With the application of stablecoins in RWA, the entire lifecycle of assets can run on-chain in the form of smart contracts.

Written by: Liu Honglin

RWA has become a doll for everyone to dress up

The term RWA has recently been everywhere. 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 say a few words about RWA is somewhat out of touch with the industry's trends.

However, the more the hype rises, the more we need to calm down and clarify: what problems can RWA actually solve, and what foundational conditions are needed for it to be implemented?

Many people say that RWA is about "reconstructing real-world assets on-chain," and lawyer Honglin does not oppose this statement. But the premise of "reconstruction" is to truly break the original information barriers and settlement processes.

In many RWA projects I have encountered, the so-called "asset tokenization" is actually just rewriting data that originally existed in Excel, ERP, or custodial institution systems onto the chain. But the entire process remains the same: asset generation, value confirmation, income calculation, investment distribution—these are still handled step by step by the project's offline operations team, with the chain merely serving as an "enhanced report."

In this case, saying it "uses blockchain" is indeed correct; but to claim it "changes the logic of financial operations" is somewhat misleading.

What you call "asset mapping" is actually no different from drawing a balance sheet in Excel. You cannot simply replace the asset-related information from a paper contract with a JSON file written into the blockchain and then claim to have achieved "real-world asset tokenization."

You can use the chain to record assets, but you cannot use the chain to drive finance. Without breaking through this point, RWA will forever remain at version 0.1.

Two Standards for Judging the Authenticity of RWA

Many people think the core of RWA lies in "rights confirmation"—assets have sources, and there is registration on the chain. However, in reality, trustworthy data is just a basic prerequisite; what truly determines whether RWA has financial value is whether it can achieve trustworthy settlement, meaning whether the fund flow mechanism on the chain can operate.

Thus, the value of RWA is divided into two layers: first, trustworthy data; second, trustworthy settlement.

The first layer: trustworthy data refers to whether the chain can record the state changes of real-world assets. This may seem very "technical," but it is essentially a transformation of business processes. External interfaces such as sensors, custodial institutions, and oracles must be able to push information to the chain in real-time, automatically, and objectively when asset changes occur. This is the first threshold for RWA. A project that can truly be called RWA must achieve "as soon as an event occurs, the chain knows," rather than having the operations department upload "reports" at the end of each month.

In many RWA cases packaged in the news that we are aware of, many projects still rely on manual operations: a folder contains various asset information, and at the end of the month, someone clicks a mouse to generate a summary on the chain. This kind of "post-upload" is essentially just "on-chain bookkeeping," far from the concept of "native trustworthiness" of blockchain.

The second layer: trustworthy settlement is where the true value of RWA lies. In other words, whether the actions of distributing income, returning principal, handling defaults, and transferring fees can be executed automatically, be tamper-proof, and be transparent. To achieve this, there must be a currency unit on the chain, which means the participation of stablecoins.

Many projects overlook this point: they have data, they have contract logic, but when it comes to the settlement stage, they still rely on finance staff to manually transfer funds or "simulate" fund flows through third-party platforms. Under this design, the on-chain token is merely a symbol that "looks like an asset," but is not an actual executable financial right.

Therefore, we say that there are two fundamental criteria for assessing whether a project is a legitimate RWA:

First, can your data flow automatically go on-chain without relying on human effort?

You say you are making new energy charging piles; is the power, on/off status, and fault log written directly to the chain from the sensors? You say you are doing accounts receivable financing; can the buyer's ERP system push the hash to the chain as soon as the invoice is generated? You say you are selling real estate rental income rights; does the rental flow have a custodial bank API that returns data in seconds?

If these actions still rely on the operations team to collect and manually input data, then "on-chain" is a false proposition. You are not letting the system make judgments; instead, you are relying on "people making decisions," and in the end, it is still the same centralized process, just with the "bookkeeping" tool replaced by blockchain. You have changed to a fancier ledger, but it is still human effort backing it up, with no reduction in credit risk or tampering risk.

Second, can your fund flow settle on-chain?

You say you have issued new energy charging pile income tokens; do those charging fees get split into N portions of stablecoins directly to investors' addresses as soon as they enter the custodial account? You say you are doing accounts receivable financing; when a payment from the buyer arrives, can the contract immediately repay the principal, accrue interest, and deduct service fees according to the payment terms? You say you are selling real estate rental income rights; when the tenant clicks "confirm payment," does the chain simultaneously transfer the rental stablecoins to the token holders and automatically deposit the penalty and maintenance fees into the risk pool?

If these actions still require finance staff to verify each transaction and manually transfer funds, then "on-chain settlement" is just a pipe dream. Funds circle around in the background and then return to manual online banking, making the token just a voucher—something you can see but cannot redeem.

True RWA should allow money to 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 describe the income rights, investors will ultimately still have to queue for disbursement, and financial efficiency will not see a qualitative improvement.

This is not the future we want.

RWA without stablecoins is just playing tricks

What we want is a truly operational structure: native on-chain, able to run automatically, and capable of real-time disbursement. Once data is generated, it should automatically write to the chain and be tamper-proof; once funds are triggered, they should reach their destination without human intervention.

RWA is not just a prettier table; it is a new operational logic: data must be trustworthy from the source, and funds must settle on-chain.

To achieve these two points, one requires blockchain technology as the information foundation, and the other requires stablecoins as the value carrier.

Many people talk about stablecoins, often saying they can enhance cross-border payment efficiency, reduce costs, and replace banks. However, what truly determines their value in RWA is not these macro advantages, but their ability to make money truly "run" in the world of blockchain. It is not about waiting for monthly or maturity settlements, but about being programmable, callable, and able to execute payments directly based on on-chain data.

The greatest significance of stablecoins is that they allow money to be programmed for the first time, enabling rule execution.

You can specify when to pay, to whom, how much to pay, and even what on-chain events must occur before payment is made. It is not funds that wait for someone to click a button; it can flow automatically, just like data.

With the application of stablecoins in RWA, the entire lifecycle of assets—from generation, income distribution, to exit and recovery—can run on-chain in the form of smart contracts. Otherwise, no matter how many institutions participate or how many audits are endorsed, it is just another form of a centralized platform.

That is why we say: RWA without stablecoin applications is just playing tricks.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。