Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Wenser (@wenser 2010)
Affected by Trump's imminent inauguration and a series of potential favorable policies in the United States, the cryptocurrency market has once again welcomed a trading peak, with BTC prices once exceeding $107,000. Countless investment institutions are not only investing heavily in BTC ETF, ETH ETF, and other funds, but are also seeking new value growth points.
At the same time, just as Binance founder CZ previously predicted, the altcoin season has arrived. Besides the traditional tokens and meme coins, L1 public chain tokens are also experiencing strong upward momentum, especially with SUI continuously breaking new highs. The Sui ecosystem not only has a solid foundation in the DeFi sector, but the development of the meme coin sector is also noteworthy. Furthermore, unlike other L1 public chains limited to the crypto market, its recent significant moves in the RWA sector have brought new possibilities for attracting liquidity and attention from outside the circle.
On December 13, Sui officially announced a partnership with Ant Digital and its Web3 technology brand ZAN, with both parties introducing RWA (real world assets) in the ESG field into the Sui ecosystem. One party is a rising public chain, the other is a pioneer in digital assets; it seems that both sides will start an 'RWA spring' regarding physical assets, bringing more possibilities to the crypto market. Odaily Planet Daily will analyze this in this article.
The best reasons to choose RWA: an emerging track with a future scale of up to $30 trillion
The main reason why Sui and Ant Digital chose the RWA sector as a partnership is naturally because it lies at the intersection of TradFi and DeFi, with a huge potential market size. According to information from the RWA.xyz official website, the current on-chain RWA asset scale exceeds $14 billion, with stablecoin asset scale reaching $20.177 billion, and there are as many as 116 asset issuers, but compared to future prospects, there is still over 100 times market space.
Global consulting firm McKinsey Company stated that by 2030, the market for tokenized assets (RWA) could reach $4 trillion, with many projects moving from pilot to large-scale deployment. Colin Butler, head of global institutional capital at Polygon, previously stated that RWA represents a $30 trillion market opportunity worldwide. High-net-worth individuals and private equity funds will drive the adoption in this field, as tokenization brings liquidity and accessibility to historically illiquid asset classes. A previous research report from Tren Finance pointed out that if the RWA industry could reach an expected median of about $10 trillion, its value would grow more than 54 times from the current level.
Information on RWA.xyz website
According to a previous report by asset management giant Bitwise (Top 10 Predictions for the Crypto Market in 2025), by 2025, as Wall Street institutions accelerate their entry, the RWA market is expected to reach $50 billion and may experience exponential growth thereafter; venture capital firm ParaFi predicts that by 2030, the tokenized RWA market size could grow to $2 trillion; while the Global Financial Markets Association predicts it could reach $16 trillion. Such a hot market expectation naturally attracts a host of world-class giants to flock in:
Goldman Sachs' digital asset platform has officially launched and helped the European Investment Bank issue €100 million in two-year digital bonds. In addition, Goldman Sachs has partnered with traditional financial institutions to launch related businesses and plans to build a private chain for asset tokenization.
Siemens Group previously issued €60 million in on-chain digital bonds, initiating the 'first attempt in the RWA field'.
Financial giants such as HSBC, JPMorgan Chase, and Citigroup are also exploring the tokenization of government bonds to improve financial efficiency and settlement speed.
The current scale of the U.S. Treasury RWA market is nearing $3 billion, having grown nearly 30 times from $100 million at the beginning of 2023, among which the USYC launched in cooperation with Hashnote and cryptocurrency custodian Copper has reached $880 million; BlackRock's BUIDL has reached $560 million.
Information on U.S. Treasury RWA market
It is understood that the cooperation between Ant Digital and Sui is mainly to promote the tokenization of ESG-related RWA, expanding its reach to global investors through RWA, with the underlying asset being new energy assets from a Chinese solar material manufacturer.
As a blockchain ecosystem that saw its TVL grow more than 14 times to $14 billion this year, supported by American asset management giants like Grayscale and VanEck, Sui views the RWA market as the 'next growth point'. Jameel Khalfan, head of ecosystem development at Sui Foundation, stated: "The tokenization of the ESG market is a significant step forward for real world assets. Through this cooperation, investors will be able to enter a brand new market, all happening on the most suitable platform, that is Sui."
It is evident that RWA has become a strategically valued track highly regarded by both blockchain networks and digital asset institutions.
RWA development dual support: intrinsic advantages and market demand
Specifically, the strategic significance of the RWA track is reflected in the following three aspects:
Asset transparency and trading efficiency: By tokenizing physical assets and introducing them to the blockchain network, investors can deeply participate in market transactions with the help of on-chain data transparency and high efficiency of on-chain operations.
Increased liquidity of physical assets: Based on improved transparency and enhanced security, RWA assets can achieve partial ownership splitting, significantly enhancing the digital liquidity of physical assets.
Acting as a bridge between traditional markets and crypto markets: By introducing low-risk, high-return tokenized products, more physical assets and more investors will inject a new wave of liquidity into traditional and crypto markets, revitalizing the physical assets of the real world while bringing more quality targets and funding liquidity to the crypto market.
RWA can represent many different types of traditional assets, including tangible and intangible assets. The RWA in overseas markets are mainly focused on bonds and gold.
Why did Sui, as a leading blockchain network in the crypto market, choose China's new energy assets?
Industry experts point out, "This reflects to some extent the 'industrial characteristics of China'." According to data from the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the cumulative installed capacity of China's new energy industry reached 157 million kilowatts in 2023, with a five-year compound growth rate of 15.31%. From solar power generation to charging piles and new energy vehicle products, new energy has become China's 'new label'. "(These new energy assets) have high potential and high growth after being converted into RWA," said the aforementioned person.
It can be said that the tokenization of RWA for physical assets will truly promote a deep coupling between Web3 technology and digital assets, thus achieving the digital redevelopment of real assets.
Looking ahead: RWA market welcomes new possibilities for diversified development routes
In the past, the development of the RWA track mainly revolved around fixed assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds, which were relatively single in terms of asset types and technology routes. Benefiting from the deep cooperation between Ant Digital and its Web3 technology brand ZAN with Sui, both parties will jointly promote the tokenization of RWA assets on a larger scale, injecting new vitality into the traditional and crypto markets from aspects such as technical support, ecosystem development, and funding introduction.
"By tokenizing traditional assets from low liquidity environments to high liquidity markets," BiFinance Research Institute mentioned in its latest report, "this cooperation will bring high-quality assets in the ESG field into the blockchain, empower the real industry, and is expected to become a new momentum for driving market growth."
Previously, Ant Digital launched the largest on-chain asset platform for new energy in China, consisting of the 'Asset Chain', 'Transaction Chain', and 'Ant Chain Trusted Cross-Chain Bridge', with over 12 million devices on-chain; the Web3 product ZAN for overseas markets has also been launched. The total market value of the Sui blockchain has reached $13 billion, and the total locked value (TVL) has exceeded $18.9 billion. After both parties announced their cooperation, Sui's price surged 10% within 24 hours, setting a new historical high.
In the future, under the support of Sui's ecosystem, the RWA market landscape of both parties is expected to welcome a new round of expansion. It is foreseeable that the spring of the RWA market is about to arrive.
