Real World Assets (RWA) are tokens that can represent real assets and be traded on the blockchain, facilitating efficient circulation of assets and creating new asset categories.
Table of Contents
Overall Market Data
RWA Data Review This Week
Market Data Review
BTC: 2024/01/01 to Present Liquidation Intensity Index
ETH: 2024/01/01 to Present Liquidation Intensity Index
RWA Market Highlights and Financing
Securitize secures $47 million financing from traditional financial giants such as BlackRock
Government bond RWA products achieve real-time delivery and 24/7/365 instant subscription and redemption
Government bond RWA players collectively participate in asset allocation bidding on Arbitrum
Stellar network supports financial giant WisdomTree application
Mastercard, Citibank, and JPMorgan test ledger for settlement of bank funds
Agricultural tokenization platform AgriDex secures $5 million financing
Real estate tokenization platform Homium secures $10 million financing
Broadly speaking, the essence of RWA is to bring all real-world assets onto the blockchain to achieve efficient circulation of assets and create new asset categories. The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) explicitly stated, “All assets in the future will be tokenized, and Finternet based on blockchain will be the future of the financial system.” (We acknowledge the future of tokenization but do not endorse BIS’s path.)
In fact, the narrative of RWA itself has surpassed the definition given by the crypto market and should be considered as much more and beyond.
To understand RWA, one must integrate the knowledge systems and operational practices of both traditional finance and crypto finance, and respect, learn, and deeply understand the market. The market is the real teacher, not the opinions of so-called experts who don’t really understand.
The total value of tokenized RWA categories reached $1.28 billion, an increase of 0.63% compared to the previous month.
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Top four category market shares:
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Global USD liquidity continues to decline, with no upward trend yet.
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RWA Market Highlights and Financing
On May 1st, Securitize, which recently helped BlackRock tokenize the US Treasury bond fund BUIDL, announced the successful completion of a $47 million financing round led by BlackRock. The strategic investment also includes participation from Hamilton Lane, ParaFi Capital, Tradeweb Markets, Aptos, Circle, and Paxos.
Securitize will use the proceeds from this financing round to accelerate product development, expand its global footprint, and further strengthen its partnerships within the financial services ecosystem.
This investment highlights Securitize’s pioneering efforts in utilizing blockchain technology to achieve the digitization of capital markets. The funding will drive continuous innovation and expansion for Securitize, further solidifying its position as a leader in the digital asset securities ecosystem.
Carlos Domingo, co-founder and CEO of Securitize, stated, “We are thrilled to have the support of such outstanding investors as we continue to drive the digitization of capital markets through tokenization. Overall, the future of finance, especially tokenization, is promising.”
“At BlackRock, we believe tokenization has the potential to drive significant transformation in capital market infrastructure. Our investment in Securitize is another step in the development of our digital asset strategy,” said Joseph Chalom. “We are excited to lead this round of investment alongside other participants and help foster innovation to meet future customer needs.”
Hamilton Lane CEO commented, “Hamilton Lane has a long-standing relationship with Securitize, starting in 2022 when we were able to use our sophisticated credit opportunities fund (SCOPE) and our equity opportunities fund V. We are committed to enabling broader access to private markets for investors, including through token-based technologies. Securitize remains a leader in this space, and we are excited about this investment and look forward to future collaboration.”
Ben Forman, Co-founder and Managing Partner of ParaFi, said, “Securitize has built advanced infrastructure that puts traditional assets on a fast, modern track of blockchain, enabling higher transparency, real-time settlement, reduced counterparty risk, and increased programmability. At ParaFi, we have made extensive investments in digital assets and tokenization infrastructure, and we are excited to work with Carlos and the Securitize team to realize this future vision.”
In April, shortly after the collaboration between BlackRock and Securitize to launch the tokenized US Treasury bond fund $BUIDL, integration with Circle’s $USDC enabled instant minting and redemption of $BUIDL, opening up a beautiful new world for US bond RWA in DeFi.
On May 3rd, Ondo Finance announced the launch of real-time subscription and redemption functionality for its $OUSG product, greatly improving capital efficiency compared to the previous T+N subscription/redemption method. On March 27th, $OUSG had already purchased $95 million worth of $BUIDL, becoming its largest holder, accounting for approximately 23% of the total supply. This announcement is noteworthy but not surprising.
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In contrast to the significant advantages brought by the combination of $OUSG and $BUIDL, Mountain Protocol’s $USDM still relies on the liquidity mechanism of $USDC built within the protocol for $USDM’s subscription/redemption liquidity. This liquidity mechanism is more limited, as once the liquidity of $USDC within the protocol is exhausted, it reverts to the previous T+2 working day process.
We can see that the future of government bond RWA products will fully implement 24/7/365 instant subscription and redemption, truly reflecting the unique value proposition of tokenized assets. Investors can even participate in instant liquidity on Saturday midnight.
In the public solicitation that ended this week, almost all government bond RWA players submitted proposals for the Stablecoin Treasury Empowerment Plan (STEP) on Arbitrum. The plan aims to distribute $35 million worth of ARB (approximately $37 million) from the DAO treasury to RWA products.
The players applying for the proposal include well-known RWA protocols such as Centrifuge, Ondo, Matrixdock, LibreCapital, Mountain Protocol, OpenEden, Frax, Backed, Ethena, Dinari, Superstate, Midas, and DigiFT.
Surprisingly, traditional financial giants BlackRock & Securitize’s $BUIDL and Franklin Templeton’s $FOBXX also submitted applications. Their applications raise the question of how regulated financial institutions will compliantly serve decentralized organizations with non-traditional funding sources.
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MakerDAO is the first DAO to successfully achieve financial diversification through RWA, inspiring several other DAOs to explore RWA products.
Centrifuge is the leading RWA player in the private lending sector and has helped MakerDAO, AAVE, Gnosis DAO, and FRAX invest in RWA through its Centrifuge Prime product.
On May 1st, the Stellar blockchain network, focused on financial applications, supported WisdomTree’s retail financial application WisdomTree Prime, which is used by users in 41 states covering 75% of the US population.
WisdomTree manages $100 billion in assets and launched the BTC ETF called BTCW simultaneously with BlackRock in January this year.
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With the support of the Stellar network, users can trade 13 digital funds and tokenized gold products through WisdomTree Prime, a retail financial application that uses a wallet supporting Stellar. By combining savings, spending, and investing, the application brings tokenization closer to the center of consumers’ financial lives and allows consumers to benefit from the advantages of blockchain-native platforms, including 24/7 instant trading for certain assets.
After researching tokenization platforms, WisdomTree chose Stellar as its blockchain of choice due to factors such as asset control, relatively lower costs, and operational efficiency. Stellar is where blockchain meets the real world, and WisdomTree’s choice of Stellar helps bring tokenization into the mainstream.
Stellar is also the applicable network for the largest previously tokenized US bond fund, Franklin OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund. According to RWA.xyz data, as of May 10th, the fund had a TVL of $367 million, second only to BlackRock’s BUIDL fund with a TVL of $382 million.
On May 8th, ten global financial institutions announced their collaboration to pilot tokenized deposits, wholesale central bank currencies, US Treasury bonds, and other assets.
The participants include Mastercard, Citigroup, JPMorgan, US Bancorp, Wells Fargo, Visa, Swift, TD Bank NA, and Zions Bancorp. These participants will transact on the Regulated Settlement Network (RSN), a shared ledger focused on optimizing interoperability and reducing cross-registry information. The technology of this shared ledger has the potential to significantly change the way the financial industry operates today.
Currently, commercial bank funds, wholesale central bank funds, and investment-grade securities are stored on separate registers. However, once these assets are transformed into tokens executed on a distributed ledger, settlement can be conducted on the same register.
A shared ledger connecting large financial institutions is not a new concept. Similar shared ledgers have been proposed by BIS’s Unified Ledger, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority’s mBridge project, and the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Global Layer 1.
So far, all shared ledgers have been implemented as private and permissioned blockchains. At the BIS Innovation Summit on Tuesday, Umar Farooq, CEO of JPMorgan’s Onyx, stated that only private blockchains can meet the demands of large financial institutions.
“If you look at public blockchain ledgers, you’ll find they’re not suitable for today’s large transactions. If there’s a $100 million transaction and there’s an issue, there’s no one to turn to for validation or anything else. Who do I sue? You need to find a place where people can have trusted transactions between financial institutions and take some responsibility in the system.”
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On May 9th, AgriDex, an agricultural tokenization platform based on Solana, raised $5 million in its seed round. This equity financing valued the company at $18 million. The funding round was led by Endeavor Ventures, with participation from African Crops, Oldenburg Vineyards, and former executives from Goldman Sachs and Citadel, Hank Oberoi.
AgriDex is a Solana-based platform targeting the global agricultural market, enabling tokenization of agricultural products and supporting the trading of these tokenized commodities. Each transaction on AgriDex is represented by minting non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which permanently record all product, pricing, payment, and other detailed information.
AgriDex aims to help investors, farmers, and governments save costs and increase profitability. Co-founder Duckworth stated, “AgriDex has the potential to save stakeholders billions of dollars annually, and we have only scratched the surface. AgriDex will first tokenize and list agricultural products such as sugar, grains, and cocoa, and the platform plans to support more commodities through new partnerships and investments in the future.”
Duckworth added, “AgriDex is expected to launch its platform and token $AGRI in Q3 this year. $AGRI will incentivize and reward users based on transaction volume, platform participation, and community engagement. AgriDex plans to conduct token airdrops for its community in the coming months and plans to repurchase and burn 50% of the profits.”
AgriDex, headquartered in London, has nearly 20 employees and plans to expand its team as needed.
On April 16th, real estate equity mortgage lender and securitization platform Homium announced a $10 million financing round and launched its first home equity loan on Avalanche. The funding round was led by Sorenson Impact Group and Avalanche’s ecosystem fund Blizzard.
Homium loans are currently implemented in Colorado and plan to expand suite to other states. As part of the loan, homeowners commit to sharing in the appreciation of their homes. For investors, they receive a tokenized asset that tracks the price appreciation of the shared appreciation mortgage pool issued on Homium.
The purpose of this move is to help unlock trapped home equity and address housing affordability issues in various situations. Homium also offers investable assets to institutional investors through digital securities supported by real estate equity.
The CEO of Homium stated, “Homium is creating a valuable new asset class for institutional investors, providing them with a new, inflation-independent source of return for their core investment portfolios.”
Avalanche allocated $50 million in July last year to purchase tokenized assets built on its Layer 1, including equities, loans, real estate, and commodities.
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