EP. 89 | From Privacy to Policy: Building the Compliance Layer for DeFi with Nikhil Raghuveera

This week on TRM Talks, Ari Redbord, Global Head of Policy, TRM Labs, sits down with Nikhil Raghuveera, CEO of Predicate, to talk about the future of compliance in decentralized finance — and why the next wave of policy innovation will be built directly into code.As DeFi matures and regulators sharpen their focus, projects are facing a new challenge: how to meet real-world policy and legal expectations without compromising decentralization. That conversation usually starts with the question — how do you regulate a world without intermediaries? The answer, as Ari and Nikhil explore, is technology.Through its recent partnership with TRM Labs, Predicate enables developers to enforce AML and sanctions safeguards in real time — at the smart contract level — using TRM’s risk scoring and attribution. The goal isn’t to rebuild the traditional financial system on-chain. It’s to build new rails with market integrity, user privacy, and global risk in mind from day one.In this episode, Ari and Nikhil unpack:• Why “policy infrastructure” is critical to supporting both builders and regulators• How TRM and Predicate are powering programmable compliance for stablecoins, privacy protocols, and tokenized assets• What a decentralized transaction prerequisite system actually looks like in practice• The role of zero-knowledge proofs and verifiable risk tooling in preserving user privacy• And how ethical infrastructure can help unlock responsible DeFi growth at scaleThis isn’t just a conversation about compliance — it’s a blueprint for building trust into decentralized systems.