockchains that Katana is explicitly trying to fix?
General-purpose blockchain ecosystems optimise for optionality, but institutions pay the tax of that optionality. When liquidity is split across many venues, execution quality degrades at scale. When borrow markets are shallow, rates can swing more easily. When yield is mostly emissions, it is difficult to underwrite.
When there is no coherent reinvestment model, chain TVL can grow quickly but also fall quickly. We are trying to fix the mismatch between what looks good in a dashboard and what actually works for serious allocators. This means prioritising deep, durable liquidity and transparent revenue. It also requires incentives that reinforce core markets instead of scattering capital thin.
What misconceptions do crypto-native teams still have about how institutions actually allocate onchain?
Crypto-native teams often mistake institutions for high-volume yield farmers. However, institutions actually operate like underwriters.
They scrutinise the yield source to determine if it comes from emissions or genuine revenue. They rigorously map out liquidity profiles and exit paths before deploying capital.
Beyond the financials, they demand robust operational infrastructure. They evaluate governance, incident response, and risk curation. If the strategy lacks a coherent scaling plan or clear documentation, they simply will not touch it.
When an institution decides to deploy on Katana, what typically determines how they enter the ecosystem: direct protocol exposure, structured strategies, or liquidity programs, and how does Katana shape that path?
There is usually a progression. Early on, many institutions start with the lowest operational overhead, such as straightforward deposit-and-earn flows. They then graduate into direct protocol exposure once they are a bit more comfortable. Others come in through managers or structured strategies because they want better reporting, controls, and a single accountable operator.
Liquidity mining programmes tend to attract the groups they are designed for, such as market makers, liquidity providers, or teams with mandates around market depth. Katana shapes the path by curating the core DeFi stack and aligning incentives with productive activity. We ensure the default route is coherent rather than a collection of one-off integrations and deployments.
What does “productive liquidity” actually mean in practice at Katana, and how do you measure whether capital is doing useful work?
Productive TVL describes liquidity that is actively working. We want assets deployed in DeFi to build a thriving ecosystem.
In practice, we track lending utilisation and the stability of borrow and supply rates. We also rigorously measure AMM depth, price impact for large trades, and volume relative to liquidity.
Fee generation quality is another major indicator. We analyse retention and behaviour across different market regimes to see if capital remains during a bear market. Liquidity that improves execution and generates real fees is productive. Liquidity that exists solely to farm high emissions is merely rented.
What parts of Katana’s stack resonate most with allocators who are already active onchain?
Onchain allocators already understand smart contract risk and market structure. They are looking for better systems that offer better risk-adjusted returns. What resonates is that Katana is designed to return value to ecosystem participants through sustainable mechanisms and coordinated liquidity design.
They like that we are opinionated about core primitives and focus on deep markets, stable-rate environments, and transparent revenue. The appeal is not new-chain hype. It is a better economic architecture for DeFi participation at scale.
At what point does growth become a liability for a DeFi ecosystem, and how do you know when to slow down in favour of durability?
Fast growth can mask weak foundations. If you scale TVL without first deepening the relevant markets, you may experience high slippage and rate volatility. If you onboard assets faster than risk frameworks mature, you increase systemic risk. Relying on emissions alone to prop up the numbers creates an ecosystem that behaves as if it is small under stress.
This capital exists as soon as the token emission incentives dry up. Durability is a deliberate choice that requires fewer priorities, stronger integrations, and incentives that reinforce long-term participation. We grow at a disciplined and discerning pace.
Looking ahead 12–18 months, what would convince you that Katana’s thesis around verticalised, revenue-reinvesting chains has definitively worked?
I look for a few clear markers. First, yields and liquidity quality must increasingly be supported by organic revenue rather than short-term incentives. Second, market depth, rate stability, and execution quality must improve as the ecosystem grows, meaning that scale makes the system stronger.
Third, sophisticated allocators, such as funds, treasuries, and fintech partners, must choose Katana because it is the best place to deploy capital for risk-adjusted outcomes for themselves and their users.
Finally, builders must view Katana as the obvious place to launch DeFi applications that require deep liquidity and predictable markets. If we hit those markers, our thesis becomes operational.