Written by: Liu Honglin
RWA Has Become a Plaything
The term RWA has recently been ubiquitous. From international financial forums to industry entrepreneurial groups, everyone is discussing "asset tokenization" and "real-world mapping", as if not mentioning RWA means falling behind the industry trend.
But at such moments of high enthusiasm, it's even more necessary to calm down and clarify: What problems can RWA actually solve, and what basic conditions are needed for its implementation?
Many people say RWA is "re-creating" real-world assets, and the lawyer Liu Honglin does not object to this statement. However, the premise of "re-creation" is to truly break through the original information barriers and settlement processes.
In many RWA projects I've encountered, so-called "asset tokenization" is essentially just copying data that originally existed in Excel, ERP, or custodial system repositories onto the blockchain. However, the entire process remains the same: asset generation, value confirmation, revenue calculation, investment allocation—these are still gradually processed by the project's offline operational team, with the blockchain serving merely as an "enhanced report".
In this situation, saying it "uses blockchain" is indeed correct; but claiming it "changed the financial operating logic" is somewhat far-fetched.
Your so-called "asset mapping" is actually no different from drawing an asset-liability sheet in Excel. You can't just transfer asset-related information from a paper contract to a JSON file on the blockchain and then claim you've achieved "real-world asset tokenization".
You can record assets on the chain, but you cannot drive finance through the chain. Without breaking through this point, RWA will forever remain at version 0.1.
Two Standards for Identifying RWA Authenticity
Many believe RWA's core is "rights confirmation"—assets have a source, and are registered on-chain. However, in reality, credible data is just a basic premise. What truly determines an RWA's financial value is whether it can complete credible settlement, that is, whether the on-chain capital flow mechanism can run.
Therefore, RWA's value has two progressive layers: first, credible data; second, credible settlement.
The first layer: Credible data refers to whether the blockchain can record real-world asset state changes. This seems very "technical", but essentially involves business process transformation. External interfaces like sensors, custodial institutions, and oracles must be able to push information onto the chain in real-time, automatically, and objectively when assets change. This is RWA's first threshold. A truly RWA project must achieve "the moment an event occurs, the chain knows about it", rather than the operations department uploading a "report" uniformly at month-end.
In many RWA cases packaged by news, many projects still rely on manual operations: storing various asset information in a folder, and generating an on-chain summary by clicking a mouse at month-end. This "post-upload" approach is essentially just "on-chain bookkeeping" and is far from the blockchain's "native credibility" concept.
The second layer: Credible settlement is the true value of RWA. This means that revenue distribution, principal return, default handling, and fee transfer can be automatically executed, tamper-proof, and transparently public. To achieve this, the chain must have a monetary unit, which means the participation of stablecoins.
Many projects overlook this point: Data exists, contract logic exists, but settlement still requires the finance staff to manually transfer funds or "simulate" fund flows through a third-party platform. In such a design, on-chain tokens are just symbols that "look like assets" but are not actual executable financial rights.
Therefore, we say there are two basic standards for measuring whether a project is a genuine RWA:
First, can your data flow be automatically uploaded without human intervention?
If these actions still require operational teams to collect and manually enter data, then "on-chain" is a false proposition. You're not letting the system make judgments, but relying on "human decision-making", ultimately maintaining the same centralized process, just with blockchain as a more fancy ledger tool.
Second, can your fund flow be settled on-chain?
If these actions still require finance staff to cross-check and manually transfer funds, then "on-chain settlement" is just drawing a big pie. With funds circulating in the backend and then returning to manual online banking, the Token becomes just a experience voucher—visible but not redeemable.
True RWA should make money flow like water: verifiable stablecoin reserves, public distribution formulas, contract addresses that can be checked at any time. Otherwise, no matter how fancy you describe the revenue rights, investors will still have to queue for fund release, with no fundamental improvement in financial efficiency.
This is not the future we want.
RWA Without Stablecoins is a Scam
What we want is a truly operational structure: native on-chain, capable of automatic operation and real-time payment. Once data is generated, it's automatically written to the chain and cannot be tampered with; once funds are triggered, they are automatically transferred without human intervention.
RWA is not a better-looking form, but a new operating logic: data must be credible at the source, and funds must be settled on-chain.
To achieve these two points, one needs blockchain technology as the information base, and the other needs stablecoins as a value carrier.
Many people discuss stablecoins, liking to say they can improve cross-border payment efficiency, reduce costs, and replace banks. But what truly determines their value in RWA is not these macro advantages, but that they can make money truly "run" in the blockchain world. Not waiting for monthly or maturity settlements, but being programmable, callable, and capable of direct payment based on on-chain data.
The greatest significance of stablecoins is that money can be programmed for the first time and can execute rules.
You can specify when it pays, to whom, how much, and even make payment contingent on specific on-chain events. It's not funds that wait for someone to click a button, but can flow automatically like data.
Only with RWA applications of stablecoins can the entire lifecycle of assets—from generation, revenue distribution, to exit and recovery—be run entirely on-chain through smart contracts. Otherwise, no matter how many institutions participate or how many audits endorse it, it's just another form of centralized platform.
That's why we say: RWA without stablecoin applications is a scam.
