Tokenization Won't Be a Moon—It's a Wave Pool: Grayscale's Pandl Maps Out the Playbook

Grayscale's head of research Zach Pandl wants you to think of tokenization as a multi-phase roadmap, not a single trade. Speaking at the EthCC conference in Cannes, he laid out how different networks will win at different stages—and when to jump in. Basically, this isn't a pump and dump—it's a marathon where different runners peak at different miles.

First up: the boring stuff. Institution-friendly, permissioned networks that basically look like today's financial system but with slightly better UX. Canton Network, backed by DRW, TradeWeb, Goldman Sachs and Nasdaq, is leading that charge. Pandl calls it a "perfectly reasonable investment" for those wanting nearer-term traction—essentially a "slightly upgraded" version of what we already have. It's like watching your dad discover TikTok—technically modern, still cringe.

Phase two brings the hybrids. Avalanche is the poster child here—hundreds of corporate-owned subnets connected to a shared layer-1. Think of it as traditional finance learning to talk to itself across chains. Picture a bunch of suits at a conference finally getting Signal instead of fax machines—progress, but not quite cyberpunk.

Then comes the ambitious stuff: global, decentralized platforms like Ethereum. It's the bigger bet, but Pandl notes the tech and institutions aren't quite ready yet. ETH holders are playing the long game. This is the crypto equivalent of buying land in Florida in 1802—technically correct, but you're gonna be waiting a while for the beachfront property.

For the less directional play, Pandl flagged chain-agnostic infrastructure plays like Chainlink as potentially "even more compelling" than picking blockchain winners. Smart money loves infrastructure because it's basically being the drug dealer at a festival—doesn't matter