The future is liquid

The following is by Mesh Head of Content, Geoffrey Lyons

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At Mesh, we often make the case that our products solve value fragmentation: the problem of assets being scattered across accounts and protocols that don’t communicate. We correct this by letting users pay with a mix of assets from over 100 linked accounts, opening up trillions of previously closed payment paths.

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But Mesh’s ambitions go further. In the long run, we aim to solve not just value fragmentation, but also value stagnation: the problem of wealth sitting illiquid, unused, and unusable.

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In this article, I’ll explain what value stagnation is and how Mesh can help eliminate it.

How things are

Stagnation (noun): The state of not flowing or moving.

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Let’s start with a metaphor.

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Imagine everything you own compressed into a cube the size of a washing machine. The cube represents your net worth: it’s valuable but dense, immovable, and impossible to use directly. To buy anything, you have to melt off tiny bits of its surface. Those melted bits are your liquid wealth: the portion of your assets you can actually spend.

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This is an elaborate but accurate analogy for how wealth works today. In most Western households:

• The majority of wealth is held in illiquid assets (real estate, pensions, private equity).
• These assets may appreciate, but they’re not spendable until redeemed or sold.
• Opportunities can’t be seized because value is trapped.

Like the cube, your total wealth exists but most of it is stagnant. Only the melted parts flow.

How things could be

Now imagine the same cube, but this time it’s rendered digitally and divided into thousands of mini-cubes. Each mini-cube represents a portion of your wealth and is labeled “house,” “pension,” “private equity,” “illiquid bonds,” etc. Every mini-cube is worth the same amount (say, $1) and is:

• Spendable: Stores accept any mini-cube as payment.
• Fungible: A $1 “pension” cube is interchangeable with a $1 “cash” cube.

This is what tokenization makes possible. The “tokenize everything” vision calls for all forms of value to be represented on-chain. It’s an ideal with practical limits, but it’s still a worthy North Star. If more wealth were tokenized and liquid, we’d see massive societal benefits:

• Greater economic mobility: People could deploy their wealth without waiting for assets to vest, settle, or sell.
• Faster capital circulation: Money would move through the economy more quickly, increasing consumption and investment.
• More efficient allocation of resources: Capital would naturally flow to its most productive uses instead of remaining stuck.

In other words, tokenization has the potential to transform stagnant wealth into flowing wealth.

Where Mesh comes in

Even when value is tokenized, it realistically still lives across different chains, ecosystems, custodians, and regulatory boundaries. If all real estate were tokenized tomorrow, for example, transferring that value - e.g. swapping tokenized deeds - would require infrastructure that connects disparate systems.

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This is exactly what Mesh already does for today’s fragmented value landscape–we bridge assets across accounts and protocols so people can use them anywhere. So by solving existing value fragmentation, we’ve already proven that we can be the connective tissue needed to solve value stagnation. Tokenization will make all wealth liquid, but Mesh is what will make that liquidity practical (usable across accounts and chains).

Closing thoughts

Value fragmentation (the problem of assets being scattered across accounts and protocols) and value stagnation (the problem of assets sitting unused and unusable) are ultimately two sides of the same coin: they both trap value in silos so it can’t move. While tokenization promises to unlock liquidity so value can move freely, without the right connective infrastructure even tokenized wealth risks becoming just another dead-end.

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Mesh’s ultimate vision is to make value - any value - usable. By bridging accounts, chains, and asset types, we turn liquidity into real utility. As more of the world’s wealth becomes tokenized, the ability to actually use it will be essential. That’s the future we’re building toward.

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