At the beginning of September 2025, a series of significant announcements shook the financial and cryptocurrency circles. Yunfeng Financial Group reached a strategic cooperation with Ant Group's technology arm and made a strategic investment in the Pharos public chain; shortly after, Yunfeng Financial announced the purchase of 10,000 ETH as reserve assets in the open market, with a total investment cost of up to $44 million. This series of intensive actions not only reveals Jack Ma's capital grand layout in the Web3 field but also indicates that the deep integration of traditional finance and the emerging crypto world is accelerating. What is the background of Yunfeng Financial? What achievements has Ant Group's technology arm made in recent years? Why has the Pharos public chain attracted the favor of these two giants? This article will delve into the profound significance behind these developments.
- Yunfeng Financial's Crypto Layout: Deep Integration of ETH, RWA, and Web3
Yunfeng Financial, a financial giant founded by Jack Ma and Yu Feng in 2010 and listed on the Hong Kong main board, has diversified business segments including securities brokerage, asset management, insurance, and financial technology. It holds financial service licenses No. 1, 4, and 9 from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission and a long-term insurance business license from the Hong Kong Insurance Authority. Its layout in the Web3 field is not a spur-of-the-moment decision but a continuation of the financial strategy disclosed in July, when the board clearly expressed strong interest in Web3 technology, RWA tokenization, digital currency, ESG net-zero assets, and artificial intelligence.
Yunfeng Financial's substantial purchase of ETH as reserve assets is a key step towards its long-term goal of integrating finance and technology. The board believes that holding ETH will help the company diversify its assets, reduce reliance on traditional fiat currencies, and plans to explore the potential applications of Ethereum in insurance and decentralized finance business scenarios in the future. Driven by expectations of interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve and institutional investor interest, the price of Ethereum has recently surged, and Yunfeng Financial undoubtedly sees its future development potential, aiming to lock in its value by increasing its ETH holdings and share in the promising future of the crypto market.
Notably, Yunfeng Financial announced on July 14 of this year that it would venture into cutting-edge fields such as Web3.0, real-world assets (RWA), digital currency, ESG zero-carbon assets, and artificial intelligence (AI), and explore innovative applications in conjunction with the group's insurance business. The cooperation with Ant Group's technology arm and the investment in the Pharos public chain are concrete manifestations of its Web3 strategy. This indicates that Yunfeng Financial is actively seizing the heights of future financial technology development, accelerating the transformation of traditional finance to digital finance through collaboration with top technology companies.
- Ant Group's Technology Arm: A Leader in Blockchain and RWA Pioneer
Ant Group's technology arm, as an independent technology subsidiary of Ant Group, has become an important driver of industrial digital upgrade since its independent operation began in 2024, leveraging its technological strength in artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud computing. Particularly in the blockchain field, Ant Group's technology arm has achieved remarkable results in the past two years:
Independent operation and capital increase: In March 2024, Ant Group's technology arm began independent operations and completed a capital increase of 2 billion yuan, demonstrating its determination for independent development.
Exploration of RWA and CBDC: In May 2024, it became an initial member of the Hong Kong Monetary Authority's Ensemble sandbox, supporting tokenization and central bank digital currency projects; in August, it successfully completed the first domestic cross-border financing of new energy RWA, selected as a representative case in the Monetary Authority's sandbox.
Standardization and open-source: In March 2025, it jointly initiated the project "Trusted Blockchain: Trusted On-Chain Technology Specifications for Physical Assets" with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology; in April, it open-sourced the virtual machine DTVM, seamlessly compatible with the Ethereum ecosystem.
Stablecoin and Layer 2 layout: In June 2025, it initiated the application for a Hong Kong stablecoin license; in July, its Layer 2 blockchain Jovay testnet officially launched, designed specifically for institutional-level application scenarios.
Cross-chain and cooperation: In August 2025, it collaborated with Guotai Junan International to complete the first batch of structured product tokens "Ant Chain - Ethereum" cross-chain issuance; in September, it reached a strategic cooperation with Yunfeng Financial to jointly expand RWA tokenization and the Web3 field.
Ant Group's technology arm's deep engagement in blockchain technology and digital assets has made it a bridge connecting traditional finance and the Web3 world. Its proactive layout in RWA, stablecoins, and Layer 2 not only showcases its technological strength but also lays the foundation for its strong alliance with Yunfeng Financial, jointly promoting the integrated development of traditional and emerging finance.
- Pharos Public Chain: The Future Infrastructure for RWA and High-Performance Payments
The Pharos public chain, established in July 2024, was founded by core members of the former Ant Group blockchain business, with team members coming from well-known blockchain companies such as Ant Group, Solana, and Ripple, possessing deep technical backgrounds and industry experience. Pharos is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 network, with the core vision of bridging Web2 and Web3 assets and liquidity, focusing on institutional-level RWA application scenarios and enterprise-level decentralized finance needs.
Pharos aims to solve the pain points of traditional institutions entering Web3 by building leading modular infrastructure, creating an efficient and 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.
The progress of the Pharos public chain has been rapid:
Testnet launch: In May 2025, the public testnet officially launched.
Ecosystem cooperation: In June, the RWA protocol Spout announced its launch on the Pharos testnet; in August, it partnered with the decentralized Web3 wallet Bitverse to build a decentralized trading platform for perpetual contracts.
Support from giants: In September, Yunfeng Financial announced that it would collaborate with Ant Group's technology arm to layout RWA tokenization and the Web3 field through the Pharos high-performance public chain platform.
Pharos has accurately captured the current industry's hottest RWA track, and its EVM compatibility allows it to seamlessly connect with the Ethereum ecosystem, reducing developers' migration costs. With the investment cooperation of the two giants, Ant Group's technology arm and Yunfeng Financial, the prospects for Pharos's technological iteration and ecosystem expansion will continue to advance, likely becoming a key infrastructure connecting crypto finance and traditional finance, expanding the influence of RWA in the traditional financial sector.
- The Profound Significance of the Cooperation Between Two Giants: A New Paradigm for the Web3 Industry
The cooperation between Yunfeng Financial and Ant Group's technology arm is a model of the collision between traditional finance and digital finance, with significance that goes far beyond the business level for both parties, having a profound impact on the entire Web3 industry and the RWA track.
For Yunfeng Financial, this cooperation is a fast track for expanding its Web3 and crypto business. Leveraging Ant Group's technology arm's advantages in blockchain technology and ecosystem resources, Yunfeng Financial can quickly achieve the integration of traditional finance and on-chain finance, providing users with richer financial products and attracting more institutional investors looking to enter the RWA field. Its purchase of ETH as reserve assets further demonstrates its firm optimism about the future value of digital assets and strategic layout.
For Ant Group's technology arm, Yunfeng Financial has deep roots in the traditional finance sector for many years, and its financial licenses will provide a significant advantage for Ant Group's technology arm in compliance operations. At the same time, Yunfeng Financial's customer channels and capital reserves can help alleviate Ant Group's technology arm's concerns about the implementation of investments in the Pharos public chain. Through the Pharos public chain, Ant Group's technology arm can further expand its influence in the blockchain technology field, even integrating its technical standards and ecosystem construction into it, deeply focusing on the Layer 1 track.
The current public chain track has entered a stage of "comprehensive competition," and the Pharos Network has emerged in this context. It is not merely a simple imitation of existing blockchain technology but rather a bold attempt at integrated innovation. Its "deeply parallel" architecture aims to achieve ultra-fast transaction processing and global availability. At the application level, the Pharos Network focuses on two key areas: real-time payments and real-world assets (RWA), attempting to reshape the landscape of financial transactions and asset digitization. Through deep integration with traditional financial technology, the Pharos Network is expected to provide billions of users with a smooth experience akin to Web2, while filling the gaps in traditional financial service coverage, paving new paths for the large-scale adoption of blockchain technology, and becoming an important force driving industry transformation.
Conclusion:
Jack Ma's capital layout in Web3, marked by Yunfeng Financial's purchase of ETH, investment in the Pharos public chain, and the deep involvement of Ant Group's technology arm, clearly outlines the path for traditional financial giants to embrace a digital future. This is not only a pursuit of profit by capital but also a strategic bet on the future financial infrastructure. As fields like RWA and stablecoins continue to mature, and high-performance public chains like Pharos rise, we have reason to believe that a new financial paradigm driven by traditional finance and Web3 technology is accelerating to form, bringing more efficient and inclusive financial services to global users.
Related Reading: Yunfeng Financial bought 10,000 Ethereum, what does it have to do with Jack Ma?
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