In 2024, RWA (Real World Assets) has become a hot topic of discussion in the Web3 world. As a bridge between real assets and blockchain technology, RWA offers new possibilities for asset tokenization. However, in a crypto market known for high yields and speculative assets, the appeal of RWA still faces challenges. Compared to native Web3 assets, the returns of RWA appear relatively "conservative," and when compared to speculative tokens that can double quickly, the stable returns of RWA seem less enticing.

But those who truly understand RWA know that its value goes far beyond stable long-term returns. The core potential of RWA lies in its ability to drive the digital transformation of real assets, inject more trust-based assets into DeFi (Decentralized Finance), and shape a new economic order in the Web3 world.

To address the barriers to adoption and unlock the true potential of RWA, RealtyX has partnered with several leading projects in the RWA space to launch a movement promoting the deep integration of RWA and DeFi—the MTR RWAfi Movement. This movement is driven by innovation and education, exploring new possibilities for RWAfi (RWA + DeFi) through collaboration with industry-leading projects and blockchain platforms.

To spark intellectual collisions in the industry, the first discussion is themed "Mapping the RWAfi Ecosystem," delving into the composability potential of RWA and DeFi, laying the groundwork for future ecological development. From heated discussions to practical actions, the RWAfi Movement is redefining the intersection of real assets and decentralized finance, leading the industry toward a future characterized by greater trust, efficiency, and long-term value.

This discussion is hosted by Jade, Strategy Lead at RealtyX, co-hosted by the Plume blockchain team, and features several heavyweight guests, including Teddy, Co-founder and CBO of Plume, PG, Founder of RWA market project Polytrade, and Clair, CEO of perpetual contract protocol Silver Koi.

The discussion is conducted in English, and here are the highlights and translations of the core content.

Compiled by Sanqing, contributor to the RealtyX DAO community.

Jade (RealtyX): Hello everyone! I’m Jade from RealtyX, and I warmly welcome you to the first discussion of our MTR seminar and AMA series. Today's theme is "Exploring the RWAfi Ecosystem," and I will be the host for this discussion.

Before we begin, I’d like to briefly introduce what "MTR" stands for:

1. First, it represents "Most Trusted and Rewarding RWAfi," reflecting our commitment to building an impactful ecosystem of real assets and decentralized finance.

2. Secondly, "MTR" is also the name of the Hong Kong subway system, and we want to pay tribute to Hong Kong, as RealtyX was born here and is currently a member of the Hong Kong Cyberport Incubation Program. The MTR subway system is the best metaphor for our efforts to promote development and enhance connectivity in the RWA space.

Next, we are fortunate to invite several industry pioneers and innovators from Plume Network, Silver Koi, and Polytrade. Let's start with a brief introduction of each guest and their projects.

Teddy (Plume Network): Hello everyone, I’m Teddy, and I’m excited to be part of today’s discussion. Plume is a permissionless EVM network focused on the RWA space, with core goals including tooling development, facilitating asset distribution, and enhancing asset composability.

We are committed to bringing new users into the RWAfi ecosystem, unlocking trading and liquidity opportunities for them, and leveraging the excellent projects we have on today’s Twitter Spaces to achieve this goal. Thank you again for the invitation, and I look forward to the upcoming discussion!

Claire (Silver Koi): Hello everyone, I’m Claire. Silver Koi is the first decentralized exchange (Equities Perp DEX) supporting stock perpetual contracts. It may sound complex, but it’s actually quite simple. We allow users to trade perpetual contracts for stocks, commodities, forex, and other assets on one platform, offering up to 200x leverage while maintaining low funding rates and low slippage. Our goal is to provide users with an efficient and low-cost trading experience.

PG (Polytrade): Thank you, Jade! I’m glad to be part of this discussion today. I have a deep connection with MTR (Hong Kong subway) because I spent a significant part of my life in Hong Kong. So, I really love everything about this place. I am the founder and CEO of Polytrade. Polytrade has now become one of the largest RWA asset trading markets globally, and we will soon transform into an RWA hub. Our philosophy is very simple. Just like teams like Plume are building infrastructure to help more users and projects enter the RWAfi ecosystem, our job is to create the frontend or DApp that allows all ecosystems to connect seamlessly, enabling users to interact easily.

In other words, users on Polytrade can complete all operations related to RWA without leaving the platform, such as tokenization, asset management, indices, loans, and all other functions. We position Polytrade as a super application for RWA, which is our current core goal.

Jade (RealtyX & Host): Great! Today, our RWA scene is quite comprehensive. Fantastic! Let’s jump straight into the first question, but let’s focus on the RWA part first, and we’ll delve deeper into the RWAfi ecosystem later. Over the past year, RWA (Real World Assets) has become a very hot narrative. So, what inspired each of you to enter this field? For your projects, was it to solve a specific problem or to seize an opportunity? Especially in achieving goals through a focus on real assets. Let’s start with Teddy, then Claire, and PG.

Teddy (Plume Network): Yes, that’s a great question. For me, this idea gradually took shape after I joined BNB Chain. At that time, I was in their ecosystem team, responsible for bringing in various projects, whether in DeFi, GameFi, or SocialFi. RWA (Real World Assets) was already a hot track, but to be honest, the entire field was still in the early exploratory stage.

I first encountered RWA in 2021 when I was responsible for related research on the Coinbase team. However, after joining Binance and BNB Chain, my task was to bring in various RWA projects. Several core issues faced by these projects often repeated, such as insufficient tool support, lack of composability, and distribution challenges, especially how to accurately reach the right holders for assets. Our ideas gradually took shape based on solving these problems.

My co-founder and I have complementary backgrounds; he mainly comes from investment and engineering, while I focus more on ecosystem building. We noticed that most current RWA projects are led by people from traditional finance (TradFi) backgrounds, trying to bring traditional financial products onto the blockchain. But the problem is that mainstream users on the blockchain tend to be more crypto-native rather than traditional finance users, making it difficult to find a product-market fit.

Therefore, we want to look at RWA from a completely new perspective. Our goal is to create more use cases for on-chain users through our protocol, such as lending, trading, and unlocking liquidity. Projects like Polytrade, RealtyX, and Silver Koi are all focused on these directions. We want to provide on-chain users with liquidity and trading opportunities they previously couldn’t access.

We always believe that for the RWA field to truly develop, we must start from the needs of on-chain users and design products they can understand and accept. In fact, the core of all this revolves around product-market fit. If you look back at the development history of RWA, you will find that stablecoins are the products that best meet market demand because they are permissionless, highly liquid, and appear closer to crypto assets in terms of usage.

At Plume, our philosophy is to abstract away the underlying complexity and package the entire ecosystem in a way that on-chain users can easily understand. What users interact with on the surface are decentralized financial products, but behind them are real-world assets that bring actual returns to users.

Currently, we are tokenizing various assets, such as alternative assets, government bonds, collectibles, GPUs, mining rights, and more. We hope to bring these assets on-chain so that more people can fairly access the benefits of RWA. For us, this is the true direction of growth in the RWA field—creating new liquidity and yield opportunities for people through DeFi, breaking traditional limitations.

Claire (Silver Koi): Thank you for Teddy’s wonderful sharing. Next, I’ll start with my personal experience. I lived in Asia for a long time and noticed that in many regions, it is very difficult for ordinary people to access foreign markets. Take the US stock market as an example; it is the largest market in the world, yet over 4 billion people find it hard to access. Many of my friends want to invest in the US stock market but have to go through very cumbersome processes, such as needing up to 10 different brokerage accounts, which usually require high minimum deposits to open. Moreover, they often have to pay seven to eight different fees, and if they want to trade fractional shares, the fees can be even higher.

All these barriers make it difficult for many people to access better investment opportunities. This is also the reason we wanted to create Silver Koi. We firmly believe that the opportunity for wealth growth should not be exclusive to a privileged few. Why can’t people from other regions—I'm not just talking about "non-Americans," but many people from various regions—grow their wealth like others? They should also have the tools to utilize. So, this is why we started building Silver Koi.

Our goal is to make trading extremely simple. We hope that all operations, such as placing an order, can be completed in less than five clicks, and trades can settle in under a second. In fact, we have already achieved this. Speaking of fees, I just mentioned that high fees are one of the main barriers many people face. We have eliminated all these fees for users: no rollover fees, no management fees, and no additional charges for fractional share trading. Additionally, we are committed to providing extremely low funding rates to remain competitive with major centralized exchanges.

Of course, another focus of ours is speed. All operations can be completed very quickly, and users can freely transfer funds at any time. We hope that through these efforts, we can truly achieve our goal: to make investing simple and straightforward.

PG (Polytrade): I really appreciate Teddy and Claire’s sharing; they mentioned important reasons for entering and delving into the RWA field. For us, when we entered the RWA space, RWA was still a vague term. At that time, almost no one truly understood what RWA meant.

We started in this field in 2021. I came from a Web2 background and had worked in trade finance for nearly a decade. I wanted to bring these valuable assets on-chain and provide DeFi liquidity for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) borrowers, which was the impetus for the birth of Polytrade in 2021.

At that time, the term RWA seemed a bit ridiculous to us because, by literal definition, almost everything real could be called RWA. Nevertheless, some terms gradually gain acceptance in the market, and RWA is one of them. Over the past four years, Polytrade has been working tirelessly, starting from the tokenization of single assets, focusing on trade finance. Subsequently, we transformed into a market-oriented platform model.

In this process, we found that the biggest challenge was the asset discovery problem. Therefore, we wanted to become the "OpenSea" of the RWA field, allowing users to easily discover various protocols, chains, and industry trading dynamics, as well as understand which protocols are operational, which assets are trading, and which tokens can be used.

Then, we began to engage in secondary trading of these assets and launched "Buy Now, Pay Later" (BNPL) and other innovative financial products on the platform. Ultimately, we realized that there was still a crucial missing link in the entire ecosystem, which is speculation. Most people are not inclined to speculate on RWA; for example, very few would bet on whether gold will rise by 20%. The characteristic of RWA is its stability, which essentially contrasts with the high volatility of crypto assets.

Therefore, our goal is to introduce speculation for Web3 users, and our solution is based on a token model. We are building Polytrade into a super application where users can not only trade assets but also trade, stake, and lend RWA tokens. We are also developing prediction markets to further enrich the user experience.

Currently, we have made good progress, with over 60,000 to 70,000 active users participating. We are also collaborating with Plume, actively exploring in the testnet, and planning to complete the final integration. For users, our goal is to provide a comprehensive application entry point where they can complete all operations.

The advantage of this model is that we do not compete with other protocols but provide a distribution platform for them. This is a purely distribution strategy that allows us to comfortably collaborate with all protocols and add value to the entire ecosystem.

Jade (RealtyX & Host): Great! I think the sharing from all of you has laid a very good foundation for my next question. Teddy and PG both mentioned that while RWA holds tremendous potential, it also faces a key challenge: insufficient appeal to Web3 native users, who often seek higher yields and fast-paced financial speculation.

So my next question is directed at Teddy: In this context, from your perspective, why is it so important to create an interconnected RWAfi ecosystem? Additionally, how is Plume Network supporting and promoting the development of this ecosystem through infrastructure building? I know you partially explained this in your previous answer, but this time we can delve deeper into the topic.

Teddy (Plume Network): That’s a great question, and I’m glad to explore this topic in depth. As I mentioned earlier, creating an RWAfi ecosystem is crucial for us because traditional RWAs are often static. People buy tokenized government bonds or private credit products, but these assets mostly just "sit" in wallets without additional utility or yield.

By building an RWAfi ecosystem, people can perform more operations on these assets, such as bringing them into different lending protocols as collateral, borrowing, or even participating in decentralized finance (DeFi) circular strategies. These are unprecedented in the traditional RWA space. If you are just developing a DApp on a generic blockchain, it’s hard to achieve these functionalities. Currently, generic L1 and L2 chains perform well in the overall ecosystem, but they cannot provide sufficient support for certain vertical needs, such as market expansion, demand creation, and ecosystem incentives. This is why we want to build the RWAfi ecosystem.

We want users to trade RWA as they do with crypto assets while ensuring compliance. We achieve this through various products from Plume. For example, our Plume Arc is an asset tokenization engine that allows anyone to tokenize any asset in a compliant manner. We integrate various compliance solutions, tokenization schemes, and develop internal transfer agents while making more modifications to the chain layer protocols. Our other protocol is Nest Protocol, which is a yield stream protocol. Users can invest in yield tokens representing future cash flows. This allows ordinary users to access assets that previously required them to be accredited investors or complete KYC to participate. This works similarly to how DAI and SI operate, and we have replicated this mechanism at the underlying technology level.

By combining these products, we can unleash tremendous network effects within a single network. This way, when capital enters our ecosystem, it can continue to flow. For example, users can invest in one asset and then plan across assets, participating in more DeFi activities, such as trading on the Silver Koi platform or collaborating with Polytrade, or even accessing these assets through some aggregator. There are numerous assets on Plume, and we hope to integrate DeFi projects with RWA within the same ecosystem, creating new opportunities for users.

Our testnet has already demonstrated the potential of this model. In just two months of testing, we achieved 280 million transactions, covering about 18 million wallets, of which 4 million are active unique users. This scale is unimaginable in traditional RWA projects.

In contrast, traditional RWA projects often struggle to attract users. For example, based on my recent observations on Etherscan, Ondo Protocol may have only 50 holders. However, by combining RWA with DeFi, we allow users to truly explore its potential.

A pre-staking event we held two weeks ago is a great example. The target TVL for this event was originally $5 million, but it was filled in just 70 seconds and ultimately reached $30 million in TVL within 90 minutes. This growth rate indicates that building the RWAfi ecosystem can bring real product-market fit for users.

We believe that collaborating with projects like RealtyX, Polytrade, and Silver Koi is the best way to drive development in this field and is why we are focused on building the RWAfi ecosystem.

Jade (RealtyX & Host): That’s fantastic! So, from the project perspective, how does it look? Perhaps we can start with PG from Polytrade to share. From the project perspective, how does an interconnected RWAfi ecosystem with DeFi elements differ from one without DeFi elements? How will this bring value to your users?

PG (Polytrade): We are all actually working towards the same goal—promoting the adoption of RWA. We want more people to believe in RWA and trade more on-chain rather than relying on off-chain operations. Continuous efforts are needed to attract more Web2 users, showing them the real advantages that Web3 brings, such as the convenience, security, transparency of on-chain trading, and potentially lower costs.

Many members of our team come from a Web2 background, so we are very aware of the issues within the traditional financial system and recognize that the financial world needs to be redesigned and reinvented. Of course, this is no longer a novel viewpoint. We have moved past the stage of needing to sell Web3 to people—Bitcoin has touched $100,000, and institutional participation and acceptance are evident. More and more financial tools and products are entering this space.

For example, we have established a partnership with MasterCard and are continuously developing DApps for institutional clients with them. While our users may not care about our collaboration with MasterCard, we understand the importance of this foundational infrastructure.

Regarding the RWAfi ecosystem, I think it’s a great concept, but ultimately, we are building a parallel financial world that allows all real-world assets to migrate from Web2 to Web3. This not only brings greater value to users but also makes these assets more accessible to everyone. Just like Claire mentioned, why can’t some people trade assets available globally? Why should geographical restrictions or capital thresholds prevent me from purchasing a certain asset? Why can’t I buy Apple stock with $10, while this opportunity is only available to those with millions of dollars?

This is precisely the direction the entire RWAfi ecosystem should strive for in the end. As a market-oriented platform, one of our greatest advantages is the ability to observe and participate in various exciting projects, and I believe Plume has a similar experience. We see many projects tokenizing different types of assets, and the diversity of these projects exceeds our imagination. They are not limited to financial assets or real estate but extend to green energy, climate projects, renewable resources, and commodities.

Currently, Polytrade has received numerous protocol requests and even needs to pause activities to better plan how to support and integrate these protocols. This pace of innovation and diversity excites me immensely. Polytrade will continue to strive to be the largest distribution platform in this field. Partners like Plume are continuously bringing us users who need a simple and friendly frontend experience, which is the value of our platform.

Moreover, our close relationship with the blockchain has become crucial, as we not only help users acquire assets but also create various on-chain activity opportunities for them. I am very confident in the entire RWAfi narrative and believe this is the right path to achieve larger-scale adoption.

Claire (Silver Koi): These are all fantastic answers, and I’ll keep my response brief. For Silver Koi, our goal is to make investing accessible to everyone. The importance of building an interconnected RWAfi ecosystem lies in its ability to help us achieve this goal. As part of this ecosystem, we can gain value from multiple aspects. For example, users can easily access a broader range of investment opportunities, such as stocks. They can also invest in real estate through RealtyX or explore other asset platforms through Polytrade. Through such an ecosystem, users can actually reach various asset classes, including stocks, commodities, forex, and bonds. Secondly, with this ecosystem, sharing infrastructure and liquidity becomes easier, significantly reducing costs, speeding up transactions, and greatly enhancing user experience. Ultimately, this ecosystem not only helps various projects work better together but also makes the user experience smoother. So, from our perspective, this ecosystem is a win-win for both projects and users. That’s my answer.

Jade (RealtyX & Host): I personally resonate with the sharing from the guests. For RealtyX, I believe a supportive ecosystem and an interconnected ecosystem are crucial for the prosperous development of projects. Currently, we have partnered with Plume, and a few months ago, we also launched our assets on Polytrade, seeing everything closely connected. As Claire mentioned, a smooth and seamless user experience is key to bringing the next million or even billion users into this space.

Next, let’s continue the discussion. In fact, my next question has been partially answered in previous responses, but I still want to extend it a bit regarding the synergies we can achieve in the interconnected RWAfi ecosystem. If you would like to add more, you can talk about what unique advantages your projects have that can complement other projects in the RWAfi ecosystem. Or, share what you are currently collaborating on with other projects to help everyone better understand how RWAfi operates in practice.

Teddy (Plume Network): We can use the three projects present today as examples to demonstrate the synergies in the RWAfi ecosystem. Once we launch the mainnet, yield products will become one of the core highlights of the ecosystem, and many users will come to Plume because of the diverse yield opportunities we provide.

Suppose users transfer assets to Plume through our main bridging partner LayerZero; they can invest in RealtyX’s yield-bearing assets through Polytrade’s application and interface. Once they acquire these assets on the RealtyX platform, they can further use these assets as collateral to enter other lending protocols. For instance, in the future, Silver Koi may accept these assets as collateral, allowing users to earn yields while trading on the Silver Koi platform. This composability of assets is a significant highlight in the DeFi space, making the use of assets more diverse. This kind of network-level composability was rarely seen in the past, but it is now becoming a new possibility.

Additionally, we see many protocols developing new strategies around this ecosystem. One major direction is stablecoin circular strategies. For example, users can use PUSD (Plume’s stablecoin) as collateral to borrow more stablecoins and then reinvest them into PUSD, creating a continuous loop. Through this method, users can elevate their original stable yields of 8%-11% to 20%-30%.

The RWAfi ecosystem provides robust support for these strategies, enriching the yield models of assets and giving users the opportunity to enhance their returns through innovative means. This is a very exciting field, and we are already seeing more and more opportunities emerging, with promising developments ahead.

Jade (RealtyX & Host): Thank you, Teddy! Your answer is very clear and helps us better understand how the RWAfi ecosystem brings real value to users. Let’s quickly move on to the last question. In the next 12 months, what do you think are the key indicators of success for the RWAfi ecosystem? Are there any potential obstacles that need to be overcome?

Claire (Silver Koi): Okay, I’ll make a brief prediction. Let’s start with the obstacles, which may be one of the concerns for everyone, namely regulation.

Regulatory issues may be one of the biggest challenges we face right now. The overall legal environment and rules are still not clear enough, and each country and jurisdiction has its own rules. Especially in the United States, it is particularly uncertain in this regard. Although the situation may improve after some policy adjustments, no one can be sure. From the perspective of startups, this is especially difficult because clarifying these different rules often requires a lot of time and resources. I hope that in the next 12 months, the legal environment will become clearer. At the same time, this is also one of the reasons for the existence of the RWAfi ecosystem—we can share legal knowledge and even share some advisory resources. This actually responds to the question you raised earlier.

Now let’s talk about the key indicators of success. We can measure this from many aspects, but the most direct one is the number of new users. Here, "new users" includes those brought in from the Web2 world and those from the crypto-native user base. For Web2 users, the challenge lies in educating and guiding them, such as teaching them how to use crypto wallets and other tools. For Web3 native users, while they are familiar with crypto assets, they may know little about traditional markets. The difficulties here may relate to factors like age and educational background. If we can make progress in both areas, that would be an incredible achievement.

Another key point is liquidity.

Teddy also mentioned this. Plume and the entire ecosystem are working hard to provide more shared liquidity for different projects, increasing the depth of capital pools and the variety of assets. This can bring more competitive pricing for users. We have also invested a lot of effort in the performance development of the platform while trying to introduce high-quality liquidity to ensure users experience lower slippage and lower fees.

Jade (RealtyX & Host): Claire’s answer has been very comprehensive. For RealtyX, we also face regulatory challenges, which is an issue that all RWA projects need to pay attention to and work hard to overcome. At the same time, we need to engage in more dialogue with the government. Fortunately, we are currently participating in the Hong Kong Cyberport Incubation Program, which provides us with a valuable opportunity to promote policy discussions.

In the next 12 months, we hope to see a more open and supportive legal environment, which will provide greater space for the growth of the entire RWAfi ecosystem. As mentioned earlier, through the RWAfi ecosystem, we can not only collaborate with other projects but also jointly explore how to advance relevant policy discussions and solve practical problems.

This AMA discussion has been very enlightening, and I hope everyone has gained something from it. Finally, I would like to thank all the guests and audience for participating today. Don’t forget to follow these exciting projects and guests on social media to stay updated on their latest developments! Thank you all for listening, and have a great day!

Link to the original AMA audio