Steakhouse's curator bets the dull vaults win, not the flashy ones
A non-venture-backed DeFi vault firm thinks safe, low-drama vaults will outgrow the high-yield crowd, which is an unusual call in a space that rewards spectacle.
Steakhouse is a DeFi vault curator with an unusual self-description: a family business, not venture-backed, oriented toward what Adrian calls thinking “in centuries.” That framing matters because it shapes the firm’s core thesis, which runs against the grain of how crypto attention and capital typically flow.
This is not going to be super exciting but we expect the more boring vaults to grow more and faster. Adrian
Adrian’s prediction is that the least glamorous vaults will outpace the riskier, higher-yield alternatives. “This is not going to be super exciting but we expect the more boring vaults to grow more and faster,” he said. The reasoning connects to a structural critique: DeFi vault infrastructure tends to develop in the wrong order, with high-risk products arriving before the foundational layer is in place. The safer end of the market, he argues, is where the underserved demand actually sits.
He also pushes back on the common assumption that constrained vault structures are inherently weaker for depositors. A properly constrained vault, he said, can be made “safer even than a hedge fund,” inverting the usual risk narrative around crypto products. On AI’s role, Adrian does not expect it to shrink the curator headcount. Instead, he anticipates a Jevons-paradox effect: cheaper, faster vault creation will expand the total number of vaults rather than substitute for the people who build them.