Recently, the PayFi concept introduced by the Solana Foundation has been well-received by the market, with a series of popular projects including Huma and Credix. Just yesterday, Velo Protocol, a veteran in the payment track, also announced that it will tokenize BlackRock's short-term government bond fund (BUIDL) and integrate it into the stablecoin camp to further promote the integration of traditional financial institution products and the web3 on-chain world. How do you view this? In traditional web2 application consumption scenarios, problems such as long accounts receivable waiting times and high frictions in cross-border SWIFT proxy settlements have always existed, and the root cause lies in the complexity of issues involving government policy regulatory frameworks, banking system process standards, cross-border payment infrastructure, and exchange rate time zone differences. Objectively speaking, among the many factors affecting the efficiency of the global payment settlement network, the on-chain payment infrastructure provided by web3 only accounts for a small part, and the more critical issue is whether a balance can be found in the complex network of relationships between regulatory authorities, banking system compatibility, and the interest chain of payment service providers. However, the reality is that web3 technology infrastructure projects are too disconnected from the complex political and business relationships of web2, while web2 relationship-based projects are not so web3 Native. Velo Finance, on the other hand, seems to have a relatively good balance in both aspects: 1) First, in terms of corporate background, Velo Finance belongs to the Charoen Pokphand Group, the largest business conglomerate in Thailand, and has been providing payment scenario support for Charoen Pokphand Group's businesses in finance, retail, supply chain, telecommunications, real estate, and media since its inception, with more than 12,000 7-Eleven convenience stores and other high-frequency payment application scenarios. It should be said that in Southeast Asia and the Asia-Pacific region, Velo has a strong "aristocratic" aura in the web2 political and business relationship background. Recently, Velo has reached a cooperation with PTL Holding Co. Ltd. to expand the financial market in Laos, further realizing its vision of a global payment settlement network. PTLH is a representative company in the industrial sector of Laos, with a comprehensive layout in the bulk commodity industry, banking system, and trade logistics. In addition, Velo has reached a global strategic partnership with Visa, cooperated with the Thai local bank SCB, and later developed cross-border business solutions with Asian digital banks, which shows that Velo has put a lot of effort into expanding the "hard bones" of traditional web2 political and business relationships. In fact, the global cross-border payment and transfer market share exceeds $1 trillion, and the market space in Southeast Asia alone exceeds $150 billion, while the vast majority of Southeast Asians have not even opened a bank account. In this context, the difficulty of implementing blockchain-based cross-border payment technology in Southeast Asia can be imagined. If there is no project with strong industrial strength, rich payment application scenarios, and strong political and business relationships to take the lead, it will be extremely difficult to implement blockchain cross-border payment applications. 2) After establishing a solid foundation in web2's complex political and business relationships, Velo has also made considerable exploratory efforts in web3 cross-border payment infrastructure: 1. Velo's blockchain framework is built on the Stellar network, and Stellar and Ripple are veteran payment-focused blockchain projects, where users can transact at extremely low fees. Velo has directly acquired Interstellar, which was founded by the Stellar core development team, so Velo can be considered a "direct" offspring of the Stellar team's cross-border payment solution. 2. Velo has adopted the EVM-compatible Nova Chain as the unified blockchain execution network, and has also built the Orbit mobile application to provide a simple "scan-and-pay" mode to lower the participation threshold for traditional market users to onboard the web3 environment. In addition, Velo has built a Universe super DEX, allowing users to connect to third-party decentralized self-custody wallets to manage their assets, which is the foundation for ensuring a frictionless integration of users into the web3 native environment. In addition to these, Velo has also laid out a Warp network that connects multiple blockchain environments, supporting Stellar, BNB Chain, Ethereum, and other popular public chains. Overall, although Velo does not have advanced concepts like "modularization" and "chain abstraction" at the web3 infrastructure layer, it has all the practical functionality it needs, and is down-to-earth. 3. Velo has built a Federated Credit Exchange (FCX) network, more like a distributed DAO organization, using a system of staking Velo tokens to obtain 1:1 anchored digital credits for daily operations. Since the network members are traditional financial institutions such as SEBA Bank and Lightnet Group, this credit exchange network, although having a DeFi framework at its core, is strictly a CeDeFi network, serving as a bridge between CeFi and DeFi environments for its cooperative partners. 3) Looking at Velo's product protocol development roadmap and its two-handed approach to expanding in the web2 political and business resource market, it is clear that Velo's approach to entering the global cross-border payment settlement network is somewhat special: it is neither too web3 Native, nor too traditionally web2 entrenched, and can be called a CeDeFi dual-track project. It is worth mentioning that Velo has recently signed a strategic cooperation with the Solana Foundation, with Solana serving as the blockchain settlement layer, and Velo naturally becoming the "bridge" for connecting on-chain and off-chain integration, and will jointly provide designated clearing services for Laos' digital gold trading. It is clear that PayFi is not just a narrative concept, but more of a long-term challenge to integrate web2 traditional finance and web3 on-chain infrastructure and liquidity. How to better serve the traditional financial payment framework with web3 convenience technology facilities, and how to introduce blockchain liquidity subjects without damaging the interest network of the traditional financial architecture, is full of obstacles. Especially in the current pure on-chain world with a serious infrastructure stack, solutions that aim to solve real-world application scenarios, such as "using lending platform interest payments for consumption, creator monetization, and real-time cross-border payments," are particularly precious.