Written by: Lulu
Real Data Assets (RDA) are an innovative asset form that is reshaping the path of data element valorization. Proposed by the Shanghai Data Exchange in 2025, the RDA paradigm is not only an exploration of the transformation of data from resource to capital but also a practice of promoting the deep integration of the real economy and digital economy under China's 'real data integration' strategy. This article will delve into the unique value of RDA from its origin, core mechanism, development status, and related concept stocks, and look forward to its future potential.
Origin of RDA: A New Paradigm for Data Valorization in China
In 2025, the Shanghai Data Exchange (hereinafter referred to as the Shanghai Data Exchange) first proposed the RDA concept in 'RDA: Exploring the Valorization of Data Elements', led by General Manager Tang Qifeng and Deputy Director of the Research Institute Lü Zhengying. This paradigm responds to the national strategy of 'New Quality Productive Forces' and the marketization of data elements, aiming to deeply integrate physical assets with operational data through technologies such as blockchain and the Internet of Things, forming a new type of asset unit that is 'verifiable, tradable, and financeable'. Unlike the global focus on asset tokenization of real-world assets (RWA), RDA emphasizes the authenticity verification and value enhancement of data, constructing a unique path of 'real number integration'.
The Shanghai Data Exchange positions RDA as the core engine of data valorization, encapsulating the full lifecycle data of physical assets into standardized and tradable digital assets through blockchain technology. In April 2025, the Shanghai Data Exchange officially released the RDA paradigm at the Hong Kong Web 3 Carnival, marking the transition of data from backend resources to frontend assets, with standardized paths for registration, valuation, trading, and financing. In July of the same year, the Shanghai Data Exchange held a closed-door seminar titled 'New Opportunities in Capital Markets: RDA', attracting financial institutions such as Guotai Junan Securities, Haitong Securities, and CITIC Securities to discuss the application prospects of RDA in capital markets, laying a solid foundation for subsequent project implementation.
The Core Mechanism of RDA: From Data to 'Gold Assets'
The core of RDA lies in utilizing technology to transform data into credible and tradable assets, encompassing three stages: asset preparation, asset issuance, and asset trading. In the asset preparation stage, the Data Assets Shell (DAS) encapsulates operational data, revenue data, and other information of physical assets into standardized digital assets, embedding ownership proof, transaction agreements, and asset management models. Blockchain technology ensures data immutability, while the three rights separation structure and judicial preservation channels further ensure data authenticity. In the asset issuance stage, data service providers and financial institutions complete asset on-chain registration and issuance of financial targets under regulatory review, making the data meet the requirements of 'gold assets'. In the asset trading stage, data assets circulate through domestic and foreign capital markets, creating value for enterprises.
RDA supports multiple financing channels, providing enterprises with new sources of funding:
Credit Financing: The Shanghai Data Exchange, in collaboration with financial institutions, launched the 'Data Easy Loan', with a credit amount exceeding 100 million yuan in 2024, providing low-cost financing support for enterprises.
Equity Financing: Using data assets to invest in shares, exchanging for company equity, achieving capitalization operations.
Securitization: Issuing securities supported by future cash flows through data asset ABS (Asset-Backed Securities), transforming data into equity value.
Global Fundraising: Connecting with overseas capital markets to attract foreign investment to support the development of the domestic real economy.
The five major characteristics of RDA highlight its unique value: first is real number integration, deeply binding data with physical assets to form a new asset form; second, real and transparent, with blockchain technology enabling credible traceability of assets throughout their lifecycle; third, reliable returns, with smart contracts connecting real operational returns to ensure transparent distribution; fourth, value reconstruction, leveraging the low marginal cost and reusability of data in conjunction with capital markets to amplify asset value; fifth, ecological collaboration, integrating data markets and capital markets to build an open value ecosystem. These characteristics make RDA a bridge connecting the real economy and financial capital, providing enterprises with innovative financing pathways.
The Development of RDA: A Leap from Theory to Practice
Since its proposal in 2025, RDA has rapidly moved from theoretical conception to practical application, demonstrating strong development momentum. As the 'testing ground' for national data element marketization, Shanghai has become the core area for RDA implementation under policy support. The Shanghai Data Exchange promotes RDA applications in multiple fields through cross-industry cooperation and project pilots. Below are several representative projects:
Steel Trade RDA: Shanghai Steel Union (300226.SZ), as the leader in global commodity data pricing power, has a global market share of over 70% in steel data, and issues the steel trading chain stablecoin 'STEEL-CNY' through the Shanghai Data Exchange platform. This project utilizes blockchain technology to encapsulate steel trading data, supporting trade settlement and account splitting, with commission costs reduced to 0.15%, and annual commission income potential exceeding 1 billion yuan.
Shipping Data RDA: COSCO Shipping Technology (002401.SZ), leveraging its monopolistic advantage in shipping data, has its 'Ship Vision' platform covering over 5000 ports, with the RDA-ized data valuation increasing by 3 times, supporting the 'Freight Treasure CNY' stablecoin to achieve real-time RMB settlement for Southeast Asian freight, with an anticipated annual trading scale of 50 billion yuan.
Data Asset ABS: On August 21, 2025, the first data asset-enabled ABS was successfully listed on the Shanghai Stock Exchange. The Shanghai Data Exchange provided full-chain support, including compliance review, a scientifically rigorous valuation system, and inter-market linkage mechanisms, ensuring seamless transition from preparation to listing, marking a breakthrough application of RDA in the financial market.
On July 22, the unveiling ceremony of the 'Equipment Operation and Intelligent Computing Data Center' jointly established by Hainan Huatie and the Shanghai Data Exchange was held in Shanghai, announcing the launch of the world's first equipment operation RDA project, with an expected issuance scale of 1 billion yuan, marking deep cooperation between the two parties in the fields of data element circulation, equipment operation, and intelligent computing services, jointly exploring new paths for data-driven industrial upgrading.
The following is a comprehensive overview of RDA-related concept stocks, covering data element infrastructure and technical support, trading platforms and blockchain technology, scenario applications and asset tokenization, as well as highly elastic potential targets:
Data Element Infrastructure and Technical Support:
Tuolsi (300229.SZ): Leading in NLP technology, with a market share of over 60% in government and financial data governance. Its AI large model data orders have increased by 180% year-on-year, providing high-quality data cleaning and labeling services for RDA.
Yihualu (300212.SZ): A data lake operator with a central enterprise background, storing over 100 PB of government and medical data, with the first government data asset certificate landing in China, and the scale of data asset registration expected to exceed 500 million yuan in 2025.
3D World (301159.SZ): A certified service provider of the Shanghai Data Exchange, enhancing AI-driven data auto-labeling efficiency by 80%, participating in the formulation of RDA data encapsulation standards, and supporting cross-border data assetization pilots in the Yangtze River Delta.
Trading Platforms and Blockchain Technology:
Shanghai Steel Union (300226.SZ): The leader in global commodity data pricing power, issuing the 'STEEL-CNY' stablecoin, promoting RDA applications in the commodity trading field, with annual commission income potential exceeding 1 billion yuan.
Guangdian Yuntong (002152.SZ): The third largest shareholder of the Guangzhou Data Exchange (holding 15%), with digital RMB hardware terminals covering over 2000 banks, and gold tokenization certificates exceeding 20 tons, with new energy asset tokenization projects already implemented.
Sifang Jingchuang (300468.SZ): A blockchain cross-border payment technology provider, supporting RDA cross-border circulation, with transaction processing speeds reaching 100,000 TPS, providing technical support for the globalization of data assets.
Scenario Applications and Asset Tokenization:
COSCO Shipping Technology (002401.SZ): Valuation of shipping data RDA has increased by 3 times, and the 'Freight Treasure CNY' stablecoin supports cross-border real-time settlement, with an anticipated annual trading scale of 50 billion yuan.
Xiexin Nengke (002015.SZ): A leader in photovoltaic and energy storage data assetization, with IDC and charging pile data on-chain, and a tokenization project for charging revenue rights already implemented, reducing financing costs by 2-3 percentage points.
Vision China (000681.SZ): Owns the world's largest visual copyright library (270 million images), with NFT-based rights confirmation enhancing liquidity, and a copyright trading revenue-sharing model gross profit margin exceeding 70%, exploring a visual data RDA revenue-sharing mechanism.
Century Hengtong (301428.SZ): Focused on data services, participating in RDA-related data assetization pilots, providing data processing and trading support.
Highly Elastic Potential Targets:
Yunsai Zhilian (600602.SH): Achieving RDA transformation in Shanghai state-owned enterprise computing power leasing, with blockchain technology enabling real-time monitoring of computing power resources and improving on-chain efficiency by 50%, with a potential revaluation space of 300%.
Zhongxin Saike (002912.SZ): Data collection coverage exceeding 80% (ETC and traffic flow), with outstanding RDA data source supply capabilities, and a potential increase of over 50% after breaking the annual line on the technical front.
Shanghai Material Trade (600822.SH): The data products of its Shanghai Nonferrous Metals Trading Center are registered and listed on the Shanghai Data Exchange, achieving four consecutive trading limit increases, but the total revenue in 2024 is 4.517 billion yuan, a year-on-year decrease of 42.59%, with data asset trading contributing less than 1%, and a dynamic price-to-earnings ratio as high as 126.57 times, far exceeding the industry average (average of trade companies and industrial product distributors at 19.30 times), reflecting that the market's enthusiasm is more due to expectations of policy dividends.
The capital market's enthusiasm for RDA reflects its potential, but it also comes with high valuation risks. For example, Shanghai Material Trade's high price-to-earnings ratio shows that the market's pursuit of RDA is more based on policy dividends rather than fundamental support. The international exploration of RDA is also steadily advancing. The international zone of the Shanghai Data Exchange has become a key platform for cross-border data exchange, attracting more than 30 international data merchants and listing nearly 200 data products. This zone has pioneered the 'international data brokerage model', bringing in resources such as esports data analysis from Stream Hatchet and global supply chain intelligence from Speeda, while also helping local enterprises comply with data export regulations. Through partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Neudata, and others, a solid structure of 'technical interface + data merchant network' has been formed to support seamless data transmission, helping RDA play a greater role in the global asset digitization.
The Future of RDA: Opportunities and Challenges Coexist
RDA, as an important engine for data valorization, provides new pathways for financing physical assets. However, its development still faces several challenges. Firstly, the trading scale of RDA is relatively small, and the business model has not yet matured, heavily relying on policy promotion and ecological collaboration. For example, the RDA business of Shanghai Material Trade is constrained by external ecology, making it difficult to significantly increase revenue in the short term. Secondly, data ownership rights, standardization, and pricing mechanisms still need to be improved, and cross-border circulation needs to balance domestic and foreign regulatory requirements. Additionally, the implementation of RDA projects requires cross-industry collaboration, involving coordination among various parties in technology, compliance, and market, increasing implementation complexity.
Nevertheless, the future potential of RDA cannot be ignored. With the continuous improvement of the real data integration system, RDA is expected to achieve breakthroughs in the following directions:
Industry Expansion: Expanding from bulk commodities and shipping to intelligent manufacturing, logistics, healthcare, and other fields, covering more real economy scenarios.
Financial Innovation: Exploring more data asset ABS, equity financing, and other models to unlock data value and broaden enterprise financing channels.
International Development: Promoting the global circulation of RDA through connections with international financial markets, attracting more foreign investment to support domestic enterprises.
Conclusion
RDA, as an innovative practice for the marketization of data elements in China, is not only an exploration of the path of data value realization but also a profound response to the integration of the real economy and digital economy. From the theoretical proposal in 2025 to the current project implementation, RDA transforms real data into 'gold assets' through trusted technologies such as blockchain, providing new financing channels for enterprises. RDA concept stocks have become the focus of capital markets due to their layout in data sources, technical services, and trading platforms. Despite facing challenges such as small transaction scale and immature business models, RDA is gradually releasing its potential under the promotion of policy support and technological progress. In the future, RDA is expected to become an important force in the data-driven economic transformation, contributing Chinese wisdom to the global asset digitization wave and injecting strong impetus into the development of new types of productive forces.
