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Real-World Asset (RWA) Tokenization: Latest Practices, Suitable Assets, and Innovations
Beginner
2025-08-27 | 10m
As blockchain technology integrates deeper with the real economy, Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization has emerged as a transformative force, bridging illiquid traditional assets and digital financial markets. By converting physical or financial assets into on-chain tokens, RWA addresses longstanding pain points in traditional finance—such as high financing costs, rigid investment thresholds, and opaque trust mechanisms. In 2025, RWA has entered a phase of accelerated development: computing power assets have joined new energy assets as tokenization targets, and regulatory frameworks in regions like Hong Kong have begun to clarify, providing a more stable environment for industry growth. This article systematically explores RWA’s core concepts, latest practice cases, suitable asset classes, and its disruptive impact on traditional financing, while also analyzing regulatory challenges and market outlooks, to provide a comprehensive overview of this emerging field.
Latest Practice Cases of RWA
Following the tokenization of new energy real-world assets (e.g., charging piles and photovoltaic systems), computing power assets have recently marked their first entry into RWA. On August 8, 2025, Aoruid successfully completed the first-phase issuance of RWA backed by AI server assets, with a total scale of tens of millions of RMB. Technically supported by Ant Digital Technology, the project leverages AntChain to record AI server operation data on-chain—ensuring the security, transparency, and immutability of asset data, as well as the verifiability of investment returns.
The market responded positively to this issuance: On August 11, 2025 (the second trading day after the RWA launch), Aoruid’s stock price surged 10% in a single day, indirectly reflecting investor recognition of RWA’s value. Notably, this is not Ant Digital Technology’s first RWA success. In 2024, the company assisted Langxin Group and GCL New Energy in completing the tokenization of new energy charging piles and photovoltaic green assets, respectively. Aoruid’s AI server RWA thus marks Ant Digital Technology’s first expansion beyond the new energy sector into high-tech asset classes.
Other computing power RWA cases have also emerged globally. For example, in Q2 2025, a joint project by Nvidia and a Singapore-based blockchain firm completed the tokenization of a GPU cluster (with 2,000 high-performance GPUs as underlying assets), raising $50 million. The project used real-time cloud monitoring to track GPU usage and revenue, attracting institutional investors like hedge funds seeking exposure to the AI computing power market.
What Is RWA?
RWA, short for “Real-World Asset Tokenization,” refers to the process of converting tangible or intangible real-world assets into digital tokens via blockchain technology. These tokens inherit the tradability, divisibility, and global circulation capabilities of digital assets while retaining the intrinsic value of the underlying real-world assets.
In simple terms, RWA transforms traditionally fixed, illiquid, and high-cost physical assets into standardized digital tokens. This allows investors to purchase small fractions of the asset, trade tokens quickly on digital platforms, and participate in cross-border transactions—something impossible with traditional asset ownership models.
For stakeholders, RWA creates a win-win scenario: Original equity holders gain new financing channels, while investors access diversified asset-allocation products.
RWA’s Technical Support and Compliance Progress
Technical Infrastructure: “Two Chains and One Bridge”
To realize asset digitization and on-chain trading, RWA relies on specialized blockchain solutions. A typical example is Ant Digital Technology’s “Two Chains and One Bridge” product, launched in October 2024:
Asset Chain: Applied in mainland China, it digitizes and standardizes enterprises’ physical assets (e.g., AI servers, charging piles) into tradable financial products, converting non-standard assets into standard ones.
Trading Chain: Focuses on tokenizing funds (especially from traditional financial institutions) to enable efficient fund transfer and trading via blockchain.
AntChain Trusted Cross-Chain Bridge: Connects the Asset Chain and Trading Chain, ensuring secure cross-chain data and asset flow.
Compliance Breakthroughs
In 2025, RWA compliance has made significant progress, addressing earlier industry concerns about regulatory ambiguity:
In July 2025, CAICT and over 20 enterprises jointly released the Technical Specification for On-Chain Real-World Assets. This document systematically outlines technical requirements for the entire data on-chain process (including asset rights confirmation, data collection, information disclosure, and smart contract execution) and is widely regarded as the “quasi-5G standard” for the RWA industry.
On August 1, 2025, Hong Kong’s Stablecoin Ordinance officially took effect, establishing a licensing system for fiat-backed stablecoin issuers. Since stablecoins serve as the primary value carrier in RWA transactions, this ordinance provides a clear regulatory basis for token issuance and trading, reducing compliance risks.
On August 7, 2025, the Hong Kong Web3.0 Standardization Association and Hong Kong Polytechnic University released the Research Report on the Industrial Development of RWA - Industry Chapter 2025(hereafter referred to as the Report). The Report proposes three core thresholds for large-scale RWA implementation: value stability, clear legal rights confirmation, and off-chain data verifiability—providing a benchmark for enterprises selecting tokenizable assets.
Suitable Asset Classes for RWA Tokenization and Examples
The Report identifies five mainstream asset classes suitable for RWA, each supported by real-world cases that highlight their compatibility with tokenization:
Financial Assets
Financial assets (e.g., gold, bonds, accounts receivable, funds) are ideal for RWA due to their inherent digital attributes and mature compliance frameworks.
New Energy Assets
New energy assets (e.g., charging piles, photovoltaic systems) are well-suited for RWA due to their predictable cash flows (e.g., charging fees, electricity sales) and easy-to-monitor operation data.
Real Estate
Real estate (e.g., hotels, commercial properties) benefits from RWA’s ability to solve liquidity issues—traditional real estate has high value and is hard to split, but tokenization allows fractional ownership.
Intangible Assets
Intangible assets (e.g., carbon credits, intellectual property [IP], data) are increasingly tokenized, as RWA can quantify their value and enable trading.
Computing Power Assets
Computing power assets (e.g., AI servers, GPU clusters) are a new RWA category, driven by the AI boom. Their high digitization and real-time monitorable data make them naturally compatible with on-chain requirements.
How RWA Transforms Traditional Financing: Costs, Thresholds, and Trust
RWA addresses three key points of traditional financing, as illustrated by real cases:
Reducing Financing Costs and Speeding Up Processes
Traditional financing relies on offline intermediaries (e.g., securities firms, law firms) and takes 3–6 months for credit bond issuance, with intermediary fees accounting for 2–5% of the financing amount. RWA uses smart contracts to digitize processes, cutting intermediaries and time:
Lowering Investment Thresholds
Traditional financial products (e.g., bank wealth management, trust funds) have minimum investment requirements of 50,000–1,000,000 RMB, excluding retail investors. RWA splits high-value assets into small standardized tokens:
Enhancing Trust via Transparent Data
Traditional financing relies on quarterly/semi-annual financial reports, leading to information asymmetry. RWA uses blockchain’s distributed ledger to upload real-time asset data, improving transparency:
RWA’s Risks and Regulatory Considerations
Despite its advantages, RWA faces significant challenges:
Regulatory Fragmentation
Regulatory attitudes toward virtual assets vary globally. For example, Hong Kong has established a stablecoin licensing system, but mainland China’s regulations on virtual asset trading remain unclear. This fragmentation hinders cross-border RWA financing.
Structural Risks
RWA shares similarities with Asset-Backed Securitization (ABS), which caused the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis due to complex structures and poor regulation. Yang (2025) warned that multi-level RWA nesting (e.g., tokenizing RWA-backed tokens) could lead to information opacity and magnify market fluctuations.
Regulatory Recommendations
The Report suggests that regulators adopt a “penetrating + function-oriented” approach: Classify RWA based on underlying asset attributes and clarify rules for each category. This would align RWA with existing regulatory frameworks for securities, commodities, and credit.
Market Scale and Future Outlook
As of July 2025, the total market value of global on-chain RWA assets (excluding stablecoins) exceeded $25 billion. Boston Consulting Group (BCG, 2025) predicts that by 2030, this scale could surpass $10 trillion, driven by:
Growing demand for alternative assets from institutional investors.
Improved regulatory clarity in regions like Hong Kong and the EU.
Technological advancements
The key to RWA’s growth will be balancing innovation and risk—ensuring compliance while retaining the flexibility to transform traditional assets.
References:
CoinGecko. (2025).
CoinGecko 2025 real-world assets (RWA) report.
https://assets.coingecko.com/reports/2025/CoinGecko-2025-RWA-Report.pdf
Goldfinch. (n.d.).
Introduction and overview. Retrieved October 26, 2025, from
https://www.goldfinch.finance
Ondo Finance. (n.d.).
The institutional standard for settlement. Retrieved October 26, 2025, from
https://ondo.finance/ousg
Tokenized Asset Coalition. (2024).
State of tokenization 2024. RWA.xyz.
https://www.rwa.xyz/blog/tokenized-asset-coalition-state-of-tokenization-2024
Coinbase. (n.d.).
What are real-world assets (RWA)? In
Crypto glossary. Retrieved October 26, 2025, from
https://www.coinbase.com/learn/crypto-glossary/what-are-real-world-assets-rwa
CoinCatch Team
Disclaimer:
Digital asset prices carry high market risk and price volatility. You should carefully consider your investment experience, financial situation, investment objectives, and risk tolerance. CoinCatch is not responsible for any losses that may occur. This article should not be considered financial advice.
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