Marcos Viriato of ParFin/ Rayls: Building the Compliant Bridge for Banking's $100 Trillion Move to Blockchain

In a recent episode of the alpha un# podcast, host Sri Misra sat down with Marcos, a financial markets veteran and the mind behind Rayls, a new infrastructure designed to solve one of the biggest challenges in finance today: how to bring the world’s largest banks and their trillions of dollars in assets onto the blockchain, compliantly and securely. Marcos shared the entire journey, from early mock-ups to landing banking giants with over 90 million customers, and laid out a clear vision for the future of on-chain finance.

This article captures the key insights from that conversation, exploring the unique story and strategy behind Rayls. 

The $100 Trillion Disconnect

For years, a wall has stood between traditional financial markets and the world of Decentralized Finance (DeFi). As Marcos explained, this separation wasn't accidental. 

"Financial markets has been isolated from DeFi for a long time for the various reasons, you know, compliance concerns, risk of not dealing with identified wallets, know your transaction and so on". 

How could a global bank with 60 million customers possibly interact with a public blockchain without robust regulatory controls? This is the core problem Marcos and his team set out to solve, aiming to build the infrastructure that could finally bring what he estimates to be "$100 trillion on-chain".

The "Trojan Horse" Strategy: From Mock-ups to Major Banks

The story of Rayls began not in a boardroom, but with a simple observation. While living in London in 2019, Marcos, with his background in financial markets, saw a clear gap. Banks, he believed, would inevitably embrace blockchain, but the core technology they needed simply wasn't there. He connected with his co-founder Alex, and they decided to "test the waters".

Their first step was surprisingly simple. 

        "We built some screens of a platform. It was very mock-up  and we showed some clients and they  said, wow, if you have that, I would use it".

This early validation led them to build what is now known as the ParFin platform. In 2020, they landed their first client, providing a system for banks to offer digital assets and crypto to their customers. The real turning point came when the pandemic prompted Marcos to move back to Brazil, a country with a uniquely open regulatory framework for blockchain. There, they managed to get their platform into some of the largest financial institutions in the country.

"We have banks like Santander, Bradesco. Santander with 65 million customers, Bradesco with 90 million customers, Inter with 30 million customers, and so on".

This initial product, ParFin, was what Marcos calls the "Trojan horse". Once inside these major banks, a new, more significant demand emerged. The banks wanted to tokenize their own assets, leading directly to the creation of Rayls.

Building Rayls: A Network Designed for Banks

Unlike many blockchain projects built on theoretical use cases, Rayls was designed from the "bottom up," based on the explicit requirements of these massive financial institutions. It was conceived to handle incredible scale, citing the example of a single bank tokenizing "1.2, 1.3 million certificate of deposit a day".

Rayls is a public blockchain network that acts as a liquidity and connectivity layer. It allows a bank to operate its own private, compliant node while still being able to connect to a broader on-chain ecosystem. The key is how it handles identity and compliance.

"All the wallets being KYC'd by the bank at the stations without disclosing the information".

This allows for a new world of on-chain banking services, from participating in lending pools to acting as a market maker in a foreign exchange automated market maker (AMM). A bank can ensure compliance without revealing sensitive customer data on a public network.

Unlocking Siloed Assets: Beyond the "Closed Loop"

Marcos drew a sharp contrast between the vision for Rayls and existing models for tokenized assets. He pointed out that many current offerings, operate in a "closed loop". An investor can buy the token, but they "cannot freely move the token to whoever wallet you want to".

Rayls is designed to break open these silos. Marcos provided a powerful example.

"Imagine you have a better rate to borrow in another bank, you cannot move your assets from bank A to bank B seamlessly and this locks up opportunities. So imagine you have those assets tokenized and you can port them over to a lending pool of another bank with a better rate or even to the public to offer lending".

A bank could even accept a tokenized certificate of deposit from a competing bank as collateral for a loan, something they are already testing. This unlocks immense potential, allowing customers to use their assets in ways that are impossible in today's fragmented banking system.

A Pragmatic Approach to Blockchain's Future

Throughout the conversation, Marcos maintained a pragmatic and utility-focused perspective. He was quick to point out common misconceptions, noting that blockchain is a "very good transaction ledger," but it is not an accounting ledger meant to replace a bank's entire back-office system.

He also acknowledged the significant hurdles still facing the industry, particularly around user experience.             "It's not easy to use, still," he stated frankly. "If you're not savvy enough, connect your MetaMask. If you use a bridge incorrectly, you lose the money. It's gone".

This focus on real-world application extends to his view on token prices. When asked about Ethereum's price potential, he emphasized its utility and flawless execution of complex upgrades, like the move to Proof of Stake.

"This is unheard in the history of... computer engineering. You're upgrading a system live with millions of people using it and there's no stop... the price will be a consequence of this utility, the security that Ethereum is bringing to the ecosystem".

For Rayls, the philosophy is the same. The goal is to build something so useful for banks that its value becomes an inevitable consequence of its adoption.

The Road Ahead: On-Chain FX and a New Financial Infrastructure

Looking forward, Marcos sees stablecoins and foreign exchange as major drivers of adoption. One of the most immediate use cases is using Rayls' attestation service to verify the recipient of a payment before a stablecoin is even sent. The next level is creating on-chain AMMs where banks can act as liquidity providers to seamlessly convert between different stablecoins, like a non-USD stablecoin to a USD stablecoin.

This vision is already gaining traction. Marcos mentioned a project with JP Morgan's Onyx that involved tokenizing funds and using on-chain suitability verification to ensure they were distributed only to eligible wallets based on factors like investor type and jurisdiction.

Ultimately, Marcos sees this as the beginning of a long journey, comparing it to the early days of the internet when banks first tentatively moved online. They are building what he calls a "new financial markets infrastructure,"  a foundational layer that will take time to mature but will eventually reshape how finance operates.