Can we still expect the RWA track in 2025? A detailed explanation of RWA technology practical logic.

Written by: TinTinLand

The momentum of the 2025 RWA hot discussion goes far beyond the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival.

At the recently held Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, RWA (Real World Asset Tokenization) became the focus of the entire event! As an innovative attempt in Web3 finance, RWA has been referred to by BlackRock's CEO as a "financial revolution" that may usher in explosive growth, changing our logic of living and wealth accumulation. In the past year of 2024, the market value of RWA has been soaring, showing a rapid growth trend.

The emergence of RWA has become one of the topics of concern in the industry since the past two years, and its mention again in the new year is inseparable from the changes in the current industry environment and the introduction of policy support. At the beginning of this year, the State Council promoted the tokenization and restructuring of state-owned enterprise assets, focusing on encouraging innovation in the intelligent connected vehicle field. Coincidentally, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority actively launched a digital bond funding program, offering a maximum subsidy of HK$2.5 million per project as an incentive, allowing USDT payments for shared bicycles.

At the same time, the U.S. SEC amended securities rules to provide an exemption channel for compliant RWA projects; the EU also promptly released cross-border circulation guidelines to facilitate the free movement of tokenized assets among member states... A series of supportive physical measures for RWA financial transactions and project incubation have allowed the new energy sector (such as Ant Group tokenizing the revenue rights of 9,000 charging piles to raise 100 million yuan), traditional financial giants (such as HSBC issuing gold tokens, with liquidity increasing by 300%), and cross-border payment companies (global shipping giant GSBN achieving electronic bill of lading settlement in seconds) to reap the benefits of policy dividends.

So why has this highly anticipated RWA track suddenly become a sensation? What are the promising and exploitable development trends for the overall market situation of the Web3 industry facing 2025? Today, let's get closer to the world of RWA and look forward to the opportunities and challenges it faces.

What is RWA? A detailed explanation of the technical implementation logic.

RWA (Real World Asset Tokenization) refers to the conversion of ownership, income rights, or usage rights of real world assets (such as real estate, bonds, commodities, etc.) into digital tokens on the blockchain, enabling the circulation of assets on-chain. Its essence is to enhance the liquidity, transparency, and composability of assets through blockchain technology. In simple terms, RWA is the transformation of financial assets tied to physical assets in the real world into tradable digital forms through technological means. This concept is very similar to asset securitization in traditional finance, but it is more "cutting-edge" and flexible.

For example, if a house worth 10 million is put into a blockchain and converted into digital currency for trading, then this house can not only be divided in value, but the complete transaction chain of every purchase and sale of its partial value can also be tracked.

Currently, multiple countries around the world, including the United States, Japan, and Singapore, are actively exploring innovative applications of RWA and the technological upgrade paths for projects. According to data from the Okex Research Institute, as of early April 2025, the total market value of the RWA sector (excluding stablecoins) has approached 20 billion USD, achieving a growth of 26.26% from the beginning of the year, with a year-on-year growth rate reaching 102.87%. It can be seen that RWA is gradually becoming a key link connecting traditional finance and the emerging digital economy in the process of market competition. Traditional financial giants like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are also actively laying out in the RWA field, striving to provide investors and users with a convenient and secure trading environment.

Specifically regarding the technical implementation path, RWA mainly achieves financial operation support through three aspects: off-chain packaging, information bridging, and protocol layer applications.

Off-Chain Formalization: Clarifying the asset value of the project, the legitimacy of ownership, and legal support, for example, Ondo Finance ensures the compliance of U.S. Treasury tokenization through SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle).

Information Bridging: Utilizing oracles (such as Chainlink) to bring off-chain assets on-chain, ensuring that data updates are synchronized in real time. For example, Ant Group achieves cross-border asset circulation and transaction information confirmation between Mainland China and Hong Kong through the "Asset Chain + Transaction Chain" architecture.

Application Layer (On-Chain Integration): Unlocking RWA application value through DeFi protocols (such as lending and trading), for example, Centrifuge integrating NFTs as collateral into MakerDAO, can further optimize capital utilization.

It can be seen that RWA has significant advantages in improving asset liquidity, lowering financing transaction thresholds, enhancing transaction transparency, and personalization, specifically:

RWA digitizes physical assets such as real estate and artworks, splitting the original "large items" into smaller fractional units, allowing investors to participate in investments with less capital, significantly lowering the investment threshold. At the same time, digital assets can be traded globally 24/7 on blockchain platforms, breaking geographical and temporal limitations, greatly enhancing asset liquidity and market participation.

In the traditional securities issuance process, enterprises and projects often need to go through multiple layers of review before financial transactions and project operations can take place, which poses significant challenges for different enterprises. Nowadays, RWA leverages blockchain's smart contract technology to enhance information transparency, achieve automated issuance and management of assets, reduce lengthy review times and cumbersome issuance procedures, simplify transaction processes, and lower operating costs, thereby significantly lowering financing thresholds and further improving financing efficiency. For example, Maple Finance, as an RWA collateral lending platform, has issued loans totaling $2.46 billion, with an annualized yield of 9.69%. It has launched Syrup.fi to support cash management pools and direct lending, addressing the financing difficulties of small and medium-sized enterprises while reducing the costs of traditional financial intermediaries.

In traditional financing transactions, user groups are often excluded due to capital thresholds. Now, RWA is committed to breaking down technical barriers by leveraging the immutable and transparent characteristics of blockchain, allowing all asset real-time data, operational records, and transaction records to be permanently recorded on the blockchain. Anyone can access this information at any time, ensuring the authenticity of assets and the fairness of transactions. This not only reduces the risk of fraud but also enhances the trust of users and investors in project development, thereby further increasing the success rate of financing.

In addition, RWA allows enterprises to tailor their financing structure according to market demand and their own goals, and freely set key elements such as revenue distribution model and redemption mechanism, leading enterprises to better produce innovative projects that match user needs. Centrifuge, an asset tokenization protocol based on the Polkadot ecosystem, dynamically adjusts the funding amount through NFT collateral, integrates with MakerDAO to improve liquidity and ensure the transparency of the process.

Multiple parties promote RWA to reach new heights

Not only does the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival emphasize and discuss the RWA track, but in fact, RWA is currently facing a "blue ocean market." In this process, the demand for high-yield assets, traditional finance's attempts to move towards Web3, increasingly mature regulatory technologies, and innovations in liquidity technology solutions are all driving the flourishing development of RWA.

Currently, the cryptocurrency market is shifting towards risk-free yield assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds in a low interest rate environment. For example, the annualized yield of OUSG (U.S. Treasury Token) from Ondo Finance reaches 4.44%, attracting significant allocation demand from DeFi protocols like MakerDAO. At the same time, traditional financial firms are actively merging into the crypto market to overcome development issues related to economic downturns and innovation bottlenecks. Companies like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs have successively launched tokenized funds and custody services, involving various sectors such as real estate and logistics. Traditional asset management institutions are also actively reaching out to crypto user groups through RWA to achieve incremental capital inflow. For instance, the tokenized treasury bond product launched by Franklin Templeton has attracted more new customer groups.

It is worth mentioning that the regulatory environment and technological means in the cryptocurrency industry are becoming increasingly完善. All around the globe, new compliance technical frameworks are being actively implemented, including the issuance of RWA licenses by Dubai's VARA and the U.S. SEC exempting certain registration requirements to lower compliance barriers. On the infrastructure level, innovations such as zero-knowledge proofs and dynamic KYC are frequently emerging, with the potential for a balance between privacy and compliance to be efficiently achieved. Currently, many ecosystems are still striving to solve the liquidity shortage issue that RWA has historically faced, through measures such as DEX market-making mechanisms and the transparency of private credit collateralized by NFTs, allowing RWA to cover more future financial investment and trading scenarios.

Embrace opportunities and challenges, the future of RWA is promising.

For ordinary users and investors, the key question that may still come to mind is: how to participate in this wave of innovative technology in RWA?

On one hand, the public can focus on and choose compliant and reputable trading platforms for product usage experience, giving priority to standardized and highly liquid assets such as gold, U.S. Treasury bonds, and green bonds, which can relatively ensure the stability and low risk of their own assets while fully enjoying the RWA dividend resources; on the other hand, the public also needs to keep up with policy risks. Even though the current policy environment is relatively positive, the regulatory situation across various industries and around the world is not static. Regular participation in industry seminars, forums, or various offline activities is necessary to obtain the latest investment strategy information and avoid falling into the quagmire of information asymmetry.

Before making an investment transaction, actively study the industry report and RWA project white paper, and have a relatively clear grasp of the background and quality of the project team, so as to enter the camp of investors, and build a more diversified portfolio to maximize the resistance to unnecessary risks and challenges. Since the beginning of the year, new energy technology brands such as Ant Digital and GCL-ET have actively launched the first new energy asset RWA project in China, using mainland charging piles as the underlying asset to issue tokenized income rights in Hong Kong, and using blockchain + AIoT technology to help achieve asset data transparency to solve the financing problems of small and medium-sized operators.