An article that takes a closer look at RWA assets

Original title: "Deep dive into Real Word assets"

What are they?

How do they work?

What impact might they have on the financial world?

Let’s answer these and other questions with this RWA-themed deep dive.

The growth of the DeFi ecosystem has highlighted the unique advantages offered by this decentralized infrastructure based on digital asset exchange and has even pushed traditional financial entities to explore the possibility of extending these advantages to real assets, giving rise to An emerging field, referred to as RWA.

Today, we will delve into the concept of RWA (Real World Assets), focusing on the following points:

1. What is RWA?
2. The process of asset tokenization
3. Why should physical assets be tokenized?
4. RWA Market Data Analysis

Let’s get started!

1. What is RWA?

Let’s immediately answer the simplest but at the same time most important question of our research: When we talk about Real World Assets (RWA), what do we mean?

Real World Assets, or RWA, are tokenized assets that refer to any physical, digital, or data-based asset that exists outside of the blockchain. By tokenizing RWA, you actually create a digital twin of the physical asset on the blockchain.

So, we can think of RWA as a digital representation of physical world assets that exist in the blockchain through Tokens. Pretty simple, right?

As stated in the definition above, the tokenization process can be applied to a variety of assets such as government bonds, real estate, private credit agreements, precious materials, etc., allowing access through decentralized applications.

Having laid the foundation for our discussion, let us now move on to explore how the transformation process of these assets from physical commodities to exchangeable tokens within the blockchain occurs.

2. The process of asset tokenization

Asset tokenization refers to the process of recording rights to specific assets into digital tokens. These tokens can be owned, sold and traded on the blockchain. The created Token represents the ownership portion of the underlying asset.

The tokenization process may differ depending on the type of assets involved. Since I'm not a technical expert, I'll focus on purely descriptive rather than technical explanations. Generally speaking, the process can be summarized into the following steps:

• Valuation and Documentation: Determine the value of the asset through market valuation.
• Asset Digitization: Create a digital representation of an asset on the blockchain, recording its ownership and related details.
• Token creation: Generate digital tokens representing asset portions, and use smart contracts to manage their issuance and distribution.
• Oracle integration: Use oracles to verify and authenticate asset data to ensure the integrity of information on the blockchain.
• Token issuance and trading: Issue Tokens and allow them to be traded on decentralized or centralized trading platforms, promoting liquid market access to assets.

These general steps outline the basic asset tokenization process, which is flexible and can be adapted to the specific needs and characteristics of the assets involved. For example, in the famous Chainlink decentralized oracle project, the concept of Proof of Reserve was introduced in the asset tokenization stage, which is a statement used to transparently and reliably verify whether an entity actually holds an asset. Reserve mechanism. For those who are more interested, I've left some in-depth articles in the "Useful Links" section at the bottom of the article.

3. Why tokenize physical assets?

Tokenizing physical assets within the blockchain provides many significant advantages to end users. Let’s look at some of the most relevant advantages:

1) Elimination of intermediaries: One of the most significant advantages of tokenization of physical assets is the possibility of direct peer-to-peer transactions without the need for intermediaries as counterparties, thus Completely relies on smart contracts.

2) Speed ​​and operational continuity: Since the fiduciary counterparty is eliminated, all its "physical" requirements are also eliminated, making the entire process simpler, faster, and available 24/7.

3) Operating costs: Another significant benefit of avoiding interaction with physical counterparties is reflected in operating costs. Just consider the fees required at the closing of a traditional home purchase transaction, compared to what might be required using a decentralized smart contract, and the difference is clear.

4) Barriers to entry: In the transition to a permissionless system, we can remove in one fell swoop all barriers to entry, such as nationality or social background typical of the “traditional” world.

5) Convenience of asset splitting: By converting physical assets into digital assets, we have the opportunity to split the latter into multiple identical or different parts through simple smart contracts according to the user's needs.

6) Security and Trust: By introducing these assets to the blockchain, we have the opportunity to interact with distributed smart contracts that are used thousands of times every day. This allows us to operate in a trustless and transparent system, eliminating the risks of relying on a centralized physical authority.

4. RWA Market Data Analysis

To complete this research, I used two sources, which we will analyze one by one: Nifty0x Dune Dashboard and rwa.xyz website.

Let’s start with Nifty0x’s Dune dashboard:

Reference blockchain for asset tokenization (excluding collateralized fiat currencies)

As can be expected, the field of asset tokenization is The reference blockchain is undoubtedly Ethereum, thanks to the reliability and stability it has demonstrated over time. While second-layer solutions are increasingly popular in this space, the area of ​​asset tokenization, which is closely related to more "traditional" areas, tends to choose blockchains that offer the highest levels of security and reliability, given the importance of the assets under management. sex.

It is worth noting that after Ethereum, we find that blockchains that are not usually ranked high in market capitalization in the DeFi field are rising, such as Stellar, Polygon and Gnosis (with a special focus on the tokenization of real estate assets).

Number of users with tokenized assets

As the chart clearly shows, the total number of users has grown steadily, reaching a peak of approximately 60 million active users. What is particularly interesting is that after a period of drawdown between 2022 and 2023, the number of new users has begun to grow significantly again, indicating a resurgence of interest in this space and further hinting at the relationship between asset tokenization and decentralization. The increasing adoption and acceptance of technologies and platforms related to globalized finance.

Now let’s turn to the analysis of the data reported by rwa.xyz. Through the rwa.xyz website we have the opportunity to explore a vast amount of data related to the world of RWA in a highly technical and pragmatic way. Although the interface may not be intuitive at first, using the website is still an extremely useful tool for monitoring key data in this area.

RWA Value

With values ​​approaching all-time highs at over $160 billion, the category of tokenization of fiat currencies through stablecoins such as USDT and USDC stands out in the RWA space, highlighting fiat tokens The key importance of decentralization in the decentralized financial ecosystem. Due to their extremely easy tokenization and high utility, stablecoins play a vital role in facilitating fast and efficient transactions on the blockchain.

RWA Value (excluding Collateralized Fiat)

To get a clearer picture, the site allows us to exclude the Collateralized Fiat category from the chart in order to analyze the market situation in different subcategories in more detail.

After excluding the collateralized stablecoin category, we find ourselves facing a very interesting situation. While the previous chart suggested RWA’s value was close to its 2022 all-time highs, excluding stablecoins, there are clear signs of unprecedented expansion in other subcategories.

Of particular importance is the private credit category, which shows an almost exponential growth trend and is worth close to $8 billion, positioning this category as the second most important category in the RWA space.

次に、このチャートは、国債も実物資産市場で力強い成長期を迎えており、その価値は20億ドルに近づいていることを明確に示しています。このカテゴリは、ブロックチェーンの可能性を活用してこれらの資産へのアクセスと流動性を向上させる、トークン化された政府債券への関心の高まりを反映しています。

さらに、商品カテゴリも、PaxGoldTokenization を通じて主に金に焦点を当てた、物理的資産のトークン化のもう 1 つの重要な領域となっています。この選択は、伝統的に非流動性だった現物資産を流動性にして、投資家がより柔軟で分散型の方法で金市場に参加できるようにするという関心を反映しています。

これらのデータは、複数の資産クラスがブロックチェーンとスマートコントラクトによってもたらされる技術革新の恩恵を受けている、実物資産トークン化業界の進化する状況を浮き彫りにしています。

それでは、ステーブルコインを除く各サブカテゴリーを分析しましょう。私はそれらを RWA 内の別のカテゴリーと考えており、今後数週間でそれらを掘り下げる特集記事を捧げることにしました。

5. 私募信用市場の主要な分析

次に、私募信用分野の RWA 市場データに焦点を当てましょう。以前のデータが強調しているように、担保付きステーブルコインに次いで、このカテゴリーが最も重要なものであるようです。

rwa.xyz によると、2022 年末の時点で、私募信用市場の誰もが認める市場リーダーは Figure.com プラットフォームです。

Figure.com は、ブロックチェーン技術を使用して、個人ローン、住宅ローン借り換え、ホームエクイティクレジット、エクイティリリースサービスなどのさまざまな金融サービスを提供する米国に拠点を置くオンライン融資プラットフォームです。ウェブサイトを通じて、プラットフォームによって開発された経済評価プロセスを通じて評価される物理的担保を使用して融資を受けることができます。実物資産のトークン化は行われないため、厳密にはリアルリアルアセット（RWA）プロジェクトではないことに注意してください。ただし、ブロックチェーン技術は、借入プロセスをより速く、より安く、より安全にするために使用されます。

処理されたトランザクション量の点で 2 位は、私がより興味深いと思うプロトコル、遠心分離です。深入りを避けるため、この投稿では各プロジェクトの詳細には触れませんが、今後数週間以内に詳細を投稿する予定です。

完全を期すため、データによる主なプロトコルは次のとおりです: Maple、Goldfinch、Clearpool、TrueFi、Credix、HomeCoin、Florence Finance、Ribbon Lend。

米国国債に焦点を当てます

次に、米国債券トークン化カテゴリーに目を向けましょう。

グラフからわかるように、このカテゴリーは最近爆発的な成長を遂げており、これはおそらく金利の上昇によりこれらの商品の魅力が高まったためであり、その結果、このカテゴリーの時価総額は 15 億ドルを超えています。明らかに、これらの数字は従来の金融界と比較するとまだ非常に小さいですが、「BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund」商品でランキングをリードしている Blackstone のようなプレーヤーによって強調されているように、これらの商品の使用が増加していることは注目に値します。 RWA の割合は増加しており、確かに特別な注目に値します。

原材料に焦点を当てる

最後に確認したカテゴリは原材料に関するものです。

この分野のデータから分かるように、PaxosのPAXGプロダクトはゴールドのトークン化を表しており、TetherのXAUTもゴールドのトークン化を表しています。これらはほぼ原材料の分野で使用されているトークン化です。これは唯一の例であり、他の原材料に対する現在の市場の関心が比較的低いことを示しています。

今日はここまでです。ご質問がございましたら、コメント欄にてお問い合わせください。

The above is the detailed content of An article that takes a closer look at RWA assets. For more information, please follow other related articles on the PHP Chinese website!