RWA Project Implementation Guide: Key Considerations from Concept to Practice

At the beginning of 2025, Hong Kong's financial industry welcomed two major pieces of good news. First, the Asia-Pacific region's first retail tokenized fund has launched in Hong Kong. Second, the Hong Kong Financial Secretary announced that the second virtual asset development policy declaration is about to be released, further exploring the innovative integration of traditional assets and virtual assets.

These two pieces of news are widely regarded as a sign of the compliance of RWA projects coming to fruition. Coupled with the news that the first RWA project in the mainland agricultural sector has successfully raised 10 million at the Shanghai Digital Asset Exchange, RWA tokenization seems to have completed its transition from concept to implementation. Various participants are actively carrying out related work, with an increasing number of project consultations and discussions.

Recently, there has been a significant demand for project implementation, involving a wide range of underlying assets, including bonds, gold, rare metals, non-performing assets, agricultural products, property rents, bulk commodities, digital copyrights, fan economy, and several other fields.

As the project demonstration deepens, the project party often returns to the essence, pondering the following key questions:

• Is the project suitable for RWA?
• Which projects are more suitable for the RWA model?
• What are the requirements for underlying assets in RWA? Are all real-world assets applicable?
• What type of token is issued?
• Do investors have speculative motivation for physically anchored assets?

This article will attempt to analyze these issues by combining practical experience.

First, let's draw a conclusion: the most ideal RWA path is mainland assets + compliant data going abroad + raising overseas funds, achieving controllable assets, trustworthy data, and fund raising.

1. Understanding the Essence of RWA

RWA(Real-World Assets Tokenization) refers to the process of packaging and storing the value, operation, revenue, and other data of real-world assets using blockchain technology, creating digital tokens for issuance, financing, and trading.

The main characteristics of RWA financing include:

1. Core Assets

RWA is centered around underlying assets, rather than tokens without value. These types of tokens can be referred to as Asset-Backed Tokens ( ABT ).

Financing relies on the assessment of the underlying asset value, rather than the credit of the enterprise. As long as a certain batch of assets owned by the enterprise has value and potential, it can achieve packaged on-chain financing.

Assets suitable for RWA typically possess characteristics such as high value, high quality, the need to improve liquidity, and lower investment thresholds. Typical projects include:

• Stablecoins: Issued with backing from fiat currencies or cash equivalents, such as USDT and USDC.
• Bonds and stocks: Improve the liquidity and market access of traditional financial assets.
• Real Estate: Lowering investment barriers.
• Commodities: such as carbon credits, precious metals, and other physical assets.

2. Financing Speed Improvement

RWA leverages blockchain technologies such as smart contracts to digitize the financing process on-chain, achieving data structuring and standardization. From asset evaluation to token issuance and fundraising, the public and transparent nature of blockchain can significantly enhance the speed of financing.

3. Enhanced asset liquidity

RWA tokenizes, fragments, and internationalizes real assets through blockchain technology, significantly increasing asset liquidity. For example, a property valued at 50 million can be divided into 1 million token units, allowing more investors to participate. This endows the asset with the ability to move quickly while also providing investors with flexible exit channels.

Although the price of tokens is influenced by market sentiment fluctuations, the underlying asset value still provides a relatively stable benchmark.

2. Challenges Faced by Enterprises in RWA

Although RWA has many advantages, there are still limited successful cases among mainland enterprises. The main challenges are twofold:

1. Compliance Challenges

Mainland China has explicitly banned virtual currency trading platforms from conducting exchanges, buying, selling, or providing pricing services. Therefore, the RWA project must plan a complete compliance path.

Tokens cannot be issued domestically, but the underlying assets can be either domestic or overseas. Projects can adopt a model of domestic and overseas linkage or operate only overseas to meet the compliance requirements for issuing tokens.

For cross-border projects, it is essential to first realize asset financialization. Linking products with standardized financial products like stocks, bonds, and fund shares ( helps to reduce regulatory friction and ensure the effectiveness of legal enforcement. Only after asset financialization can tokenization be carried out through smart contracts.

) 2. The challenge of attracting investors

After the issuance of tokens, how to generate value and attract investors is a major pain point.

In the Web3 world, the value of tokens is mainly determined by their operational mechanisms ### such as the way they are generated, token economics, circulation, etc. Most investors seek high multiples of returns, such as the recent peak increase of Trump coin reaching 800%.

In contrast, RWA tokens are anchored to real assets, making their value relatively stable and unlikely to experience dramatic surges. Investors are more focused on the underlying asset value of the tokens. This contradicts the speculative practices popular in the current Web3 world.

In addition, based on compliance considerations, exchanges usually set entry thresholds for investors. For example, a tokenized fund issued by a certain bank is only available to investors in the Hong Kong region.

These factors significantly narrowed the range of potential investors.

3. RWA Project Implementation Guide

( 1. Initial screening of feasible projects

Enterprises should fully understand their asset status and determine suitable underlying assets for RWA. The underlying assets must be related to the enterprise's operations. This requires enterprises to have cross-disciplinary talents who understand both business operations and asset value, as well as the Web3 ecosystem.

) 2. Technology and Compliance First

Once the initial screening is completed, it is necessary to conduct in-depth research on the RWA program, including designing the token economic model, developing the technical architecture, formulating data collection methods, assessing cost cycles, and planning compliance pathways, among others. Technical and compliance risks should be addressed in advance.

3. Project Execution and Implementation

The focus of this stage is to assist enterprises in executing on the ground. This includes in-depth due diligence, writing white papers, developing and deploying smart contracts, preparing legal documents, and connecting with resource providers throughout the entire process. Ultimately achieving asset tokenization.

4. Plan for Secondary Market Circulation

Combine the policy environment, corporate needs, and changes in investors to assist enterprises in going online on exchanges and achieving circulation in the secondary market. Provide legal support for investment and financing, continuously follow up on regulatory policies, and dynamically adjust compliance plans.

5. Continuous Operation Support

Assist enterprises in designing and executing community operation plans, connecting media and KOL resources, and optimizing communication strategies. Regularly monitor operational data, implement market value management strategies, etc.

4. The Value of a Professional Team

A professional Web3 team can provide comprehensive support for RWA projects:

• Legal Compliance Expert: Ensure asset tokenization compliance, review the validity of smart contracts, and establish investor protection frameworks.
• Strategic Advisor: Develop market and capital operation plans, optimize asset liquidity, and control risks.
• Blockchain technology expert: build underlying infrastructure, develop smart contracts, ensure accurate mapping of on-chain data.
• Financial experts: provide asset valuation, financing strategies, and risk management analysis, and design structured financial solutions.

The rich experience and comprehensive capabilities of a professional team help enterprises accurately grasp RWA opportunities and efficiently implement projects. In a complex regulatory environment and rapidly changing market, the support of a professional team is crucial for project success.