According to Cointelegraph, Plume Network, a blockchain specializing in real-world assets (RWA), is launching a tokenized 'Mineral Vault' to meet the growing demand for high-yielding private assets onchain. Chris Yin, Plume’s CEO, announced the launch on September 9. The Mineral Vault, created by asset manager Allegiance Oil & Gas, represents tokenized mineral interests, a form of real estate that earns royalty revenues from natural resource extraction and sales. The Vault aims to provide financial exposure to resource production like gold, silver, coal, and primarily crude oil and natural gas in the United States, Plume stated in a release shared with Cointelegraph. Tokenized RWAs currently command nearly $12 billion in total value locked (TVL), according to RWA.xyz. Colin Butler, Polygon’s global head of institutional capital, mentioned in August that RWAs could eventually represent a $30-trillion market opportunity globally. Yin highlighted that the fastest-growing segment within RWAs is yield-bearing assets. The highest-TVL RWAs include tokenized US treasury bills and money funds, such as BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) and Franklin OnChain US Government Money Fund (FOBXX), which hold approximately $514 million and $443 million in TVL, respectively. Yin noted an increased demand for accessing more private, liquid assets like mineral interests, which are traditionally difficult to access but offer yields upward of 10%, paid out in stablecoins. He added that the natural evolution is to move slightly upstream where products provide extra yield. Plume aims to develop an RWA-centric ecosystem, dubbed RWAfi, to imbue real-world assets with the same properties as crypto-native assets. This includes using RWA tokens as collateral for loans and other decentralized finance use cases. Yin explained that $10 worth of tokenized mineral interests could be worth 1.5-2x more if properly collateralized and borrowed against within Plume’s RWAfi ecosystem, unlocking more liquidity and yield for the end-user. Plume launched its testnet in July in partnership with data availability layer Celestia and is not yet live on mainnet.
