Episode Details

The man behind one of Solana's most foundational DeFi protocols finally sits down with us. Michael Hwang, CEO of Orca, breaks down how a protocol that's been quietly powering Solana's liquidity for 5+ years is now stepping into the spotlight — and building infrastructure for the next era of on-chain finance.

What we cover:

🏦 From BlackRock to Solana — Michael's backstory and why he believes blockchain is building the financial rails of the future

🌊 Orca's evolution — How the protocol went from a retail-friendly DEX to the back-end liquidity engine for institutions, RWAs, and hybrid assets

🔐 Regulated Asset Infrastructure — Orca's brand-new product that lets asset issuers toggle KYC/compliance controls directly into on-chain liquidity pools

🪙 Tokenized Gold, Stocks & RWAs — Why permissioned DeFi isn't a contradiction, and how Orca is building rails for a full spectrum of asset types

🤖 Prop AMM research — The internal market-making engine Orca has been quietly running in production (and what it might become)

📈 Institutions on Solana — Why "institution" is a spectrum, who's actually ready to step on-chain, and what friction remains

🌍 The democratization thesis — Michael's core belief: your grandma LPing alongside a Wall Street quant in the same pool is what makes DeFi worth building

🔗 Links:
 📺 The Index Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@theindexpodcast
🐦 Michael Hwang (Twitter): https://x.com/tmoClabs
💼 Michael on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mqhwang/
🌊 Orca: https://www.orca.so/
🐦 Orca on Twitter: https://x.com/orca_so
💼 Orca on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/orca-so/

Show Links

The Index
X Channel
YouTube