Traditional finance has LIBOR, which serves as a benchmark for trillions of dollars worth of products worldwide. Although LIBOR was phased out due to manipulation scandals, the lessons it left behind are timeless: a mature financial system requires a widely recognized benchmark interest rate based on real transactions that is difficult to manipulate to guide the market.

DeFi appears to have inherent advantages—on-chain data transparency, real-time verifiability—making it theoretically easier than traditional finance to establish a trustworthy reference standard. But what is the reality? Quite the opposite.

Open any yield aggregation platform, and you'll see a wide array of APY data. Some are alarmingly high, others pitifully low, and everything in between. The problem is that most of these figures are sustained by token inflation; once inflation stops or slows down, yields collapse immediately. Investors are left confused, developers can't build reliable products, and traditional financial institutions keep their distance. This chaotic state has become a bottleneck for DeFi's next stage of evolution—structured products, derivatives, enterprise-level treasury management—all of which require a reliable "risk-free rate" as an anchor.

The current DeFi interest rate market is like a port without a lighthouse. Data is everywhere, but no one trusts what the truth is. Fragmented, distorted, unsustainable—that's the state of affairs.

The real problem is quite simple: who can bring order to this chaotic yet vibrant market? Who can provide a universally accepted pricing benchmark for trillions of dollars in digital assets? This is not just a product issue but a matter of how the entire DeFi ecosystem matures on a historical level. Some protocols have recognized this and are trying to become that "market consensus anchor." Their efforts are crucial for whether DeFi can truly attract traditional financial participants and move from the fringes to the mainstream.