The concept of "Internet Capital Markets" preached by Lily Liu, the chair of the Solana Foundation, has gained popularity on Solana after the success of Believe. Another "ICM" concept, the RWA project Collaterize, saw its token COLLAT's market cap recently surpass $90 million, now correcting to $54 million. Since its launch in January, it has been consolidating around a market cap of $9 million, finally exploding on May 18 when Solana co-founder Toly shared Collaterize's App Demo video, causing the token to surge and bringing renewed attention to the RWA project by these two former Microsoft employees.

What is ICM?

A few years ago, Solana proposed the vision of building an "on-chain Nasdaq," but as Nasdaq itself explored going on-chain, the narrative focus gradually shifted to the more crypto-native "Internet Capital Markets (ICM)." ICM serves as an alternative to traditional capital markets (TCM), allowing entrepreneurs to bypass venture capital and IPOs to raise funds directly from the network community through tokenization. Solana projects like Believe App have made it easy to complete project issuance and investment on X.

Today, "ICM" has replaced "on-chain Nasdaq" as the core narrative of Solana. Lily Liu, chair of the Solana Foundation, has repeatedly emphasized that the goal of ICM is to create a global financial infrastructure that allows 5.5 billion internet users to participate in capital markets without barriers. The Solana team is also working hard to build it as a key infrastructure for on-chain ICM.

By the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of Solana ecosystem Superteam, mentioned the concepts of "Internet Capital Markets" and "F.A.T. Protocol Engineering" in the Solana 2025 marketing memo. He believes that in 2024, companies will be able to go public "on the internet" and reach over a billion investors holding private keys—who will vote for their desired future with the funds they hold, not limited to stocks but encompassing all asset classes, cultures, and ideas worth owning.

Data shows that the demand for private equity firms has skyrocketed from fewer than 8,000 in 2005 to 30,000 in 2024, making "going public on the internet" seem imminent.

Despite numerous criticisms, such as lack of regulation, low project thresholds, and the ease of issuing misleading tokens, ICM still has strong potential for mass adoption, especially in promoting Web3 to Web2 users through a simple user experience, fiat payment gateways, and viral narratives. For long-term development, platforms like Believe need to move beyond short-term speculation, promote founder accountability mechanisms, optimize token economic models, build DAO governance, and achieve real utility, thus transforming ICM from a meme craze into a new paradigm of capital formation. After a series of product updates like Pumpfun, Timefun, and Believe, the market currently needs a more open, permissionless financing and trading ecosystem that covers a variety of assets from meme coins to NFTs to startup projects, and Collaterize extends the business of ICM into RWA within this concept.

RWA also has its own Bonding Curve—Collaterize

The founders of Collaterize are two Frenchmen, Paul Antoine Arrighi and Pierre Hoffman, both of whom previously worked at Microsoft. Paul launched his own startup project, OneClight, in 2015, which allowed users to navigate web pages without the need to "input a password." However, after a year with little progress, he joined Microsoft in 2017 for a four-year career.

Pierre joined Microsoft in the same year, managing Microsoft partners and ensuring the accurate deployment of software asset management services in both public and private sectors. After just one year, he left Microsoft and joined the IOTA Foundation to handle business development.

Paul Antoine Arrighi showcasing Collaterize's App at AWS Demo Day

Pierre Hoffman stated, "RWA can achieve functionalities that were previously impossible, such as liquidity, programmability, or broader access, making it meaningful. We are starting to see early cases in this area, especially with publicly traded RWAs like U.S. Treasury bonds or stocks, but there are greater opportunities in private assets, as these assets currently cannot enter more liquid markets."

Development of RWA in the U.S., Hong Kong, and France, where Collaterize is based

Hoffman further said, "If we can put these assets on-chain within the right framework and maintain transparency, we can let the market decide which assets have enough value to be traded, collateralized, and utilized. It feels a bit early now, but the fundamentals are gradually emerging." This aligns with the concept of "everything on-chain" mentioned by David Sacks, the White House crypto affairs lead, and the types of assets supported in their documentation also reflect Collaterize's ambitions.

Collaterize supports the tokenization of any RWA, from baseball cards to real estate, from company equity to tokens. Notably, the protocol employs a dynamic bonding curve; once the target is reached, the asset can be traded on Meteora, which has currently reviewed the bonding curve proposal. The Solana-based protocol charges a 1% fee for transactions and a 5% fee when migrating to Meteora. Additionally, 15% of the fees will go into the Meteora liquidity pool.

Of course, the process of creating tokens is not as easy as the Bonding Curve model of Believe or Pumpfun; when a token goes live, it undergoes a relatively strict review by Collaterize. First, applicants need to hold 100,000 $COLLAT and then submit an application. Collaterize will assess whether the company has multiple dimensions of sustainability, including a clear business model and growth plan, the ability to generate stable income and expand into new markets, and a good profit record with predictable cash flow. Additionally, specific high-value collectibles and luxury goods can be considered as assets, provided they have authoritative appraisals, clear provenance, and insured storage.

According to public information, the highest value product currently collaborating with Collaterize is a soon-to-be-issued property "Token" located in France. This collaboration is the first product launched after Collaterize partnered with ARP (Asset Realty Partners), which announced its collaboration with Collaterize at the MIPIM "International Real Estate Exhibition" in March 2025.

Founded in 2006, this comprehensive real estate service company is quite reputable, headquartered in Paris, France, and founded by Pascal Roth. After nearly 20 years working at a German mortgage bank, he established ARP to provide professional real estate services, and the group currently manages billions of euros in assets.

This is not their first attempt at "fragmenting real estate assets"; in 2020, they entered the real estate crowdfunding market through their subsidiary Beefordeal, which allows investors to participate in real estate projects with a minimum investment of 1,000 euros, offering about 10% potential returns. As of 2023, the platform has raised over 11 million euros.

However, even with such a luxurious lineup of real-world collaborations, Collaterize still faces a paradox. At the current stage, crypto-native users instinctively reject the review mechanism, leading them to shun compliant asset protocols, while traditional asset users do not accept the crypto interfaces and asset forms, resulting in a market paradox of "compliance and user demand misalignment."

According to on-chain information from Collaterize, four months after the project's establishment, the blockchain's activity remains very low, with only 70,000 total transactions to date and just 381 total addresses. When comparing these numbers, it even falls short of the number of holders of a meme coin with a market cap in the hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, RWA still has a long development period ahead; the $75 trillion market potential is immense, but there are significant uncertainties regarding regulations, infrastructure, and reviews.

However, new eras always require new explorers, and Collaterize, as one of them, is also searching for "possible" treasures in this vast ocean.

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