Author: Lawyer Liu Honglin
RWA has become a little girl who can be dressed up by anyone
The term RWA has been everywhere recently. From international financial forums to industry startup groups, everyone is talking about "asset on-chain" and "real world mapping", as if anyone who doesn't mention RWA is a bit out of touch with the industry trend.
But the more heated the moment is, the more we need to calm down and figure out: What problems can RWA solve and what basic conditions are needed for its implementation?
Many people say that RWA is to “reshape” real-world assets on the chain, and Honglin Lawyer does not object to this statement. However, the premise of “reshaping” is to truly break the original information barriers and settlement processes.
In many RWA projects I have come into contact with, the so-called "asset tokenization" is actually to transfer the data originally stored in Excel, ERP or the depository system to the chain. But the whole process is still the same: asset generation, value confirmation, income calculation, investment allocation - these are still handled step by step by the project's offline operation team, and the chain is just an "enhanced report".
In this case, if you say it "uses blockchain", it is indeed correct; but to say it "changes the logic of financial operations" is a bit nonsense.
What you call “asset mapping” is actually no different from drawing a balance sheet in Excel. You can’t just replace the asset-related information from a paper contract with a JSON file written into the blockchain and then claim that you have achieved “real-world asset tokenization”.
You can use the chain to record assets, but you cannot use the chain to drive finance. If this point is not broken through, RWA will always stay at version 0.1.
Two criteria for determining the authenticity of RWA
Many people think that the core of RWA is "rights confirmation" - assets have a source and are registered on the chain. But in fact, credible data is only a basic premise. What really determines whether RWA has financial value is whether it can complete credible settlement , that is, whether the capital flow mechanism on the chain can run.
Therefore, the value of RWA is divided into two progressive layers: one is trusted data, and the other is trusted settlement.
The first layer: trusted data refers to whether the chain can record the status changes of real-world assets. This may seem "technical", but it is essentially a transformation of business processes. External interfaces such as sensors, custodians, and oracles must be able to push information to the chain in real time, automatically, and objectively when assets change. This is the first threshold of RWA. A project that can truly be called RWA must achieve "once an event occurs, the chain will know" , rather than the operations department uploading a unified "report" at the end of each month.
In many RWA cases packaged in the news that we know of, many projects still rely on manual operations: various asset information is placed in a folder, and at the end of the month someone clicks the mouse to generate an on-chain summary. This kind of "post-upload" is essentially just "on-chain accounting", which is far from the concept of "native trust" of blockchain.
The second layer: Trusted liquidation is the real value of RWA. In other words, whether the distribution of income, return of principal, handling of defaults, and carry-over of expenses, these value transfer actions can be automatically executed, cannot be tampered with, and are open and transparent. To achieve this, there must be currency units on the chain, that is, the participation of stablecoins.
Many projects overlook this point: the data and contract logic are in place, but the settlement process still relies on the financial lady to manually transfer the funds, or "simulate" the flow of funds through a third-party platform. Under this design, the on-chain token is just a symbol that "looks like an asset" but is not an actual executable financial right.
So we say that there are two most basic criteria for measuring whether a project is a serious RWA:
First, can your data flow be automatically uploaded to the chain without human intervention?
You say you make new energy charging piles. Are the pile power, power on/off, and fault logs written directly into the chain from the sensor? You say you do accounts receivable financing. Can the buyer's ERP system push the hash to the chain as soon as the invoice is landed? You say you sell real estate rental income rights. Does the rental flow have a custodian bank API that can send back the rental flow in seconds?
If these actions still rely on the unified collection and manual input of the operations team, then "uploading data to the chain" is a false proposition. You are not letting the system make judgments, but relying on "people to make judgments on the spot". In the end, it is still the same centralized process, but the tool for "writing the ledger" has been replaced by blockchain. It has changed to a more fancy ledger, but it is still backed by humans, and the reputation risk and tampering risk have not been reduced at all.
Second, can your capital flow be settled on the chain?
You said you issued a token for the revenue of new energy charging piles. Once the charging fees entered the escrow account, were they split into N stablecoins by the smart contract and sent directly to the investor's address? You said you were doing accounts receivable financing. Once the buyer received a payment, could the contract immediately repay the principal, accrue interest, and deduct service fees according to the account period? You said you sold the right to real estate rental income. The moment the tenant clicked "Confirm Payment", did the chain simultaneously transfer the rental stablecoin to the token holder, and automatically deposit the penalty and maintenance fee into the risk pool?
If these actions still require the financial lady to check and transfer money manually, then "on-chain settlement" is just empty talk. The funds go around in the background and then return to the manual online banking, and the token becomes a trial voucher - you can only look at it but not redeem it.
A true RWA should make money flow like data: verifiable stablecoin reserves, public distribution formulas, and contract addresses that can be checked at any time. Otherwise, no matter how fancy you talk about the right to income, investors will eventually have to wait in line for loans, and financial efficiency will not be qualitatively improved.
This is not the future we want.
RWA without stablecoin is just a hooligan
What we want is a structure that can really run: native on the chain, can run automatically, and can be redeemed in real time. Once the data is generated, it is automatically written to the chain and cannot be tampered with; once the funds are triggered, they arrive automatically without human supervision.
RWA is not a better-looking table, but a new set of operating logic: the data source must be credible, and the funds must be settled on the chain.
To achieve these two points, blockchain technology is needed as the information base , and stablecoins are needed as the value carrier .
Many people talk about stablecoins, saying that they can improve cross-border payment efficiency, reduce costs, and replace banks. But what really determines its value in RWA is not these macro advantages, but that it can make money really "run" in the blockchain world. Instead of waiting for monthly or maturity settlement, it can be programmed, called, and payments can be executed directly based on the data on the chain.
The greatest significance of stablecoin is that it makes money programmable and rules enforceable for the first time.
You can specify when it will be paid, to whom, how much, or even after an on-chain event. It is not money that will move only after someone clicks a button, but like data, it can flow automatically.
Only with the RWA of stablecoin applications can the entire life cycle of assets, from generation, income distribution, to exit and recovery, all run on the chain in the form of smart contracts. Otherwise, no matter how many institutions participate and how many audit endorsements there are, it is just another form of centralized platform.
That’s why we say: RWA without stablecoin application is a rogue.
