RWA: A Slow, Steady, and Serious Battle—The Four Mountains It Must Overcome
We spent an entire month researching over 30 RWA projects across 8 key regions, producing a comprehensive 25,000-word report. Just two days after its launch, we received numerous reader feedbacks. Some were skeptical, some were enlightening, and they helped us see more clearly the four major challenges RWA must overcome—these real-world challenges are the path thresholds it must cross.
🪨 The First Mountain: Slow Startup, Unable to Be Driven by Emotion
"RWA is not a field where you can get FOMO and expect to see a 10x increase tomorrow." The startup of RWA is slow. Initially, it may even seem "unremarkable": it doesn't rely on imagination but rather on gradually bringing real assets like government bonds, real estate, and carbon rights onto the blockchain, to gain liquidity and composability, and finally be embraced by the DeFi ecosystem. @nancy_c813 summarized it very well!
The challenge lies in: it’s not about the concept but about patience, the clarity of the structure, and regulatory recognition. This is bound to be a "long-term battle in a slow lane."
🪨 The Second Mountain: Incompatibility Between On-Chain Systems and Traditional Risk Controls
@fjun99 also raised doubts in the member community, "Is this path really feasible? Large institutions conduct pilot programs every day, but it seems the actual value is very small." Author @Hanghan40488295 believes, "The problem is not the technology itself but the unchanged traditional risk control system, which causes many RWA projects to be immediately flagged as 'red lines' upon going on-chain, even if they are compliant structures."
Our research found that many compliant RWA projects are automatically identified as "red line assets" by banking systems once they are on-chain. This means that the transparent structure on the blockchain is fundamentally incompatible with the traditional black-box risk control model, constituting one of the biggest technical obstacles in practical implementation.
🪨 The Third Mountain: Lack of "Resonance" Among Regulation, Market, and Technology
"This is not a path that can be solved by Web3 alone, nor can it be resolved by TradFi alone." @Hanghan40488295 also emphasized in the article that in reality, regulatory gaps, market cold start, and non-unified technical standards make coordination among the three parties extremely difficult.
This also explains why:
🔹 Hong Kong and Singapore use a "sandbox mechanism" to test RWA?
🔹 Why the Ministry of Finance frequently convenes universities to research stablecoins and blockchain reforms?
🔹 Why giants like Blackstone and BlackRock are still cautiously experimenting?
They know that the structural breakthrough of RWA is not a minor innovation but a multi-dimensional co-construction of institutions, trust, and computing power.
🪨 The Fourth Mountain: Misleading Industry Direction by Pseudo RWA Projects
@0xNing0x's comment revealed another aspect of the RWA industry, "Anyone who still equates RWA with packaging off-chain assets onto the blockchain and exiting is a culprit in the development of the crypto and RWA industry."
Some projects, under the guise of RWA, merely repackage off-chain assets for distribution, with the blockchain merely serving as an exit channel. This "pseudo RWA" model creates more shadow assets and gray areas, interfering with the true asset blockchain transformation.
True sustainable RWA is not just about bringing assets onto the blockchain but establishing a transparent underlying structure with clear credit rules.
The ultimate meaning of RWA is not just "bringing assets onto the blockchain" but to truly achieve asset-backed finance, yield anchoring, and credit building in the blockchain.
@Web3Caff_Res will continue to track and follow the long-term development of the RWA path and welcome discussions!
📎 Report Reading Link:
https://t.co/z1WCZwHqvY