Consumer lending remains one of the most intermediary-heavy corners of the financial system. A bank originates the loan, a servicer collects the payments, and a securitizer packages the resulting receivables for investors. Between these layers, a surprising amount of every dollar a borrower pays is siphoned off before it reaches the people actually providing the capital. Kevin Miao, co-founder and chief executive officer of Tare, argues that tokenization can change that — with direct implications for what households pay on everyday borrowing, from personal loans to car financing.

Speaking on stage at Avalanche Summit 2026 in New York City, Miao contended that onchain infrastructure can strip out those middlemen and return more value directly to borrowers.

From BlockTower Credit to Tare

Miao previously founded BlockTower Credit, a private credit fund that grew to manage $1.9 billion in assets under management by leveraging blockchain technology to improve capital efficiency in lending operations.

Tare is positioning itself as consumer lending infrastructure built natively on the Avalanche blockchain, designed to move the entire lending stack onchain rather than simply tokenizing the final asset. According to Miao, placing a digital wrapper on a traditional loan after it has already been originated, serviced, and structured through conventional channels misses the point. The real gains, he argued, come from rebuilding the process itself onchain and eliminating the layers of intermediaries that currently extract fees at every stage.

His challenge to the industry at the summit was straightforward: measure whether onchain methods actually produce better outcomes for borrowers. The framing turns a familiar tokenization pitch into a testable claim about borrower outcomes.

Avalanche's institutional push

The Avalanche Summit, held September 16–17, was heavily oriented toward institutional adoption and real-world asset utilization. Speakers from firms including Franklin Templeton and Securitize discussed onchain credit and the mechanics of bringing traditional financial products onto blockchain rails.

Among the developments highlighted at the event was a collaboration with Hanwha Group for tokenized securities. Separately, Aave's V4 launch on Avalanche in July 2026 marked the lending protocol's first expansion outside of Ethereum, with Aave V4 on Avalanche specifically targeting tokenized asset lending. Taken together, the developments place onchain lending — the territory Tare is entering — at the intersection of traditional finance institutions and established decentralized protocols.

Why intermediaries are costly

When someone takes out a personal loan or finances a car, the interest rate they pay reflects far more than just the risk of default. It also incorporates origination fees, servicing costs, compliance overhead, and profit margins for every entity in the chain.

Tokenization, as Miao frames it, automates or eliminates these functions through smart contracts. A loan originated onchain can have its payment collection, compliance checks, and investor distribution handled programmatically, reducing the number of parties that need to take a cut. Whether those savings actually reach borrowers is precisely what Miao has challenged the industry to measure, making consumer lending one of the more concrete test cases for the tokenization push on display at the summit.

Source: Cryptoing