Toronto, Canada, August 10, 2026 – Earlier this year, Anvil, the universal collateral management layer, and Blockchain Futurist Conference announced a new way for sponsors to reserve spots using digital asset-backed “promises,” (via digital Letters of Credit) instead of paying months in advance.
During the 2026 event, companies, such as EukaPay, Digital Spenders Club, Polymath, Stablecorp, APX Lending, and MayFlower, used Anvil’s Promise Now, Pay Later solution to secure spots while keeping their digital assets productive until payment was due. Every commitment remained fully secured throughout the process.
The implementation showcased a fully secure Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) experience, demonstrating how digital assets and smart contracts can modernize the collateral infrastructure behind financial commitments. Reflecting on that broader opportunity, Dr. Guneet Kaur wrote during the conference:
“Anvil’s ambitions extend beyond improving an established banking product. Schwartz argues that its infrastructure could enable merchants to offer secure Buy Now, Pay Later services while abstracting most of the blockchain’s complexity from customers.”
Speaking on Futurist’s Main Stage, Anvil Research Labs CEO Maximillian Schwartz demonstrated that while BNPL has proven demand for payment flexibility, the infrastructure supporting it is fundamentally flawed. Its reliance on unsecured credit contributes to a growing pool of phantom debt, leaving hundreds of billions of dollars in consumer obligations outside traditional credit reporting and creating an increasingly fragile credit system.
“Today’s model is built on unsecured credit because traditional collateral simply isn’t practical at checkout.”
Schwartz explained that reducing this growing systemic risk requires moving from unsecured lending to collateralized credit. Digital assets are the only form of collateral that can be efficiently monitored and enforced in real time, making this practical at checkout.
“Historically, digital assets have been treated as dead capital. They hold value, but that value can’t easily participate in traditional financial services.”
Today, the crypto market represents more than $2.3 trillion in value, yet it remains largely disconnected from the financial systems where it could secure loans, guarantees, and commercial commitments.
Anvil Protocol addresses this gap by transforming onchain collateral into fully secured, universally accepted credit, while Anvil Research Labs (ARL) provides enterprise-grade tooling that enables businesses to integrate and manage these capabilities through familiar business workflows and easy to leverage libraries.
In interviews throughout the conference, Schwartz expanded on the opportunity beyond BNPL, explaining that the goal is not to replace traditional finance, but to connect the growing digital asset economy to it.
“Last year, 741 million people owned crypto. The question is: how do we give them access to financial services? You need a layer that allows that value to secure financial commitments, so it can support loans, lines of credit, Buy Now, Pay Later, and much more.”
Making digital assets usable as collateral extends their utility far beyond crypto-native applications. CoinDesk Research notes Anvil’s addressable markets include $560 billion in BNPL, $2.5 trillion in global trade finance, $640 billion global in gambling, subscription services, security deposits, and other financial commitments where capital is immobilized to provide assurance.
More About Anvil
Anvil is a DeFi protocol on Ethereum that unlocks efficient collateral management and fully secured credit. Anvil combines transparency, trustless verification, and decentralized governance by the ANVL token to reduce counterparty risk and extend credit utility across decentralized and traditional finance. While initially designed by the Acronym Foundation, Anvil Research Labs (ARL) has since been established to continue the development and expansion of the protocol.
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