From Retail Validators to Wall Street: The Institutional Staking Shift with Laszlo Szabo of Kiln
The Smart Economy Podcast: Real-World Blockchain Applications with Crypto, DeFi, NFTs, and DAOs · 2026-03-12 · 1h 6m
Episode notes
In this episode of The Smart Economy Podcast, host Dylan Grabowski sits down with Laszlo Szabo, co-founder and CEO of Kiln, an institutional staking and on-chain yield platform powering validator infrastructure for exchanges, custodians, wallets, and asset managers across the crypto ecosystem. Szabo shares how staking evolved from early retail validator activity into critical infrastructure for institutions exploring on-chain yield. The conversation examines how staking behaves across market cycles, why institutions increasingly view staking as foundational infrastructure, and how validator operations scale securely across multiple networks.