I've spent the last few years watching crypto infrastructure companies try to solve the "DeFi discovery problem," and most of them fail quietly because they pick the wrong starting point. They build dashboards, aggregators, or recommendation engines before they have clean data and try to capture too many trends. Ryan Rodenbaugh (@ryanrodenbaugh) and the team at http:/Vaults.FYI (@vaultsfyi) took the opposite approach, and that's why they're one of the few teams actually shipping something useful.
What stood out in our conversation was their methodological choice: derive everything on-chain. Most platforms take protocols at their word when it comes to APY estimates. http:/Vaults.FYI pulls hourly share price data and calculates yields themselves. It's slower to build, harder to scale, and completely unglamorous. It's also the only way to create a neutral, verifiable data layer that enterprises and fintechs will actually trust. When Ryan mentioned that some protocols now use http:/Vaults.FYI data to power their own frontends, that's not a vanity metric. That's proof the methodology works.
Another valuable insight: 95% of their integrations are customer-driven. They're not chasing trends or forcing a product vision. They're building what wallets, fintechs, and onchain platforms are actually asking for, which means they're seeing demand signals most of us aren't exposed to. Whether it's Jumper Exchange adding an earn tab or OKX allocating a team of 10-20 engineers just to maintain DeFi integrations, the infrastructure need is real and growing fast.
At @indexingco, we think a lot about what it means to build durable data infrastructure in a space that moves this quickly. http:/Vaults.FYI is a good reminder that sometimes the best path forward is just to do the work, stay neutral, and let the data speak for itself.
Full conversation:
YT - youtu.be/ZNE6U5kdZfo
Spotify - open.spotify.com/episode/27J3g...…
