Article source: Zen
Author: Zen, PANews
Real World Assets (RWA) are gradually becoming the focal point of market attention as an important bridge connecting traditional finance and cryptocurrency. However, the current RWA market still faces numerous challenges: inefficiency, high costs, and a lack of smooth integration between the traditional financial system and the on-chain ecosystem, with further development bottlenecks awaiting breakthroughs.
To address this issue, Plume, a fully integrated and modular chain focused on RWAfi, was created. As the first truly public chain serving crypto-native users, Plume is committed to providing a more efficient, transparent, and convenient solution, creating a dynamic, liquid, and composable scheme that redefines finance for the RWA market, making it as multifunctional as native crypto assets.
Raised tens of millions, deployed assets over a billion
After nearly a year of rapid development, Plume Network has been recognized by the community, institutions, emerging banks, and crypto-native protocols (such as lending protocols, perpetual contract DEXs, AMMs, etc.) as the best solution for RWAfi. Currently, over 180 projects have been built on Plume, with a cumulative asset deployment exceeding $1 billion, and several hundred million in assets are about to go on-chain. During a two-month testing phase, Plume achieved significant results: active wallet numbers exceeded 3.75 million, and on-chain transaction volumes surpassed 270 million, fully showcasing the ecosystem's vibrancy and user engagement.
In November, Plume held a pre-staking event with an initial goal of $5 million, which was filled rapidly in 70 seconds, exceeding expectations. In response to significant community demand, Plume promptly raised the cap to $30 million, ultimately exceeding the target in 90 minutes, with oversubscription reaching six times the original plan.
Plume's growth potential has also been recognized by several well-known VCs, having cumulatively completed $30 million in financing. In May of this year, Plume announced the completion of a $10 million seed round led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures, and Reciprocal Ventures. This financing round has laid a solid foundation for Plume's innovation and expansion in the RWAfi field.
On December 18, Plume announced the completion of a $20 million Series A financing round (total raise of $30M), with participants including Brevan Howard Digital, Haun Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Lightspeed Faction, Superscrypt, Hashkey, Laser Digital (under Nomura), A Capital, 280 Capital, SV Angel, and Reciprocal Ventures.
Leveraging DeFi concepts, a blockchain ecosystem designed specifically for RWA.
Although there are already many Layer 1s in the industry, and new projects continually entering the space intensify the competition, Plume recognizes the need to create a blockchain specifically designed for Real World Assets (RWA) due to the customization requirements for permission management, compliance, and liquidity in the series of operations on-chain for real-world assets. It aims to achieve its goal by embedding more customization and functionality at the network level.
Unlike traditional RWA models, Plume aims to create a more efficient and easily accessible ecosystem for crypto users and traditional financial institutions by leveraging DeFi principles, being the first and only protocol focused on RWAfi. RWAfi represents a new model in the blockchain finance sector, implying that tokenized RWAs can be composable and flexible like native crypto assets. Focusing on the adoption of crypto-native concepts, Plume prioritizes composability, liquidity, permissionlessness, and interoperability, designing products and business around RWAfi from the perspective of building what crypto users truly need.
Plume's modular infrastructure is designed to support the tokenization and management of real-world assets, with core components including the tokenization engine Arc, smart wallet, and on-chain data highway Nexus. Through the collaborative work of these components, Plume provides a seamless and secure environment for managing multiple asset classes, ensuring compliance, and facilitating data integration.
Arc aims to simplify the creation, registration, and management of tokenized RWAs, supporting the tokenization of both physical and digital assets, integrated with compliance and data systems to ensure the accuracy, security, and compliance of each asset in the network. As an efficient asset tokenization engine, Arc's structure allows asset issuers to quickly and economically tokenize assets, while automated compliance checks reduce operational complexity and costs.
Plume's smart wallet aims to truly achieve the composability of RWA assets, providing customizable control features for managing digital assets, yield tools, and contract-based interactions. Users can access advanced DeFi functionalities such as yield generation and liquidity management through this smart wallet. It maximizes functionality while maintaining asset security and user control.
Nexus is a foundational component of Plume's architecture, bringing real-world data into the blockchain to support new use cases such as prediction markets, DeFi applications, and speculation indices. Nexus's data pipeline integrates reliable off-chain data, connecting with external sources to deliver real-time, actionable insights directly to the blockchain. By providing accurate, real-time data, users can make informed decisions regarding tokenized assets, enhancing the functionality and accuracy of on-chain financial products.
In core functionalities, Plume focuses on accelerating the tokenization of real-world assets, liquidity, and regulatory compliance, providing a comprehensive framework that includes liquidity management, built-in anti-money laundering (AML) compliance, and data access features.
Plume leverages its network with compliance partners to achieve compliance verification of tokenized assets, ensuring transactions meet relevant regulatory requirements. By adopting a model that directly integrates compliance into the platform, it simplifies regulatory compliance processes and user registration. With integrated compliance features, users can confidently participate in RWAfi trading, accessing broader opportunities on the Plume network while meeting necessary legal standards.
In terms of key asset liquidity and market efficiency, Plume promotes liquidity development through partnerships with trusted liquidity providers and deploying yield enhancement mechanisms. Its trading features enhance liquidity options for RWA tokens through staking, yield farming, and integration with DeFi protocols, supporting market activity. This allows users to participate in asset trading by reducing slippage and increasing asset stability, taking advantage of liquidity and yield opportunities in the RWA market.
Focusing on real yields, primarily serving crypto-native users.
As a unique intersection of blockchain technology and traditional assets, the immense potential of RWA stems from the traditional financial industry. Perhaps based on this, most RWA projects are currently led by individuals with traditional finance (TradFi) backgrounds, who attempt to bring traditional financial products onto the blockchain. However, mainstream users on the blockchain tend to be more crypto-native rather than traditional finance users, making it difficult for most products to find a market fit.
Plume believes that to truly drive the growth of RWAs, it must first focus on the needs of on-chain users. Its RWAfi concept not only aims to bring RWAs on-chain but also to tailor products to what users are already doing when combining traditional and crypto-native worlds, creating solutions that are easy for them to understand and accept. This is due to the fact that on-chain users are often the most vibrant and innovative when exploring RWAfi application scenarios, with a strong demand for real returns, liquidity, and composability. Essentially, Plume meets these needs in a DeFi-like manner, aligning products with the market. Users are superficially engaging with decentralized financial products, but behind them are real-world assets that can provide actual returns.
As an open and permissionless chain, Plume provides an easy-to-use, compliant, and efficient tool for asset tokenization, allowing anyone to freely build and drive development without restrictions. Among the hundreds of protocols that have currently attracted Plume, these assets cover various categories. Currently, Plume's asset categories can broadly be divided into collectibles, alternative assets, and financial instruments. Collectibles include wine, artworks, watches, sneakers, and Pokémon cards; alternative assets mainly consist of private credit, real estate, or green energy projects; financial instruments are primarily stocks or corporate bonds.
However, for the vast majority of crypto users, the category of the asset itself is not important; its utility and potential returns are what matter. Therefore, based on providing benefits to existing on-chain users, Plume also focuses its efforts on the three most critical use cases for crypto users. The first is yield farming, which revolves around earning yields through depositing funds and circular operations, while achieving efficient and convenient operations. The second is trading, which includes buying, selling, lending, and traditional spot trading behaviors. The third is speculation, mainly involving derivatives and other similar high-risk investment activities. Plume focuses on assets and application scenarios related to these protocols, making them more aligned with the actual needs of crypto users.
Plume focuses on bringing real yields through yield-bearing assets and introduces real users into the existing market, expanding the use cases of the crypto ecosystem and RWAs. For example, Plume collaborates with Projective Finance, an RWA project in the renewable solar energy sector, providing users the opportunity to earn yields from $100 million worth of solar assets. Projective Finance tokenizes 'leveraging commercial solar construction loans and post-operation assets,' which will serve development projects for public school districts. Plume Network states, 'These projects have 100% contracted income, and costs are predictable.' According to the statement, both teams believe that the commitment of school districts to these development projects reduces the overall risk of tokenized projects, with expected yields ranging from 9% to 18%.
In addition to emphasizing the needs of on-chain users, Plume also serves traditional financial institutions and can address major challenges in compliance and liquidity while promoting institutional adoption. This dual-service strategy positions it for innovation and breakthroughs in the RWAfi field, meeting the different core needs of crypto-native users and traditional financial institutions.
Looking ahead, with the imminent official launch of its mainnet, Plume will technically enhance the scalability and security of its infrastructure further based on its existing foundation and integrate additional features to improve data privacy. In terms of ecological development and RWA expansion, it will undoubtedly add more asset classes, including tokenized luxury goods, stocks, and new forms of commodities. Furthermore, by expanding partnerships with financial institutions, Plume will make it easier for institutional investors to access tokenized RWAs. This strategic positioning not only facilitates the connection between the crypto world and traditional finance but will also make Plume an important bridge for promoting RWAfi development.