It is noteworthy that the tech giant Ant Group is also quietly entering the RWA track, focusing on serving ESG-related new energy assets—a business scenario that requires a large cash flow over a long operational cycle.
After Ondo introduced U.S. Treasury bonds and Huma incorporated credit service accounts receivable, Ant Group's financial technology and Sui have cooperated with the intention of capturing the 'heavyweight' application scenarios that demand higher compliance qualifications, have good growth potential, longer launch cycles, and a more specialized investor base in ESG. A brief discussion:
1) The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) is a necessary entry point for many traditional finance giants to connect with the web3 field, because:
1. Although related to ambiguous regulation of virtual assets, its core underlying business is physical assets, which are bound by a complete legal framework and compliance terms;
2. RWA business can sustain the traditional finance giants' legacy operations, highly related to their current customer base and business models, with low integration barriers;
3. Virtual on-chain platforms have mature DeFi infrastructure but lack sustainable Yield revenue models, perfectly matching the large and flexible capital flow needed for new energy business scenarios;
Therefore, institutions such as JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, Goldman Sachs, and Ant Group will attempt to maximize the possibilities for RWA business implementation within the existing compliance framework.
2) ESG (Environment, Social, Governance) actually covers a wide range of areas, but the urgency of integrating such business scenarios with the web3 industry is significant.
For instance, heavy asset industries like charging piles and photovoltaics have long cash flow cycles, but there are already many successful cases, making them suitable for packaging into RWA assets. Their RWA transformation can effectively address asset liquidity issues. Similarly, high-frequency pain point scenarios in supply chain finance, such as accounts receivable, can effectively alleviate the difficulties and high costs of financing for small and medium-sized enterprises after being transformed into RWA.
Essentially, the reason why traditional financial business scenarios can actively embrace web3 despite 'compliance' pressures is that their social value is greater and they genuinely bring the physical industrial chain to Web3.
Moreover, it is increasingly evident that the business scenarios involved in RWA are maturing. Initially, @OndoFinance and others chose relatively simple demand scenarios for tokenization, such as U.S. Treasury bonds. Recently, @humafinance, which secured $38M in funding, has tried to build infrastructure for credit services based on income streams, including income mortgage loans, credit limit loans, accounts receivable financing, and other common and high-frequency scenarios.
3) The cooperation between Ant Group's financial technology and @SuiNetwork further promotes the depth of service and imaginative space for RWA business:
On one hand, Ant Group's financial technology relies on its Ant Chain and has consistently connected with the web3 market, leveraging the rich experience of Ant Group and Alipay in payments, risk control, etc., over the past 20 years, which greatly benefits the Web3 market;
On the other hand, Sui, as a high-performance layer1 that has performed strongly in the past six months, has established a new DeFi application Flag based on the security advantages of the Move language. Its past background from the Meta team also gives it advantages in collaborating with internet giants;
In summary, the integration of traditional asset Tokenomics + programmable smart contract management tools and web3 infrastructure with web2 real economy business scenarios is definitely a trend.
Currently, RWA business is becoming increasingly rich, resulting from the continuous deep integration of web2 traditional finance and web3 financial infrastructure, and it will also provide more opportunities to inject new vitality into the traditional real economy.
