Plume Network: Building an RWAfi ecosystem for encryption-native users

Real World Assets (RWA) are becoming an increasingly important link between traditional finance and encryption, gradually capturing the market's attention. However, the current RWA market still faces many challenges: inefficiency, high costs, and the connectivity between the traditional financial system and the on-chain ecosystem is not smooth, with bottlenecks in further development urgently needing to be overcome.

To address these challenges, a fully integrated and modular chain focused on RWAfi has emerged. As the first truly public chain serving encryption-native users, the project aims to provide more efficient, transparent, and convenient solutions by redefining finance through the creation of a dynamic, liquid, and composable market for RWA, making it as multifunctional as native encryption assets.

Rapid Development and Financing Achievements

After nearly a year of rapid development, the network has been recognized by the community, institutions, emerging banks, and encryption native protocols (such as lending protocols, perpetual contract DEX, AMM, etc.) as the best solution for RWAfi. Currently, over 180 projects have been built on it, with a cumulative deployed asset exceeding $1 billion, and several hundred million assets are set to go on-chain. During the two-month testing period, the network also achieved significant results: the number of active wallets surpassed 3.75 million, and the on-chain transaction volume exceeded 270 million, fully demonstrating the activity of the ecosystem and user engagement enthusiasm.

In November, the project held a pre-storage event with an initial target of 5 million dollars, which was quickly filled in 70 seconds, exceeding expectations. In response to the huge demand from the community, the cap was raised to 30 million dollars, and ultimately, the target was exceeded rapidly within 90 minutes, with oversubscription reaching 6 times the original plan.

The growth potential of this project has also been recognized by several well-known investment institutions, having cumulatively completed $30 million in funding. In May of this year, it announced the completion of $10 million in seed round financing, with participation from several renowned venture capital firms. This round of financing has laid a solid foundation for its innovation and expansion in the RWAfi field.

On December 18, it was announced that they have completed a $20 million Series A financing round, with participation from several well-known investment institutions and financial groups.

A blockchain ecosystem designed for RWA, leveraging the principles of DeFi

Although there are already numerous Layer 1s in the industry, and new projects continuously entering this space make the competition increasingly fierce. However, due to the customized requirements for permission management, compliance, and liquidity in the series of operations for real-world assets on-chain, the project realizes the need to build a blockchain specifically designed for RWA, and aims to achieve its goals by embedding more customizations and functionalities at the network level.

Unlike traditional RWA models, this project aims to create a more efficient and accessible ecosystem for encryption users and traditional financial institutions by leveraging DeFi principles, making it the first and only protocol focused on RWAfi. RWAfi is a new model in the blockchain finance space, meaning that tokenized RWAs can be composed and flexible like native encryption assets. Based on the principle of adopting encryption natively, the focus is on composability, liquidity, permissionlessness, and interoperability from the perspective of building what encryption users truly need, designing products and services around RWAfi.

The project's modular infrastructure is designed to support the tokenization and management of real-world assets, with core components of its architecture including a tokenization engine, smart wallets, and on-chain data highways. Through the collaborative work of these components, a smooth and secure environment is provided for managing multiple asset classes, ensuring compliance, and facilitating data integration.

In terms of core functions, the project focuses on accelerating the on-chain process 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 capabilities.

Focus on real returns, prioritize serving encryption native users

As a special field at the 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 a background in traditional finance (TradFi), who are attempting to bring traditional financial products onto the blockchain. However, mainstream users on the blockchain tend to be more encryption-native rather than traditional financial users, making it difficult for most products to find a market fit.

The project believes that in order to truly promote the growth of RWAs, it is essential to first focus on the needs of on-chain users. The concept of RWAfi not only aims to bring RWAs on-chain but also to tailor products that are easy for users to understand and accept, in line with what they are already doing while combining the traditional and encryption native worlds. This is due to the fact that on-chain users are often the most vibrant and innovative when exploring RWAfi application scenarios, and they have a strong demand for real returns, liquidity, and composability. Essentially, the project meets these needs in a manner similar to DeFi, aligning products with the market. What users encounter on the surface are decentralized financial products, but behind them are real-world assets that can deliver actual returns.

As an open, permissionless chain, this project provides an easy-to-use, compliant, and efficient asset on-chain tool, allowing anyone to freely build and drive development without restrictions. Among the hundreds of protocols that have been attracted so far, these assets cover a variety of categories. Currently, asset categories can be broadly divided into three types: collectibles, alternative assets, and financial instruments. Collectibles include wine, artwork, 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 encryption users, the category of the assets themselves is not important; their use and potential returns are the focus. Therefore, based on the premise of benefiting existing on-chain users, the project will also focus on the three major use cases that are most important to encryption users. The first category is yield farming, which revolves around earning returns through methods such as depositing funds and cyclic operations, while achieving operational efficiency and convenience. The second category is trading, including buying and selling, lending, and traditional spot trading activities. The third category is speculation, mainly involving derivatives and other similar high-risk investment operations. The project focuses on assets and application scenarios related to these protocols, making them more aligned with the actual needs of encryption users.

The project focuses on bringing real returns through income-generating assets and introducing real users into the existing market to expand the use cases of the encryption ecosystem and RWAs. For example, by collaborating with RWA projects in the renewable solar energy sector, it provides users with the opportunity to earn returns from solar assets valued at 100 million dollars. The RWA project tokenizes the "leveraging of commercial solar construction loans and post-operation assets," which will serve development projects for public school districts. It is reported that "these projects have 100% contracted revenue and predictable costs." According to the statement, both teams believe that the commitment of school districts to these development projects reduces the overall risk of the tokenized projects, with expected returns between 9% and 18%.

In addition to emphasizing on-chain user needs, the project also serves traditional financial institutions and can address key challenges in compliance and liquidity in promoting institutional adoption. This bidirectional service strategy positions it to achieve innovation and breakthroughs in the RWAfi space, catering to the different core needs of encryption-native users and traditional financial institutions.

Looking ahead, the project that is about to officially launch its mainnet will technically enhance the scalability and security of its infrastructure based on the existing foundation, and further integrate 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; moreover, expanding cooperation with financial institutions will make it easier for institutional investors to access tokenized RWA. This strategic positioning not only facilitates the connection between the encryption world and traditional finance but will also make it an important bridge for promoting the development of RWAfi.