RWA: Building a New World of Public Ledgers for Real Assets

Currently, the RWA sector is showing a vigorous development trend. The market size has reached $36.5 billion, with a year-on-year growth of about 60%. It involves multiple fields such as private credit, US Treasury bonds, commodities, real estate, and stock securities. The Hong Kong region mainly focuses on new energy assets.

Despite the numerous challenges RWA still faces, such as compliance implementation and global liquidity issues that need to be addressed, the involvement of traditional financial giants and the proactive attempts of governments around the world bring hope for RWA to change the hollowing out and scaling issues in blockchain finance.

RWA, as a blockchain financial derivative of traditional assets, perfectly fills the gap in value capture in the blockchain world. We believe that RWA will become a key bridge connecting traditional finance and cryptocurrencies.

In this "dark forest" of the blockchain world, RWA may serve as the "sword bearer" in certain specific domains.

The ultimate goal of RWA is to seamlessly connect traditional finance and decentralized finance. It aims not only to reshape traditional finance but also to bring real-world opportunities onto the chain, rather than just existing as a pile of private protocols on public chains. We look forward to RWA bringing global borderless asset investment and financial expression. In the future, we may be able to buy Nasdaq stocks during the day in Hong Kong, deposit funds into the Savings Bank of the Russian Federation in the early morning, and the next day invest in Dubai real estate together with hundreds of previously unknown shareholders around the world.

We believe that RWA is building a brand new world based on a public ledger of real assets! A greater borderless world!

Recent Market Trends and Key Events

Market-related Dynamics

1. The market size continues to grow: As of April 21, 2025, the total market value of the RWA market reached $36.5 billion, with a growth of 0.7% within 24 hours. The number of related cryptocurrencies exceeds 185, with a total market value of over $10.62 billion, a year-on-year increase of 61%.

2. Traditional financial giants are actively positioning themselves: BlackRock is seeking regulatory approval for bond and stock tokenization, while JP Morgan has launched an internal tokenization platform. The scale of this field is expected to exceed one trillion in the next five years.

3. Regulatory Compliance Progress: Mantra Chain has obtained the VASP license from Dubai VARA, becoming the first DeFi platform to receive this license. The platform allows ecosystem participants to build permissioned applications in a permissionless environment.

4. Stellar Blockchain Expansion Cooperation: Partnership with Paxos, Ondo, Etherfuse, and SG Forge under Societe Generale. Plan to put $3 billion of real-world assets on-chain by the end of 2025.

5. Alchemy Pay integrates RWAs: Announced collaboration with mainstream RWA providers to introduce high-quality traditional financial assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds and blue-chip stocks.

6. Yala RealYield platform launched: The first structured yield market platform based on Bitcoin, integrating RWA, aggregating diversified RWA providers.

7. RWA REAL UP Dubai Summit 2025: The summit, led by Ant Group and jointly participated by multiple Web3.0 partners, will be held in Dubai.

Technology Innovation Dynamics

1. Quant Network launches Overledger: an interoperable blockchain operating system that supports multi-chain applications, enhancing RWA cross-chain liquidity.

2. Securitize launched the sToken Vault feature: enhancing RWA liquidity and composability based on ERC-4626 vault technology. Collaborating with Elixir to connect traditional finance with DeFi.

Project Financing Dynamics

1. Plume has raised $20 million in funding to build a RWA financial ecosystem.

2. Tether invests in Quantoz, plans to launch a stablecoin that meets MiCAR standards to expand tokenization capabilities.

Hong Kong and China's RWA Development

1. Conflux Network collaborates with Ant Digital Technology: Promoting the growth of RWA in Hong Kong and participating in China's first renewable energy battery exchange RWA project.

2. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority has launched the "Digital Bond Grant Scheme": encouraging the capital market to adopt tokenization technology. It has initiated the "Project Ensemble" sandbox project to support institutions in experimenting with tokenized applications.

3. The 2025 Web3 Festival will be held in Hong Kong: RWA tokenization becomes a focal topic. Discussion on the "Project Ensemble" initiative, exploring innovative market infrastructure.

4. China Pacific Insurance Tokenized Fund: Launched a tokenized US dollar money market fund on HashKey Chain, raising $100 million on the first day.

Industry Observations and Thoughts

The main challenges in the current development of the RWA industry

1. Regulatory uncertainty: The lack of a unified regulatory framework affects global promotion and increases compliance costs.

2. Barriers to adoption: Requires a broader user base to accept and use, overcoming the learning curve of new technology.

3. Sustainability and Volatility: Tokenization may lead to excessive speculation, affecting the confidence of long-term investors.

4. Technical Challenges: Vulnerabilities in smart contracts and issues of blockchain scalability may affect security and reliability.

5. Liquidity Issues: Certain RWAs (such as real estate and artworks) may still face insufficient liquidity after tokenization.

6. Investor confidence: Lack of transparency, security, and regulatory compliance may undermine confidence.

Observation and Thinking

1. The centralized on-chain regulation before and the decentralized on-chain circulation after are the ultimate expressions of RWA. Taking Hong Kong as an example, a collaborative mechanism with a three-tier structure of Mainland-Hong Kong-Singapore has been established.

2. Activating the vitality of the RWA secondary market is key to the industry's takeoff. The Distributed Digital Identity (DID) system will become an important strategic watershed.

3. RWA can both tokenize traditional finance and traditionalize cryptocurrencies. The two move in opposite directions, achieving a process of good money reforming bad money in cryptocurrency.