Author: Deng Tong, Golden Finance
On September 1, 2025, Yunfeng Financial Group announced a strategic cooperation agreement with Ant Group's Ant Technology, while also making a strategic investment in the Pharos public chain. On September 2, Yunfeng Financial released an announcement stating that the company's board of directors had approved the purchase of ETH in the open market as a reserve asset. As of the announcement date, the group had cumulatively purchased 10,000 ETH in the open market, with a total investment cost (including fees and expenses) of $44 million.
Yunfeng Financial's intensive announcements over these two days have attracted attention from industry insiders. What is the background of Yunfeng Financial? What achievements has Ant Technology made in the past two years? Is the Pharos public chain worth paying attention to? What are the far-reaching implications of the cooperation between these two giants?
1. Yunfeng Financial's Crypto Layout
In 2010, Jack Ma and Yu Feng, the founder of Puxin Media, established Yunfeng Fund. The following year, it was renamed Yunfeng Financial. The name "Yunfeng" is derived from the names of the two founders. Jack Ma indirectly holds approximately 11.15% of Yunfeng Financial through Yunfeng Fund.
According to Yunfeng Financial's official website, the company is listed on the Hong Kong main board and has business segments in securities brokerage, asset management, insurance, and financial technology. Subsidiaries of Yunfeng Financial Group hold financial service licenses No. 1, 4, and 9 granted by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Additionally, the group holds a long-term insurance business license from the Hong Kong Insurance Authority and is an approved trustee for the Mandatory Provident Fund through its subsidiary, Wan Tong Insurance International Limited.
The purchase of ETH by Yunfeng Financial and its designation as a reserve asset is actually a continuation of the financial strategy disclosed in July, when the board expressed strong interest in Web3 technology, RWA tokenization, digital currencies, ESG net-zero assets, and artificial intelligence. The board reiterated that purchasing ETH would help the company achieve its long-term goal of integrating finance and technology. "ETH is accounted for as an investment in the group's financial statements." Yunfeng Financial also pointed out that holding ETH would help diversify assets and reduce reliance on traditional fiat currencies. In the future, it plans to explore potential applications of Ethereum in insurance and new decentralized finance business scenarios.
Driven by expectations of interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve and interest from institutional investors, the price of Ethereum has surged significantly in recent weeks. Undoubtedly, in the current wave of crypto treasury, Yunfeng Financial has also recognized the future development potential of Ethereum. Incorporating ETH into its financial framework can enhance financial autonomy and innovation capabilities, improve customer experience, and lock in its future value by increasing ETH holdings, allowing it to share in the promising future of the crypto market. Moving forward, Yunfeng Financial will continue to monitor market trends and regulatory frameworks for digital assets to assess whether to increase its ETH reserves.
Additionally, Yunfeng Financial's announcement of cooperation with Ant Technology and investment in public chains was not surprising. As early as July 14 of this year, Yunfeng Financial had already announced its intention to enter the Web3 field. The announcement indicated that based on its existing insurance and financial technology businesses, it would strategically layout in Web3.0, real-world assets (RWA), digital currencies, ESG zero-carbon assets, and artificial intelligence (AI), as well as explore innovative applications connecting these frontier fields with the group's insurance company. The group plans to further increase its investment in digital currencies (such as stablecoins), real-world assets (RWA), and AI related to digital technology, based on the financial and technological ecosystem platform it has built in collaboration with strategic partners in cloud services and virtual banking, while actively exploring the ESG zero-carbon asset field in the Greater Bay Area. The group will continue to actively participate in and lead technological transformation, enhancing long-term shareholder value and returns.
Yunfeng Financial's entry into the Web3 field is a well-considered strategic decision. In the current rapidly developing financial technology landscape, fields such as Web3 and digital currencies exhibit tremendous growth potential, and Yunfeng Financial aims to position itself early to seize the high ground in the future development of financial technology.
2. Achievements of Ant Technology in the Past Two Years
Ant Technology is an independent technology subsidiary of Ant Group, which began independent operations in 2024. Its core business is to provide digital upgrade solutions for industries through technologies such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud computing.
In the past two years, Ant Technology has achieved remarkable results in the blockchain field.
March 2024: Ant Technology began independent operations and completed a capital increase of 2 billion yuan.
May 2024: The Hong Kong Monetary Authority launched the Ensemble sandbox, and Ant Technology became one of the initial members. This project supports the HKMA's tokenization and central bank digital currency (CBDC) projects and explores tokenization use cases.
August 2024: Under the guidance of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority, Ant Technology supported the mainland new energy listed company Langxin in successfully completing 100 million yuan of RWA cross-border financing, with the underlying asset being charging piles. This is the first new energy RWA project in the country and was selected as a representative case in the HKMA's Ensemble sandbox.
March 2025: The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and Ant Technology jointly initiated the "Trusted Blockchain Real-World Asset Trusted On-Chain Technology Specification," officially starting the writing process, indicating that the standardization process for real-world assets (RWA) has entered a new stage.
April 2025: Ant Technology open-sourced the virtual machine DTVM, which is seamlessly compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem.
June 2025: Ant Technology initiated the application for a Hong Kong stablecoin license.
July 2025: Ant Technology's Layer 2 blockchain Jovay testnet officially launched, designed as a blockchain platform specifically for institutional-level application scenarios, aimed at serving various application scenarios, including RWA.
August 2025: Ant Technology collaborated with Guotai Junan International to complete the first batch of structured product tokens "Ant Chain - Ethereum" cross-chain issuance.
September 2025: Ant Technology and Yunfeng Financial reached a strategic cooperation agreement, and both parties will leverage the Pharos public chain platform to jointly and compliantly expand into the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) and other frontier fields such as Web3.
As mentioned above, Yunfeng Financial has extensive experience in securities, asset management, insurance, and financial technology, while Ant Technology has been deeply engaged in blockchain technology and digital assets in the past two years. The cooperation between the two is a strong alliance and a classic case of the integration of traditional finance and emerging finance, complementing each other's strengths.
3. Is the Pharos Public Chain Worth Attention?
The Pharos public chain was established in July 2024 by core members of the former Ant Group blockchain business. The founder and CEO, Alex Zhang, previously served as the CTO of Ant's blockchain business group and the CEO of Ant Chain's Web3 brand ZAN; the CTO, Wish Longer, was the CSO of Ant Chain.
Pharos is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 network aimed at bridging Web2 and Web3 assets and liquidity. Pharos focuses on institutional-level RWA application scenarios and enterprise-level decentralized finance needs, committed to solving the pain points of traditional institutions entering Web3 by building leading modular infrastructure, creating an efficient low-cost payment network, and promoting the large-scale deployment of decentralized applications and the expansion of tokenized asset scenarios. It aims to bridge over $50 trillion of RWA, TradFi, and cross-chain capital into a modular on-chain economy of internet scale, providing support for real-time, real-world applications through a deeply parallel layer architecture.
In May of this year, Pharos announced the official launch of its public testnet (Testnet).
In June, the RWA protocol Spout announced its launch on the Pharos testnet.
In August, Pharos partnered with the decentralized Web3 wallet Bitverse to plan the construction of a perpetual contract decentralized trading platform (PerpDEX) on the Pharos network.
In September, Yunfeng Financial announced that it would collaborate with Ant Technology to jointly layout RWA tokenization and the Web3 field through the high-performance Pharos public chain platform.
Pharos has accurately captured the hottest track in the current industry. As the popularity of RWA continues to rise, both traditional financial institutions and crypto financial institutions have urgent needs for on-chain asset platforms. With its EVM compatibility, the Pharos public chain can seamlessly connect with mature development tools and applications in the Ethereum ecosystem, reducing migration costs for developers; at the same time, focusing on institutional-level needs, as the investment cooperation between Ant Technology and Yunfeng Financial unfolds, its technological iteration and ecological expansion prospects may continue to advance, becoming the infrastructure connecting crypto finance and traditional finance, and expanding the influence of RWA in traditional finance.
4. The Significance of the Cooperation Between the Two Giants
The cooperation between Yunfeng Financial and Ant Technology is the result of the collision between traditional finance and digital finance, which not only benefits their respective business developments but also has significant implications for the entire Web3 industry and the RWA track.
For Yunfeng Financial, this cooperation can directly help it expand its business in the Web3 and crypto fields. Yunfeng Financial pointed out in the announcement: "The cooperation with Ant Technology will not only strengthen our group's layout in the digital finance field but also assist Ant Technology in deepening the application of blockchain technology. The synergy between the two will create new growth opportunities for each other." By leveraging Ant Technology's blockchain technology and ecological resources, Yunfeng Financial can directly accelerate its development in blockchain technology and crypto finance. Through the Pharos public chain, Yunfeng Financial can quickly achieve the integration of traditional finance and on-chain finance, providing users with a richer array of financial products and potentially attracting more institutional investors looking to enter the RWA field.
For Ant Technology, Yunfeng Financial has been deeply engaged in the traditional finance sector for many years, and its existing financial licenses No. 1, 4, and 9 can provide Ant Technology with more advantages in compliance operations. Additionally, Yunfeng Financial's customer channels and capital reserves can help alleviate Ant Technology's concerns about the implementation of investments in the Pharos public chain. Through the Pharos public chain, Ant Technology can further expand its influence in the blockchain technology field, deeply engage in L1, and even integrate its technical standards and ecological construction into it.
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