Messari has published a Pulse Report analyzing how Flow is evolving from its consumer collectibles origin into consumer DeFi infrastructure. The report, titled "Flow Network: From Collectibles to Consumer DeFi" and authored by Jonny Kreiser, examines the technical upgrades, protocol design decisions, and product strategy driving this shift, and whether Flow's existing consumer distribution can become a DeFi advantage.
The full report is available here: https://messari.io/report/flow-network-from-collectibles-to-consumer-defi
Consumer Distribution as a DeFi Foundation
The report opens with a central finding:
"Flow is leveraging its proven consumer distribution and operational experience to drive consumer DeFi adoption."
Flow has over 40 million consumer accounts across NBA Top Shot, NFL All Day, Disney Pinnacle, Ticketmaster, and other apps in the ecosystem. Approximately 15 million of those users have completed at least one on-chain transaction. Ticketmaster alone has minted and distributed over 100 million NFTs through the Flow network, with most recipients unaware they were interacting with a blockchain at all. This consumer base, built over years of live products with household-name brands, is the distribution layer that Messari identifies as Flow's core differentiator. No other Layer 1 network has comparable direct consumer reach through mainstream entertainment and sports partners.
The report's thesis is that this distribution becomes the foundation for financial products:
"Flow can convert consumer distribution into repeat financial behavior."
Two Protocol Upgrades That Enable this Strategy
Messari identifies two specific protocol upgrades that make the consumer DeFi strategy technically viable:
"Flow's shift toward consumer DeFi is anchored to two protocol upgrades: Crescendo makes Flow EVM a practical target for Solidity teams, and Forte adds native, reusable automation for recurring actions."
Crescendo, which shipped in September 2024, brought full EVM equivalence to Flow. Developers can now deploy Solidity smart contracts on the Flow network using standard EVM tooling such as Hardhat, Foundry, Remix, and OpenZeppelin. All while still having access to Cadence, Flow's native resource-oriented language. This dual-language support means DeFi teams building in Solidity can deploy to Flow without rewriting their codebase, while also tapping into Cadence's safety guarantees for critical financial infrastructure.
Forte, which shipped in October 2025, introduced on-chain automation at the protocol level. The report highlights this as a key enabler for consumer-grade financial products:
"Forte is the clearest signal of that shift, adding Actions, AI Agents, and scheduled execution to make recurring transfers and multi-step routines something teams can build directly onchain." Rather than requiring each application to build and maintain its own off-chain scheduling infrastructure — watchers, relayers, failure handling — Forte makes automation a shared capability of the network:
"Forte brings that recurrence onchain as a shared capability, so apps can build scheduled payments, savings sweeps, and auto-repay flows without custom schedulers." This is the infrastructure that makes features like automatic debt repayment, scheduled savings deposits, and recurring DeFi strategies possible without requiring users to manually manage positions.
Enshrined Lending: Flow Credit Market
A significant portion of the report is dedicated to Flow Credit Market (FCM), an enshrined lending protocol being built at the network level. Unlike application-layer DeFi protocols that exist as independent smart contracts, FCM is designed as shared infrastructure embedded in the protocol itself — a single canonical lending market that any wallet or app can build on top of.
"If it works, FCM will become a reusable credit layer across wallets and apps, backed by consistent rules and safety routines that consumers can trust."
The report examines FCM's approach to liquidation protection, which uses Forte's on-chain automation to actively manage positions rather than relying on users to monitor collateral ratios. According to internal simulations, this active management model protected positions from liquidation through every major market drawdown of the past five years. The enshrined model also concentrates liquidity rather than fragmenting it across competing protocols — an approach Messari analyzes as a deliberate design choice to make DeFi infrastructure more reliable for consumer applications.
Peak Money: The Consumer Interface
On top of this protocol infrastructure, Dapper Labs is building Peak Money — a consumer finance application designed for people who have never interacted with DeFi.
"Peak.Money is positioned as the flywheel app that brings consumer usage into the shared credit layer."
Peak Money is currently in early access with a small group of users, with a wider launch planned for the end of Q1 2026. The app offers high-yield savings accounts for FLOW and Prize Linked Accounts for PYUSD — PayPal's stablecoin, which holds approximately 57.5% market share among stablecoins on the Flow network. The design philosophy is straightforward: deposit, earn, withdraw. No seed phrases, no DEX routing, no position management. The report positions Peak Money as the consumer-facing layer that translates the underlying DeFi infrastructure into a product that mainstream users can access.
Reading the Full Report
The Messari Pulse Report is the first major independent research coverage framing Flow as a consumer finance platform. It provides a data-backed analysis of how consumer distribution, EVM equivalence, on-chain automation, and enshrined protocol design connect into a single thesis. The report arrives at a moment of growing developer activity on the Flow network. Q4 2025 marked the highest developer activity in Flow's history, according to Electric Capital data, and Flow ranked among the top 10 fastest-growing Layer 1 networks year over year. The network's largest hackathon attracted 3,392 participants, and Flow was the third most popular chain at Devconnect — despite not officially participating in that event.
Total network transactions are approaching one billion, with approximately 2.7 million transactions processed per week — activity driven primarily by consumer applications rather than trading bots or MEV extraction.
For developers, investors, and analysts evaluating the consumer DeFi landscape, the report offers a detailed examination of an approach that no other Layer 1 is currently pursuing.
Find the Messari Pulse Report on Flow Here: https://messari.io/report/flow-network-from-collectibles-to-consumer-defi
