Waseem Salim has spent more than a decade building in fintech. Before becoming CEO of Valdora, he held a key role at the Algorand Foundation, where his work expanded from regional community growth in the UK to global ecosystem initiatives. He now applies his digital asset experience at Valdora, which is developing vaults as a multi-asset onchain wealth tool.

1. What is Valdora’s 30-second elevator pitch, and what core problem is it trying to solve?

Valdora is liquid staking and onchain vault infrastructure designed to turn yield-bearing assets into liquid, composable assets. Salim said the company remains nascent but has reached close to $40 million in TVL, a common DeFi measure of total value locked in a protocol, and is working with credible originators on real-world financial strategies.

In practice, users deposit stablecoins into a vault, and their capital is routed into a real-world yield strategy, such as private credit or a quant strategy. In return, the user receives a liquid vault token representing the position. That token appreciates as the strategy earns and is not locked; it can be traded, held, or used elsewhere in DeFi while continuing to work.

Salim said Valdora is addressing what he described as a circular nature in much of today’s onchain yield, where crypto activity is often tied to itself rather than to the real economy. At the same time, yield connected to real economic activity through institutional-grade strategies has been difficult for everyday users to access onchain. Valdora’s goal, he said, is to act as a bridge for liquid real yield.

2. You spent years building programs at the Algorand Foundation before becoming CEO of Valdora. How did that community experience shape your approach to building onchain wealth products?

Salim said community work teaches that trust is earned publicly, one interaction at a time, and cannot be created through a marketing budget alone. Builders, he said, have to be present for their communities.

His move from regional community building in the UK to global ecosystem initiatives at Algorand required him to translate between what a protocol could do technically and what would persuade someone to use it and remain engaged. He said Valdora involves a similar challenge, but with capital rather than code.

Salim said he has a low tolerance for hype that is not supported by substance. At Valdora, he sees a convergence of several Web3 themes, including stablecoins, tokenisation, and real-world yield. Those themes sit within a broader real-world asset movement in crypto, where issuers and protocols are bringing offchain instruments such as credit, treasuries, commodities, and funds into tokenized formats. Durable ecosystems, he said, are built on utility and transparency rather than speculation around numbers. He added that users can access up to double-digit yield with accessibility and composability.

3. In plain English, what is a “Composable Vault,” and why should an everyday investor care?

Salim described composability as a structure in which a user’s capital continues working for the underlying strategy while remaining usable elsewhere. A user deposits stablecoins and receives a token in return, similar to a receipt. Unlike a static receipt, the token’s value rises as the underlying strategy earns, and it can be used as collateral elsewhere at any time.

For everyday investors, he said, this matters because it removes a trade-off that DeFi has often imposed: earning yield or keeping capital flexible. With a composable vault, he said, users do not have to choose between those two options. The practical test for this model is whether the token remains useful across venues without obscuring the risks of the underlying strategy.

4. How do Valdora’s vaults generate yield, and where does that real economic value come from?

Each Valdora vault routes capital to a strategy partner operating in the real economy. Salim said the company’s Stablecoin Yield vault sources private credit through abhi across the MENAP region. Its Quant Strategies vault runs systematic FX, commodity, and macro trading with Suisse Quant Group. Valdora also runs opportunistic credit and short-duration income strategies, along with commodities and tokenized equities.

According to Salim, the yield does not come from token emissions or from lending crypto to other crypto traders. Instead, it comes from credit spreads, trading strategies, and real assets — sources institutional capital has long used. Valdora is making the access point onchain, transparent, and liquid, he said.

5. People compare modern crypto vaults to high-yield bank savings accounts. Is that fair, or are there fundamental differences users need to understand?

Salim said the comparison is fair only at the surface level, because both products display a percentage and aim to grow a deposit. Underneath, however, they are different.

A savings account’s yield comes from a bank’s net interest margin and typically carries deposit insurance. A vault’s yield comes from the specific strategy into which it routes capital, and that strategy carries its own risks, including credit risk, market risk, and counterparty risk.

In exchange, Salim said, vault users receive a level of transparency that a savings account cannot provide. Because NAV is tracked onchain, users can verify the value of their position in real time instead of waiting for a monthly statement. Still, he said he would not want users to conclude that a vault is “same thing, better rate.” It is a different risk profile, and understanding that is part of the entry requirement.

6. Traditional finance often requires investors to lock capital away for years to access higher yields. How does Valdora allow investors to capture yields while keeping funds liquid?

Salim said the key is separating the strategy’s timeline from the user’s timeline. An underlying strategy, such as a private credit book, may genuinely operate over a multi-month or multi-year horizon. However, the vault token held by the user is a separate, tradable claim on that position, and the user does not need to wait for the underlying strategy to mature in order to exit.

Structured secondary markets, he said, give that token a real market in which it can trade. Rather than forcing the underlying strategy to unwind early to return cash, the user can sell or use the token itself. Salim said this is the point of building composability into the architecture, instead of adding a lockup and an early-exit penalty.

7. With many DeFi protocols having been exploited over the years, how does Valdora approach risk management to help keep user capital safe?

Valdora divides risk into two categories and manages them differently, Salim said. Smart contract risk, including bugs, exploits, and access-control failures, is addressed through independent audits. Valdora’s audit was conducted by Oak Security, and Salim said every new vault or chain deployment receives its own audit before launch, with no exceptions.

Strategy risk is different. It includes the possibility that a credit book underperforms or a quant strategy loses money, and it is not addressed by a smart contract audit. Salim said Valdora manages strategy risk with its curators, ZigMarkets, through due diligence, close monitoring of NAV reporting, and diversification across vaults and strategy categories rather than concentrating capital in one place.

He also emphasized transparency about what Valdora is not promising. The company does not imply guaranteed yield, fixed returns, or risk-free exposure, and it is explicit about redemption terms and risk profiles for every vault. Salim said anyone conducting real due diligence should be able to see both the audit and the strategy partner behind their deposit.

8. Looking three to five years ahead, do you see onchain vaults replacing traditional brokerage and savings accounts for the average investor?

Salim said “replacing” is the wrong term, but onchain vaults can take share, particularly among people who already hold stablecoins and want that capital to do something rather than sit idle.

He noted that the trust, custody, and regulatory infrastructure around traditional brokerages took decades to build. Onchain infrastructure will have to earn similar trust before it becomes a default rather than an alternative. For products tied to real-world yield, that trust also depends on clear disclosures, reliable reporting, and the operational link between token holders and offchain strategy partners.

What may change, he said, is the ceiling of what “onchain finance” means to people. Today, it is mostly associated with trading and speculation. In coming years, he expects it to mean access to the same TradFi yield-bearing assets, but onchain.

9. Is there anything else you would like to share?

Salim said Valdora is still early, and the team is aware of that. The category of bringing real, institutional-grade yield onchain while keeping it liquid is still being defined, and he said very few teams currently have a live, audited product doing that.

Valdora’s job now, he said, is to keep expanding the range of strategies and vaults, expand to more chains, and continue progressing toward its vision of making the future of finance composable.