In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski sits down with Olivia Vande Woude, head of tokenization at Ava Labs, the software company supporting the Avalanche blockchain, a platform designed to enable customized, high-performance blockchain infrastructure for institutions, enterprises, and consumer applications.
What you’ll learn:
- Why tokenization bottlenecks are more about distribution than technology
- How Avalanche’s multi-chain architecture differs from general-purpose blockchains
- What institutions actually care about when choosing blockchain infrastructure
- Why “distributed assets” matter more than headline tokenization metrics
- How RWAs, private credit, and stablecoins are being used in practice
- Why TVL can be a more meaningful signal than user counts for institutions
- How regulatory clarity is changing institutional behavior
Olivia Vande Woude is the head of tokenization at Ava Labs, where she works with global asset managers, fintechs, and financial institutions to bring real-world assets and financial infrastructure onto Avalanche. Prior to joining Ava Labs, Olivia worked in equity research at T. Rowe Price, covering banks and financial infrastructure, and developed deep expertise in capital markets, regulation, and settlement systems. Her background continues to shape Avalanche’s approach to institutional adoption, tokenized finance, and scalable on-chain infrastructure.
Missed our last episode? Watch it here.
About The Author: Arthur Bone
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