On-chain is just the starting point for RWA; making assets truly tradable is the ultimate goal of tokenization.
Written by: Web3 Farmer Frank
When will the RWA narrative truly shift from "mapping track" to "trading logic"?
After witnessing the entry of Wall Street giants like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton, the answer to this question seems to have remained unresolved until the emergence of a key variable—the potential entry of Nasdaq, which will undoubtedly press the most powerful accelerator for this profound narrative iteration.
In this context, RWA has reached a subtle turning point. The previous methods that lingered at the "asset mapping" level have shown signs of fatigue, while the new paradigm of "on-chain native use" and "composable trading" is becoming the focal point of competition. When asset on-chain is no longer a challenge, the real question is: who can catch the "last mile" of on-chain trading?
With this question in mind, we had an in-depth conversation with Jack, the head of FufutureDAO Foundation. In his view, the key to RWA's success lies not in the order of issuance but in the trading itself.
And the real show will only begin after Nasdaq personally enters the scene.
I. The Conflict Between "Old Assets" and "New World"
1. Since the beginning of this year, with major TradFi giants entering the market and the latest SEC statements, RWA has become the focus of the entire industry. What is your view on this wave of enthusiasm? Are there any industry misunderstandings or concept confusions?
Jack: I believe the biggest misunderstanding currently is equating the act of "putting assets on-chain" with the ultimate value of RWA. Many people think that as long as a stock or a bond is turned into a token, the RWA revolution is complete. This essentially still uses the "mapping thinking" of Web2, treating blockchain merely as a decentralized database.
This thinking overlooks the fundamental question: after assets are on-chain, how do we release their liquidity? How do we establish an efficient market-making mechanism? How do we achieve cross-asset composable trading? If these underlying trading logic issues are not resolved, then so-called "on-chain RWA" is just a certificate that exists in a wallet, devoid of liquidity, and fundamentally no different from its status in a traditional brokerage account.
Therefore, what we see is not just the current attempts at RWA tokenization of stablecoins and US stocks, but we should also foresee that mainstream financial assets such as commodities, real estate, and even carbon credits in the future will require a brand new on-chain trading paradigm to support them, which is where the trillion-dollar scale truly lies.
2. Many people see compliance as the biggest roadblock for RWA, but you seem to think there are deeper bottlenecks?
Jack: Compliance is an entry threshold, but it is not the only determining factor for success or failure. Even if all compliance barriers are resolved, the RWA track still faces a more core bottleneck: the fundamental conflict between the inefficiency and non-transparency of traditional financial assets and the inherent efficiency and transparency of the blockchain world.
For example, the clearing and settlement of a US stock requires T+1, while on-chain trading is atomic and operates 24/7. How do we bridge this mismatch in time and efficiency? These are deep structural contradictions that require a new infrastructure design.
Therefore, I have always emphasized that the success of RWA does not lie in "going on-chain" itself, but in whether we can leverage the characteristics of blockchain to create "killer applications" for these old assets that cannot be realized within the traditional financial system. This is the source of all value.
3. This viewpoint is quite interesting. Does it also explain why we have yet to see a "killer" application like Aave or Uniswap in this wave of RWA?
Jack: Yes, the fundamental reason lies in the huge gap between "putting assets on-chain" and "making assets tradable." The success of Aave and Uniswap is because they have tailored a new efficient "trading language" and "lending language" for crypto-native assets (which are inherently 24/7 and have no historical baggage).
But now we are trying to use this language designed for crypto-native assets to describe a stock that has trading hours, complex clearing processes, and a price anchored off-chain. The result is naturally "incompatible."
In other words, the current mainstream DeFi infrastructure, especially AMM, is designed for price discovery mechanisms that are vague and highly volatile for crypto-native assets. However, RWA, such as Tesla's stock, has an absolutely authoritative public market price on Nasdaq. You cannot use AMM to "discover" its price; you can only "track" it.
Using the wrong tools to solve problems will naturally fail to generate real network effects. Therefore, the real proposition is not simply to throw RWA assets into the existing DeFi Lego, but to design a brand new, native trading logic and infrastructure for RWA assets.
II. How to Welcome RWA's "Nasdaq Moment"
1. Recently, Nasdaq's personal involvement in issuing tokenized stocks may cause what kind of "disruptive impact" on the existing RWA landscape?
Jack: I believe this will not be a shock but more like a singular event that thoroughly clarifies the current chaotic state of the RWA market.
First, all previous debates about whether RWA issuers are "compliant or not" will naturally come to an end when Nasdaq issues the first native on-chain stock, as it is the top liquidity pool and source of trust in the global financial system, and the standards it defines are the ultimate standards.
More critically, it may completely reconstruct the value chain under the RWA narrative. Protocols focused on issuance and underwriting, like Ondo Finance, may find their space severely squeezed—because once the "source" of assets can be directly put on-chain, the value of any intermediary will be diminished. Not to mention, compared to the myriad of tokenized RWA assets like xxTSLA on the market, everyone will certainly prefer to choose the most liquid and credible native assets issued by Nasdaq.
This is precisely a historic opportunity for downstream protocols. Decentralized protocols and compliant exchanges, such as OSL/HashKey or on-chain protocols like Fufuture, which are close to downstream traffic entrances and build trading capabilities around on-chain composability, may become the ones truly reaping the benefits.
We can understand this change as RWA's "container moment." Looking back at global trade history, before the standard container appeared, global freight consisted of countless packages of varying sizes and inefficiencies (just like the various ALT assets currently flooding the chain). It was the establishment of the global unified standard of containers that gave rise to modern global supply chains and automated ports. Once Nasdaq tokenizes US stocks, it provides the standard for "value containers," and the market will quickly eliminate those ugly, non-standard "garbage packages," releasing huge, standardized new allocation demands and trading opportunities.
Our protocol is positioned to provide automated ports and a global trading network for these "value containers," serving as a core hub in the new order.
2. Many people mention the incompatibility of existing DeFi infrastructure with RWA assets. Can you delve deeper into the underlying logic, for example, what are the core flaws of Uniswap's AMM model?
Jack: First, it is important to clarify that the AMM mechanism was a revolutionary innovation in the early days of DeFi. It elegantly solved the cold-start liquidity problem for countless long-tail assets in a permissionless manner, and its historical significance is undeniable. However, its design philosophy determines that it is simply not suitable for RWA as an asset class; this is a fundamental mismatch between tool and task.
For RWA, the core flaw of AMM lies in its "price discovery mechanism." It passively "calculates" prices within a closed liquidity pool based on the relative quantities of two assets, which is feasible for crypto-native assets that lack off-chain real anchors—in many scenarios, the price in the pool is a true reflection of the market price.
But for RWA, such as tokenized Tesla stock, at least in the short to medium term, it has an absolutely authoritative and continuously updated public market price on Nasdaq. This price is the "cause," while the price of on-chain trading must be the "effect." The AMM mechanism not only cannot actively follow this price but will also deviate due to any on-chain trading, providing arbitrageurs with a continuous, almost risk-free attack space and forcing liquidity providers (LPs) to bear nearly 100% of impermanent loss.
Therefore, I believe that any attempts to simply modify the system, such as adjusting curves or increasing fee tiers, are merely superficial fixes. RWA needs a completely new trading structure: it must efficiently and cost-effectively obtain prices from external authoritative sources (Oracles) and use this price as an "anchor," then efficiently match liquidity and complete transactions around this anchor point through a combination that is closer to an order book and RFQ (request for quote) model.
In short, its core should no longer be "discovering" prices but "responding" to prices.
3. Since the value of issuers will be diminished, then beyond the concept of asset on-chain itself, where is the most likely area for the first "killer application" of RWA to emerge?
Jack: The first killer application will definitely be using RWA as native collateral for global, 24/7 derivative trading, which addresses the core pain points of asset fragmentation and limited trading hours in traditional finance.
Imagine an Asian investor who, on a weekend evening, can use his tokenized Apple stock as collateral to open a long position on a Bitcoin perpetual contract. This scenario is completely unachievable in traditional finance; it requires complex clearing across time zones, markets, and asset types. But on-chain, all of this can be accomplished instantaneously through smart contracts. This is true value creation.
In fact, this is also the core idea of Fufuture's current product—supporting users to use various financial assets as unified collateral to trade BTC, ETH, and even any mainstream financial asset globally in the future. We also plan to launch a spot trading market specifically designed for RWA, completely bridging the gap from spot holding to derivative trading.
III. Defining a New Syntax for RWA: The Dawn of Downstream Trading Applications
1. After discussing so many challenges, can you talk about the key technical and market challenges of using stock-like RWA assets on-chain, combining Fufuture's thoughts and practical implementations?
Jack: The biggest challenge lies in risk control and clearing mechanisms. For example, stock assets have market closure times in traditional markets, while the risk of crypto derivatives is continuous 24/7. We must design a brand new, hybrid risk control engine that can handle price "gaps" during non-trading hours while ensuring timely and efficient on-chain clearing.
In addition, the challenge in the market lies in guiding users to understand and accept this new paradigm. In fact, Fufuture's product design philosophy is "asset agnosticism," meaning that the underlying risk control and clearing logic of our infrastructure is not limited to US stocks; it can seamlessly expand to a broader range of RWA asset classes such as tokenized gold, oil, government bonds, and even carbon credits, paving the way for this grander future.
2. How will the resources and experiences of the traditional world be integrated into the on-chain business logic for the upcoming RWA "Nasdaq moment"? Is it merely channel cooperation, or is there a deeper business synergy?
Jack: It is far more than just channel cooperation; it is a deeper level of business synergy. For example, we are currently exploring collaborations with some Web2 tech giants, not only to acquire traffic but also to jointly explore efficient identity verification (KYC) and fund deposit and withdrawal solutions within a compliance framework.
When a massive number of traditional users and funds want to enter this new world, whoever can provide the safest and smoothest bridge will hold the initiative.
3. Looking ahead to the end of 2025, please boldly predict what the RWA market will look like in 18 months. Which concepts that we are currently discussing will be disproven, and what new breakthroughs that we have not yet focused on will emerge?
Jack: I believe there will be several significant changes by then:
First, the frenzy of "everything can be issued as RWA" will be disproven. Asset issuance will become highly concentrated among a few giants with top credit, making it difficult for small and beautiful issuance protocols to survive.
Second, the biggest breakthrough will occur in "cross-asset composability." We will see the birth of the first true "on-chain universal trading account," where users can use tokenized real estate equity as collateral to trade commodity futures, with all risks and positions net settled within the same protocol. This is the ultimate charm of DeFi.
Third, the narrative center of RWA will completely shift from the "asset side" to the "application side." The market's focus will no longer be on who has moved what onto the chain, but on who can create the most stunning financial plays with these assets.
Conclusion
An unspoken consensus is that the entire industry is actually waiting, waiting for the "creators" of the global financial system, such as Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange, to make that decisive move.
Because their entry will completely end the discussion about "what RWA is" and open a new chapter on "what can be done," forcing us to confront a reality: RWA is not just a technological stack revolution; it is a profound reconstruction of financial structure and behavioral logic.
It is under this expectation that the "infrastructure narrative" of RWA is irreversibly replacing the "mapping narrative."
And that phrase we are already familiar with, "going on-chain is just the first step; trading is the language," has finally transformed from a slogan into a serious question that needs to be answered.
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