Edinburgh Decentralised Finance Summit 2026: Institutional Digital Finance
Edinburgh Decentralised Finance Summit 2026: Institutional Digital Finance
Institutional DeFi, Tokenisation, Risk Management, Regulation, Compliance & Autonomous Finance
A full day across four sessions. The morning covers the cryptographic and game theoretic foundations of DeFi, the economics of token design, onchain markets and institutional liquid staking. The afternoon turns to tokenised assets and the custody and payments infrastructure behind them, then smart contract security, financial crime compliance and AI in finance, closing with government AI policy.
The summit builds on the success and high quality of the 2025 Edinburgh DeFi Summit, Scotland's first, which brought together 18 speakers across four sessions and was supported by the Ethereum Foundation, Linea, Gnosis, Nexus Mutual, Redeem Technologies and BCP Technologies. It follows our Edinburgh Tokenisation Summit in May 2026, which drew speakers from JPMorgan Kinexys, the Ethereum Foundation, 21Shares, Baillie Gifford, the FCA, the Asian Development Bank, Burness Paull, Polymath, WisdomTree and the University of Edinburgh Business School.
This is a curated event, like our previous summits. Speakers are selected on merit, against clear criteria, so the programme stays relevant and the talks are worth your time.
The programme covers the cryptographic and game theoretic foundations of decentralisation, token economics and value capture, and onchain markets spanning spot trading, perpetual futures, prediction markets and collateralised credit. Institutional themes include liquid staking, custody, tokenised securities and funds, and the market infrastructure that connects issuers, investors and settlement networks. The day also takes in DEX liquidity for tokenised assets, the future of payments, smart contract security and agentic code analysis, financial crime compliance, AI in financial services, the blockchain and AI crossover, and the Scottish Government's AI strategy.
The venue is one of Edinburgh's largest purpose-built auditoriums, a 300-seat theatre in the New Town. It is five minutes' walk from Edinburgh Waverley and six minutes from parking at St James Quarter. The historic library and reception hall give plenty of room for catering and networking.
Confirmed Speakers & Contributors
Matthew Fisher, CEO of Katana
Dominic Marley, Institutional Relations, Lido Finance
Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, Chair in Cyber Security and Privacy at The University of Edinburgh & Chief Scientist, IOHK
James Tunnacliffe, Vice President Sales Consulting, Northern Trust
Chris Boyland, Head of AI & Digital Growth, The Scottish Government
Laeeq Shabbir, Partner, Digital Assets, HT Digital
Tobias Vogel, CEO of Conensys Dilligence
Prof Bill Buchanan, Director, Digital Trust Centre & Professor of Cryptography, Napier University
Luke Dufour, Compliance Advisor, TRM Labs
Dr Amirreza Sarencheh, Co-Founder & CEO at Tokenive
Darren Gray, Head of Ecosystem at QuickSwap
Ben Whittle, Founder & Cryptoeconomics Designer, Token Architecture
Aleks Tomczyk, Chief Executive, Fintech Scotland
Dr Maciej Zurawski, Executive Director Blockchain Scotland & CEO of Redeem Technologies
Pedro Antonino, Senior Research Scientist, The Blockhouse Technology Ltd.
Preliminary Schedule (subject to change)
9.00 am - 10.00 am
Networking, Coffee & Registration
10.00 am - 11.00 am
Session 1: Foundations
10.00 - 10.10 am
Opening remarks by the host Dr Maciej Zurawski, Executive Director, Blockchain Scotland.
10.10 - 10.30 am
"Dissecting the 'De' of DeFi" by Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, Chair in Cyber Security and Privacy at The University of Edinburgh & Chief Scientist, IOHK
Decentralized Finance has been touted as a ground-breaking development for nearly a decade - but what does decentralization really entail? In this talk we do a deep dive into the cryptographic and game theoretic mechanisms that bestow upon DeFi its supposed decentralized nature and we critically assess costs vs benefits and real world value versus theoretical aspiration of the underlying technology.
10.30 - 10.45 am
"Beyond the Token Graveyard: Principles for Durable Token Value Capture" by Ben Whittle, Founder & Cryptoeconomics Designer, Token Architecture
Many crypto systems have created real usage, revenue, infrastructure and strategic relevance, but their tokens failed to capture durable value. The issue has not simply been bad market conditions. It has often been a design failure: weak token functionality, poor value routing, excessive emissions, governance without economic substance, and unclear separation between protocol value, entity value and token value.
10.45 - 11.00 am
Q&A with Prof Aggelos and Ben, moderated by Dr Maciej Zurawski
11.00 am - 11.40 am
Coffee Break
11.40 am - 1.00 pm
Session 2: Institutional DeFi
11.40 am - 12.00 pm
"From Tokenization Theatre to Onchain Markets" by Matthew Fisher, CEO, Katana
Slowly, then suddenly. For many years, tokenized assets were just theatrics. A bond or a fund wrapped in a token. No order flow. More friction. The asset moved onchain. The market didn't. Now the rails are mature. And they are increasingly interconnected with not only traditional markets, but continuous ones. The same markets are now always open. And more than that, new markets and financial instruments are blossoming. Perpetual futures and prediction markets have shown the demand for 24/7 price discovery and continuous risk transfer is here to stay. DeFi is not just slinging derivatives. The true power of tokenisation shines through composability. Through turning any asset into always-on collateralized credit.
Put perps, spot and credit in one place and you get basis trades and hedged, risk-adjusted yield — the prime brokerage function, without the prime broker. None of it works if liquidity is scattered across a hundred disconnected applications, which is the real case for verticalising the stack, and the thesis Katana is built on. Tokenisation was never the product. It is the pre-requisite for something much bigger. Assets that work. Markets that stay open.
12.00 pm - 1.00 pm Institutional DeFi Panel & Audience Q&A
Moderator: Laeeq Shabbir, HT Digital
Contribution by Dominic Marley, Institutional Relations, Lido Finance
Dominic will discuss how Lido can help institutions access Ethereum staking while preserving liquidity, supporting operational flexibility and fitting within existing institutional custody and investment-product infrastructure, including products such as ETPs and ETFs. The key message is that liquid staking makes staked ETH more capital efficient across institutional portfolios — whether held as a reward bearing token, used as collateral or incorporated into regulated ETH investment products.
Contribution by Darren Gray, Head of Ecosystem at QuickSwap
Darren will bring the consumer DeFi perspective, particularly around what has actually driven users, liquidity and activity on-chain, and what institutional DeFi and tokenised RWAs can learn from that. He will explore how we make this new, more ‘serious’ side of DeFi genuinely usable and attractive rather than simply recreating traditional financial products on-chain. From the QuickSwap side, he will speak to the role DEXs and permissionless liquidity can play in giving tokenised real-world assets actual utility, liquidity and composability once they’re on-chain, as well as some of the challenges around bringing those assets to existing DeFi users.
Contribution by James Tunnacliffe, Vice President Sales Consulting, Northern Trust
1.00 pm - 2.00 pm
Lunch
Two lunch options:
* Gluten-free & dairy-free with proteins
* Vegan
2.00 - 4.00 pm
Session 3: Tokenisation, Risk Management, Security & Compliance
Tokenisation
2.00 - 2.20 pm
"The Future of Tokenisation and Payments" by Director, Digital Trust Centre & Professor of Cryptography, Napier University
This presentation will aim to formalise the definition of a token and will outline the wide range of blockchain platforms and bridges that are relevant to tokenisation and payments. It will particularly focus on stablecoins and CBDCs (Central Bank Digital Currencies), including striking the balance between privacy and AML/KYC checking. The presentation will also showcase the integration of a practical application of smart contract integration and GenAI into the Bank of England's Digital Pound Lab and in the migration of existing blockchains towards a quantum-robust future.
2.20 - 2.40 pm
Contribution by James Tunnacliffe, Vice President Sales Consulting, Northern Trust
Tokenization has the potential to reshape financial markets, but successful adoption depends on more than technology alone. Northern Trust is committed to establishing the institutional building blocks required to support digital assets at scale, including custody, governance, risk management and market interoperability. As financial institutions and new market entrants explore tokenized securities, digital funds and on-chain investment models, Northern Trust is positioned to play a vital role in connecting issuers, investors, exchanges, banks and settlement networks into a trusted operating model. We'll examine how these participants work together, why their roles remain essential in a tokenized world, and how the combination of blockchain innovation and established financial infrastructure can unlock new efficiencies while maintaining the standards of security and oversight demanded by institutional investors.
Risk Management, Compliance & Security
2.40 pm - 3.00 p.m.
Talk by Luke Dufour, Compliance Advisor, TRM Labs
[details to follow]
3.00 - 3.15 pm
"Lessons from the Mines: Agentic Security in Practice" by Tobias Vogel, Chief Executive Officer, Consensys Diligence
At Consensys Diligence, we've been deploying the latest agentic code-analysis techniques against real Ethereum protocols. Our mental model shifted from auditing to a new concept: “Vulnerability Mining”. The findings have been unexpected, some impressive, some disappointing. Beginning with an overview of the current security landscape this talk gives an honest overview of what we've seen in practice, aiming to help you navigate the hype around agentic security.
3.15 - 3.35 pm
"Web3 security in the age of AI" by Pedro Antonino, Senior Research Scientist, The Blockhouse Technology Ltd.
AI has already changed who can find a vulnerability in a smart contract, and how cheaply. Over the next few years, it will also change what it costs to prove that a protocol is correct. Attackers benefit first as more code ships with less review behind it, and finding and exploiting bugs gets easier. Pedro Antonino draws on TBTL's own experience applying LLMs to Solidity codebases, and on a pattern his team keeps running into: asking an agent to find the vulnerabilities produces very different results from asking whether a protocol respects a stated property. That difference points to where we are heading. Formal methods let you state intent precisely, and AI agents are increasingly able to prove that a protocol behaves as intended. The talk sets out why this could raise the security bar considerably for well-specified DeFi protocols, and what auditors become when precise specification rather than bug hunting is the scarce skill.
3.35 - 4.00 pm
Panel and Q&A with audience
4.00 - 4.30 pm
Coffee break
4.30 pm - 6.00 pm
Session 4: Autonomous Finance & AI
4.30 - 4.45 pm
“How AI is transforming the financial services sector” by Aleks Tomczyk, Chief Executive, FinTech Scotland
Huge amounts of innovation is going on in the financial services sector both in large financial services companies and in fintechs - particularly with AI at the moment. This innovation will drive value for companies and also better services for their customers. Aleks will share perspectives on AI innovation, adoption risk and where things may go in what is an important and regulated sector for all economies.
4.45 - 5.00 pm
"The 91%: How AI delivers the customer of one" by Dia Banerji, Founder & CEO, Cherpa.AI
Only 9% of UK adults take regulated financial advice. This talk is about the underserved 91%. Financial services firms have historically struggled to reach them because the economics simply did not work. AI changes that. Drawing on the FCA’s Mills Review and her experience building Cherpa, Dia Banerji explores how AI can fundamentally change the cost to serve, enable the “customer of one”, and give financial services firms the ability to personalise support at scale and ultimately serve many more customers, far better.
5.00 pm - 5.15 pm
"Where Blockchains and AI Genuinely Reinforce Each Other" by Dr Amirreza Sarencheh, Co-Founder & CEO at Tokenive
Blockchains are rigid and literal. They do as written, so one bad input can be catastrophic and cannot be undone. AI is capable but unpredictable, confidently wrong in ways that are hard to foresee. Each can cover the other's weakness, and in both directions. Amirreza Sarencheh sets out what his team is building at Tokenive, combining large language models with cryptography to turn public and private web data into verifiable information. In one direction AI becomes a translation layer, letting rigid smart contracts read messy real-world evidence and natural language rather than narrow pre-scripted triggers. In the other, the blockchain world's own security tools, verifiable sourcing and secure hardware, wrap the AI so its inputs are authentic and its processing is private and provable, which lets people trust an AI decision and hand it sensitive data without exposing it. The talk then looks further ahead, drawing on a recent IC3 survey on crypto and AI, and stays clear-eyed about the limits, the gap between feasible and proven, and the risks when autonomous agents gain access to stablecoins and persist in the wild.
5.15 pm - 5.25 pm
“Scotland’s AI Strategy: from policy to economic adoption" by Chris Boyland, Head of AI & Digital Growth at the Scottish Government
The Scottish Government’s Head of AI & Digital Growth Policy will speak about the development of the recent AI Strategy for Scotland and the challenges and opportunities which the Strategy is designed to address. He will outline Scotland’s key strengths, in the context of changes to economic paradigms which AI is driving around the world, providing ways in which Scottish Government policy is being implemented programmatically in the form of interventions designed to drive business adoption and economic growth, with best-practice illustrations to show how Scotland can offer opportunities and leadership, demonstrating trustworthiness and a responsible approach in a climate of rising concern and widespread unease about the pace of wholesale AI deployment.
5.25 pm - 5.55 pm
Panel & Q&A
Session Moderator: Maciej Zurawski, Blockchain Scotland
5.55 pm - 6.00 pm
Closing remarks by the host
6.00 - 8.00 pm
Networking Drinks in the Grand Hall
Drinks and canapes will be served: gluten-free & dairy-free, and vegan
Speaker Bios
Dominic Marley, Institutional Relations, Lido Finance
Dominic Marley is an Institutional Staking Contributor at the Lido Ecosystem Foundation, supporting institutional access to Ethereum staking through Lido. Previously at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, he brings experience across traditional finance and digital assets, with a focus on bridging the two industries and helping institutions navigate the evolving blockchain ecosystem.
Prof. Aggelos Kiayias, Chair in Cyber Security and Privacy at The University of Edinburgh & Chief Scientist, IOHK
Professor Aggelos Kiayias is the chair in Cyber Security and Privacy and director of the Blockchain Technology Laboratory at the University of Edinburgh. He is also the Chief Scientist at blockchain technology company Input Output. His research interests are in applied cryptography and foundations of cryptography, computer security, and privacy, with a particular emphasis in blockchain technologies and distributed systems, e-voting and secure multiparty protocols as well as privacy and identity management. He has over 200 publications in journals, book chapters and conference proceedings in the area. He has served as the program chair of the Cryptographers' Track of the RSA conference in 2011 and the Financial Cryptography and Data Security conference in 2017, as well as the general chair of Eurocrypt 2013. He also served as the program chair of Real World Crypto Symposium 2020, the Public-Key Cryptography Conference 2020, the International conference on Advances in Financial Technologies AFT 2026 and Applied Cryptography and Network Security (ACNS) 2027. In 2021 he was elected fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. In 2024 he received the BCS Lovelace Medal. He was elected fellow of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) in 2025 and fellow of the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR) in 2026.
Pedro Antonino, Senior Research Scientist, The Blockhouse Technology Ltd.
Pedro Antonino leads the smart contract security practice at The Blockhouse Technology Ltd (TBTL) and holds a DPhil in formal verification from the University of Oxford. His research applies mathematical reasoning, increasingly assisted by large language models, to the problem of showing that a contract does what its specification says — work published across ACM SAC, SEFM and Software and Systems Modelling, including Solidifier, a bounded model checker for Solidity, and Specification is Law, a framework for safe contract deployment and upgradeability. He most recently built NAVe, a formal verifier for the zero-knowledge language Noir, which underpins TBTL's ZK program analysis work.
Ben Whittle, Founder & Cryptoeconomics Designer, Token Architecture
Ben Whittle is a cryptoeconomics specialist and the founder and principal cryptoeconomics designer at Token Architecture. Through Token Architecture, he leads end-to-end design of new cryptoeconomic systems, independent review of existing models and the repair of live token economies. His work addresses the full system: the underlying product/business model; stakeholder roles, incentives and value flows; equity/token delineation; token functionality and value accrual; wider on-chain mechanisms and market design; monetary, supply and release design; treasury/reserve policy; allocation, rewards and distribution; governance; and launch architecture. He is also a co-founder of Just Cryptoeconomics, which develops Fundamentals, a token intelligence platform providing structured research and comparables for sophisticated investors allocating to liquid tokens. Previously, he was research lead at Smith + Crown, where he held senior responsibilities across cryptoeconomic design, investment research and education, contributed to system designs and research, and led client workshops and engagements.
Tobias Vogel, Chief Executive Officer, Consensys Dilligence
Tobias joined Consensys Diligence in 2022 and is leading the team since 2024. In his previous life he worked in finance and automotive consulting. Now Ethereum excites him the most and he is interested in how to secure the ecosystem for native projects, institutions entering the space and all future users. Outside of crypto he's a foodie, a gamer and loves to get to know the diverse cultures of this planet.
Prof Bill Buchanan, Director, Digital Trust Centre & Professor of Cryptography, Napier University
Awarded an OBE for services to Cybersecurity and Innovation, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FSRE).
William (Bill) Buchanan is a Professor of Applied Cryptography in the School of Computing, Edinburgh and the Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University. He is a Fellow of the BCS and a Principal Fellow of the HEA. Bill was appointed an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 Birthday Honours for services to cybersecurity, and, in 2024, he was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE). In 2026 he received the “Cybersecurity Veteran Award” (Security Excellence Awards), in 2023 the “Most Innovative Teacher of the Year” award at the Times Higher Education Awards 2023 (the “Oscars of Higher Education”), and was awarded “Cyber Evangelist of the Year” at the Scottish Cyber Awards in 2016 and 2025. Bill has led research which has led to four successful spin-out companies (Zonefox, Symphonic, Cyacomb and MemCrypt).
Dr Amirreza Sarencheh, Co-Founder & CEO at Tokenive
Dr. Amirreza Sarencheh earned his PhD in Computer Science at the School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, focused on cryptography and blockchain, and went on to work on AI security as a postdoctoral researcher there. After his PhD, he founded Tokenive, building at the intersection of AI, blockchain, and security. He previously led R&D at Polymesh Labs, a Layer 1 blockchain for RWA tokenization. With peer-reviewed work at top venues including ACM CCS, he combines academic depth in cryptography with hands-on industry experience, giving him a perspective on where the blockchain and AI crossover delivers and where it is still unproven.
Matthew Fisher, CEO, Katana
Matthew Fisher is the CEO of Katana, a DeFi application offering perpetual futures, spot trading, and credit. Katana's vertically integrated offering is built on the Katana blockchain, which also features applications like Morpho and asset issuers like Etherfi. Matthew previously held roles at Polygon and Diem (fka Facebook's Libra), working at the intersection of institutional business development, digital asset policy and DeFi infrastructure. His writing and commentary have appeared in CoinDesk, Financial Times, FundsTech, and Yellow.
Darren Gray, Head of Ecosystem at QuickSwap
Darren Gray is Head of Ecosystem at QuickSwap, one of the longest-standing decentralised exchanges. He works across ecosystem growth, partnerships, governance, tokenomics and product strategy, with a particular focus on making DeFi more accessible and useful to everyday users. Having spent years working at the intersection of DEX infrastructure, liquidity and on-chain communities, Darren brings a consumer DeFi perspective to the evolving institutional landscape, including how tokenised real-world assets can tap into permissionless liquidity, composability and existing on-chain users to become more than simply traditional assets represented on a blockchain.
Alex Tomczyk, Chief Executive Officer, Fintech Scotland
Aleks Tomczyk became Chief Executive of FinTech Scotland in January 2026. With 25+ years’ fintech experience, he has delivered fintech transformation programmes in large firms, built two Scotland‑based tech companies from foundation to exit, advised on growth, and launched one of the UK’s first corporate venturing programmes. He previously served on the FinTech Scotland board for three years and is a trustee of the Sailors’ Children’s Society, a board member of LawscotTech and Estatesearch Group.
Luke Dufour, Compliance Advisor, TRM Labs
Luke Dufour is TRM's EMEA Compliance Advisor, serving as a subject matter expert for TRM's customers on AML and financial crime control best practices for financial institutions, banks, and crypto-native businesses. He was previously Deputy MLRO at BVNK, a global virtual asset payments firm, where he also led the Financial Crime Intelligence function, and a Senior Financial Crime Intelligence Officer at ClearBank. Earlier, he held investigative and intelligence roles at Barclays and MoneyGram, focused on sensitive casework and public-private coordination with law enforcement across France, Spain, and the UK.
James Tunnacliffe, Vice President Sales Consulting, Northern Trust
James Tunnacliffe is a Sales Consulting specialist at Northern Trust with a background in management consulting and financial services transformation. He advises institutional asset owners, managers and market infrastructure providers on technology strategy, fintech innovation, and digital asset adoption, with a particular focus on how tokenization and digital assets can be integrated into traditional financial markets and servicing models. James Tunnacliffe is a Vice President, Sales Consulting at Northern Trust.
Dia Banerji, Founder & CEO, Cherpa.AI
Dia Banerji is Founder and CEO of Cherpa.ai, an AI agent for personal finance that helps people navigate everyday money decisions across areas such as benefits, tax, savings, pensions and debt. With over two decades of leadership experience at Standard Life (Phoenix Group), JPMorgan, Barclays and Société Générale, she has led large-scale digital transformation, proposition development and customer strategy across global markets.
Alongside her executive career, Dia is a Non-Executive Director at the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service and an Independent Member of the Court at Abertay University. Additionally, she serves on Scotland’s Digital Trust Taskforce, contributing to the national conversation on AI, innovation and digital trust.
Travel Instructions
By train: Arrive to Edinburgh Waverley train station and walk 5 minutes. The venue is close to the train station.
By plane: Arrive to Edinburgh Airport and take 25 min Uber or 40 min by tram + 5 min walk.
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