The RWA Stack: From Tokenization to Yield | Boston Blockchain Week 2026

Let's uh let's go down real quick and just do really fast intros so everyone knows who's who and just I want to make sure that you outline like the part of the stack that you're at. Um I should have requested a whiteboard but we'll kind of walk through uh how we're going to just build through and talk about the challenges in each element. So pay go ahead and start up.

Thank you Kelly. Hi everybody. I'm P Chen. I'm the CEO at Theoric. uh theor builds AI native risk yield and execution layer between the tokenized asset layer and distribution layer.

So,

hi Ryan Lovar. I'm the chief legal officer and head of business and legal affairs for Wisdom Trees digital assets and tokenization initiatives. We're primarily known as an ETF sponsor. Um but entered this space about five or six years ago. Uh and so we have uh 15 SEC registered tokenized funds.

We also have tokenized gold, a stable coin. Um, and so primarily as an asset issuer, but also uh increasingly as an infrastructure provider. And uh no, I didn't just shave my head today. I think they have the wrong picture up there of somebody else. [laughter] So

uh Kyle Verma, director of sales at uh Securitize, uh best known for being the global leader in RWA tokenization. uh actually started uh the business was started back in 2017 when no one really knew or cared about tokenization but excited to talk about it with you all today.

All right. Now just to level set uh as an industry crypto has solved the issuance layer. There's about 31 billion on chain today uh give or take probably growing. That you know number's a week old. Um and you know that's done like we've checked the box on that right and then we have to add into that.

So issuance let's say issuance is done. Then we have let's call it the institutional utility layer which is pricing uh holding financing of it. Then we have the vaults yield all the risk that goes along with that and then we have the distribution who's actually using this. So if you think about that as sort of the stack we want to walk through. Um I think can you uh let's start with um issuance in terms of what's actually been accomplished and if there's anything that has to be done like when an institution says we've tokenized that what's actually on chain and why does that distinction distinction matter?

Do you want to kick us off with take on that?

It so it really depends. Um, right now Securitize has a whole lineup of fixed income products that we've brought on chain with the largest asset managers globally. So that's Black Rockck, Apollo, Newberger, Burman, VANAC. And, you know, really what this looks like is taking, you know, a portfolio management team who runs an existing portfolio in traditional finance and recreating that for onchain investors. So I think you know what we've been able to accomplish is take a product that was previously unavailable to the digital asset ecosystem and make it available um easier to invest via stable coins um you know in some cases faster settlement uh faster distribution times um and then just essentially just give that access to a group that didn't have it before.

it with your take. Is there anything that's what's the closest thing that's still broken if you look at

Yeah, it's a good question. So, let's talk about like a tokenized money market product and and obviously I'm I'm sure you know you can comment on this too, but the underlying uh bonds themselves are not tokenized. So, we have to buy these treasury bonds with dollars. So, I think the piece

the old fashioned way.

Correct. And uh so so when we're talking about like stable coins, those eventually have to get converted into dollars and there's conversion fees. And so if I'm talking about an overnight repo and I'm trying to earn yield on that, does that yield outweigh the conversion cost? That's the piece that I think is slightly broken um at this point, but I think gets solved when the underlying assets themselves get tokenized.

Would wisdom tree agree with that?

Yeah, I'd agree. We actually have an interim solve though. Um we went to the SEC and sought exemptive relief to allow that SEC registered money market fund to essentially trade 24/7 through our broker dealer. So through inventory that our broker dealer holds. So getting a lot closer to that digital asset experience in terms of trading 24/7.

I'd say the limitation there though is it's subject to the the inventory that our broker dealer holds. So, uh, but nonetheless, we're seeing, you know, some good uptake of that and it really does get a lot closer to that true 247 trading instant settlement experience.

Is there anything that doesn't work as a token? Again, we're still at the issuance layer, right? So, baby steps. Is there anything that doesn't work to be tokenized in your take?

I mean, I think to your point, it's um, you know, it's uh, you know, that you know, liquidity versus the the tokenized ability to to settle instantly. So I think there's always going to be kind of be I don't think you know the mantra that uh if we tokenize it then you know an illquid asset is going to all of a sudden become liquid necessarily. So uh I do think there's always that tension between the underlying versus the tokenization.

Yeah I think if I can just chime in quickly. Um it really depends on like what you mean by work. We can technically tokenize anything but at the end of the day if there's nobody there to buy it does it does it really matter? Um, and so I think to your point, it's

like are we minting stuff just to mint it and tokenize it or are we actually just like it's printing receipts for other

correct like why why do it if there's not somebody on the other side who and I and I think there was this inherent misconception that if we take um something illquid or semi-liquid like a private credit fund and we bring it on chain all of a sudden it becomes more liquid but you're only as liquid as the underlying either fund or the underlying assets themselves. So I think you know the the the industry learned quickly that just because we tokenize something and sure there is this ability for P2P transfers it doesn't just generate you know additional liquidity for the underlying asset

and I'd add too I think we we both spoken now about really issuer sponsored tokenization so you know we have the issuer whether it's wisdomree or black rockck or or the like and so you know it's really issuing the product and that's you know really having investor rights in the product itself it's just held in tokenized form But I think it's sort of investors need to understand that you know there are products being you know sold out there particularly offshore where it's really sort of a you know a different representation almost you know a different instrument if you will. So you know you do need to be sensitive to understanding kind of what's out there and you know ultimately what you're investing in. Okay. Hey, from running a vault, we're going to get to that part, but at the issuance side, do you think do you think that there's anything worth talking about right now, the point we're at, uh that is relevant at the issuance layer when it comes to later vault stuff?

Yeah, I think like uh just dial back like a few uh few steps, right? Like why why we think tokenization is much needed on the market. I think tokenization itself as you guys both kind of pointed out doesn't solve the demand problem and just because you can tokenize something doesn't mean that it will be more desirable to the market. So I think that's where kind of the the vault situation the vault curations come steps into the picture. Um the what is a vault?

Just just by definition, right? Vault is a is a smart contract that pulls deposits, issues a proportional um vault share token and then deploys the the capital the collateral um according to a strategy that is a very much predetermined at the code base. Why why is that important? Because it's an infrastructure piece. does not replace the asset manager or the issuer um of the under underlying asset but it's very important because it can potentially create more demand for it.

Why is that? Because now the global LPS understand with the stable coin rails that they can subscribe and own those tokenized form of real world assets. But on top of that, there's now a way to assess those assets in their risk profile, but also monitor how they perform. And furthermore, there might be an opportunity to gather additional yield to enhance the yield profile of those products because money market fund today we're just simply buying through our broker dealer accounts. That's great that you get this money market fund allocation.

you gather 3.35% of interest rate but that there's not much more you can do with it by moving the mmf um onto a digital form into token format the next thing you know you can actually potentially uh rehypothecate the asset right you can use it you can pledge into a onchain credit infrastructure such as morpho or a and you take a little bit of haircut that you can get stable coin and then you can deploy the stable coin into different strategies such as basis trades, delta delta neutral basis trades, cash and carry. Um you can look for liquidity provisioning opportunities on dexes exchanges anywhere you can think of and the wisdom tree actually will work with you guys in the sandbox environment right now. It's like yeah the money mark funds collateral now if it's accepted on a you can lend against that collateral. How powerful is that?

And just sorry to get off track a little bit. You're asking what is in on the issuance layer that's missing. There are three types of collaterals onchain right now. One is very financable such as like Bitcoin, stable coin, um ETH maybe a little bit more. And then there's a second which is like collateral collater uh tokenized RWBAs who are financable which is like money market funds low yield very safe fixed income products that is uh financable lendable in a permission environment like can or environment like that but not much more than that and a lot of like securityized products fall into that category it's like great that you can use in a permission um very specific restricted fashion but not much more and then There's the the last cate category which you said are we just maintaining for the receipts.

Some of the RWS are actually yes a receipt on your share of SP SPVS nothing nothing more than that.

Uh we're at 31 billion on chain. What year is it when we stop saying we tokenized it and it's just like it exists?

Just you know casual not financial advice not like holding it to this just friendly banter. Yeah,

it's almost six o'clock on a Tuesday. [laughter]

No, it's a it's a really good question and I think we have to get to that point for there to be more adoption. I don't think like my parents need to know that they're buying a stock uh in tokenized form and that's the only way we see mass adoption.

How how fast does that 31 billion double

double? Oh, uh two years and then

sooner way that [laughter] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I go quicker. Yeah.

I know. And but I think to to have the technology move into the background without saying tokenization, I'd say, you know, a good five to 10 years away from that. But I think, you know, if we we analogize a lot to the ETF industry, I think if we look at that growth trajectory, um, you know, right now that tokenized RWA is actually on a faster growth trajectory. Um, and if you think now 30 years later, which isn't a long time in the ETF world, um, you know, we're now at, uh, you know, multi- you know, 10 plus trillion. So, uh, you know, very, very, very fast growth.

You have any thoughts pay predictions?

Yeah, I mean um the first time we looked at RWA as a trend and asset base it was maybe like the 15 billion that was maybe like last year at some point and then in April it was at 20 billion and then very quickly surpassed like 31 billion. So now that's like kind of where we are right 30 40 billion. Um but the potential like the portion of the cloud being used on chain is very small still.

Okay. So, one of the benefits of having it tokenized is sort of this 24-hour price and how things settle. So, moving on to let's call it layer 2 pricing and and structuring and all that. Um, how does this stuff get priced after market and what do you think again works today as we have it in our little tiny 31 billion market? Uh, versus what still needs to happen?

Well, I think you're going to see I mean right now we're seeing kind of an evolution. And you're seeing, you know, the SEC, we haven't seen it yet, but, you know, an innovation exemption is coming out. I think when we talk about products that are actually SEC registered, we're going to see, you know, sort of the rule book or at least, you know, being able to work within the current rule set, but, you know, that revolves around, you know, traditional broker dealers, actual, you know, best execution pricing. So then we're going to see that sort of model that we're not unused to sort of come into this this realm because you know ultimately you have to have you know sort of a a broad rule set to to really and ultimately that's meant to protect investors really.

Yeah. I also think you're going to see some fragmentation in the market. Uh as you alluded to there's a lot of these SPV rappers out there. you, a lot of you maybe saw um the discourse on Twitter recently about AMC and I think it may get a little bit worse before it gets better. Candidly, if every single brokerage arm can create their version of like a wrapped token um that either represents a share,

what do you think smooths that out? Right. It's it's super bumpy right now and there's all this stuff up in the air with all of those. Candidly, I think it's issu I mean, I'm selling our book a little bit here, but like I think it's issuer-led tokenization. And so, we've partnered with um

from the meaning out of the gate, from the start. That's all.

It doesn't have to be via like IPO, but you know, Securitize did that as soon as we um you know, we went public. We tokenized our u our shares day one. But what it really means is working directly with the issuer. So that when the end investor holds Nvidia stock in their MetaMask account, it is the same Nvidia stock that XYZ person is holding in their Fidelity or their Schwab account. So making sure that those people have the same rights um voting rights and and dividend rights regardless of where you own that I think is is going to be the catalyst um for large institutions to candidly take this very seriously.

As an end investor we want price exposure, right? So I think in the interim I I don't think it matters as much but long term I think it really does for price discovery and for the space to mature. I don't know if anybody else wants to jump in.

Yeah, I I want to comment on the um I think what you're alluding to is like a nav challenge.

Yep.

Uh there's a huge gap. I mean there's no perfect solution right now. Although all the RWS on chain do not have continuous nav like ETH or Bitcoin. It's just a fact. Um so I think there's the industry.

Do you think it ever will?

I think it will. I think it has to come from like asset issuers and tokenization. uh the wrapper um right like the the layer needs to provide that continuous oracle support so that and maybe like exchange will become 247 who knows but you you need like a 247 open market to bring the gap between onchain offchain world together um so that the risk that's expo risk exposure that happens during holidays the weekend um and coupled with a continuous nav support will largely solve the problem I think the wrapping actually it's funny It's it's interesting you mentioned like the bring bring up the life cycle. Why don't you just like create the shares of a company and a mutual fund just like natively on chain? Yeah.

But it's going to take a long time, right? There's like 30 trillion out there. What are you going to do about

Yeah. I mean speed to market wins especially in crypto. So uh I think there's like two and a half three billion of tokenized stocks that have surged in the last I don't know like four or five months. And I think, you know, Binance is is eating the majority of that market share. Um, but to do it the quote unquote right way, it's going to take issuers to raise their hand and say, "We want to do this."

And that comes with board approvals, and it's it's going to take a while.

The other thing that comes up as this layer is who actually holds the asset at the end of the day. Um, is it self-custody of some sort? Is it uh some rapper? Is it um a custodian that has it? Like what's each of your take on who actually holds it at the end of the day and what is the end of the day sometimes?

Yeah, I think uh you know focused again on issuer sponsored tokenization. I think it's about you know giving choice. I mean essentially they're holding a a share. Um but you know we provide the flexibility where they could hold it in a self-hosted wallet so long as we've permissioned that wallet. um they could also host it through you know a thirdparty platform where we actually provide hosted wallet services.

So we're seeing kind of all flavors if you will um but you know I think it's providing that flexibility but ultimately it is within a permissioned environment on top of at least we support um you know really eight different blockchains. So it's kind of that permissioned environment uh permissioning the wallet on top of those permissionless blockchains.

And do any of those things matter when it comes to like financing or or mcking with it after it exists? Well, I mean ultimately the at least our assets can only travel to permission wallets. So, you know, that somewhat has a limiting factor on on who can hold it. Um, you know, unlike say um and that's within the the SEC registered fund world. Um, you know, other even regulated products like tokenized gold that we have issued through a limited purpose trust company could move through unpermissioned wallets, but there still need to be uh restrictions essentially uh embedded within the asset itself.

So, for instance, if that asset moves from a wallet to another wallet that's on the OFAC list, then it freezes. So, you know, a little bit more um flexibility there and and freedom, if you will. But still, I think, you know, when you're in a regulated environment, especially in the US, there's going to be some restrictions uh if you will. But I think you can still get the benefits of blockchain through instant peer-to-peer transfers, instant settlement trading, those types of things.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean I think uh we're going to replicate a lot of what has happened in traditional finance with SEC lending um in the onchain ecosystem and wherever I can get the best rates to borrow against my tokenized Apple stock is is like if if if it does require me to hold it at an anchorage, you know, I'm probably incentivized to do that. Whereas maybe there is a part, you know, a portion of my assets that, you know, I believe in self-custody and, you know, I want it to just sit there, but a lot of people are going to want to be active, uh, you know, with these assets and and do something with them, pledge them as collateral in a DeFi protocol, borrow against them, um, and and redeploy those assets to maybe make a a non-incomegenerating asset more productive. So, I think it it's really going to depend on who the user is. um we're going to see these more active users and then there's probably going to be, you know, a handful of people that own tokenized stocks like I said without knowing they have

that they have it.

Yeah, exactly. And I think that's key.

Um if we move on to some of like the vaults and yield curation, can you pay talk a little bit about risk when it comes to vaults and how you think about that today and what you think is going to matter in the future? like it's still kind of early days, but you know, I know like a huge chunk of our fund is liquid and we're very sensitive on, you know, we do a lot of due diligence on the VC investments we make and we really like to participate and support them, but there's a huge emphasis on still still whatever 10, 14, 15 years in that we want to call it, there's still a huge emphasis on the smart contract risk and the risk overall with this additional yield that we have opportunity to participate in. Can you talk a little bit about what that means today? Yeah, I think today it is, you know, there is a a big I think generally speaking people are hesitant about um taking on additional risk. Let's say that's like anywhere between three to 10% um in exchange for trusting of all curator basically like um even though we have an MPC set up it's like three parties involved for in the middle um enforcing all the policies but doesn't matter because like just like it's scary to hear about all the hacking issues and since like October 10th last year really like ours Ethan kind of was the beginning of all the you know there are really talented hackers out there with AI it's only getting better getting worse better for them worse for us.

Um but a lot of uh the reassuring part of is that smart contract is getting better and better. So from an infrastructure perspective it's getting almost like impossible but there's still like a lapse of uh OBSSAC you know diligence how an operator um how careful it is with like managing some keys and how the day-to-day procedures works and I think the risk specifically twofolds in my view like worth addressing one is how easy to deposit and withdraw your fund and given what time frame because the risk events unfolds very fast and I think depositors should all pay attention to that withdrawal time frame. Is that T+? You know, is that three day max? Is it up to seven?

Is it longer? And sometimes also associated with the underlying RWBA position. If an a curator decides to deploy into a T plus30 instrument um tokenized RWBAs, then that means that the on takes longer. Um so I think like pay attention to you know always make sure that deposit withdrawal is smooth um and clear. Another thing is when it comes to risk, I think more and more um the vault curators need to disclose upfront like how the default and unwind path is going to look like in the event of a risky event where you know repayment didn't happen on time.

There's defaults like who um is responsible to make the LPS whole. Um, a lot of times like now we're seeing like it's not it's still ambiguous and unclear maybe with like credible issuers and they have thought about all of that and they've like laid it out very clearly in documents. What happens if there's issuer freezing function probably you're pricing that risk into your purchasing decisions. If there's um so if there's a just like a liquidating problem there's no secondary liquidity for that. What does that mean for an LP?

Right? So the exit path needs to be studied and validated.

Would Securitize or Wisdom Tree allow tokens into a vault and yes or no? And then what would make that what's the top thing that would have that be the answer?

Yeah, I mean we are seeing vaults. Um I mean as I mentioned in the permissioned architecture so you have investors and then you also have you know the vaults is an investor and so you know they number one need to go through an onboarding process first. I mean you know you mentioned smart contract code but for us you know there needs to be somebody literally an entity people behind that um you know we have to go through a traditional very traditional you know traditional financial services onboarding process. So for an institution it looks like you know what exactly um you know what's the source of funds what's their business what exactly is that vault infrastructure look like um and so uh you know as part of that it's uh it's diligence it's you know traditional onboarding and the like so yeah we are seeing some use cases there but um you know there has to be some you know certainly uh you know traditional onboarding and and traditional sort of financial infrastructure there

it works the same way it securitized tradition traditional broker dealer onboarding, which crypto users are starting to get used to, but are certainly not a fan of. Um, but to me, I look at vaults as a uh another distribution angle. Um, you know, they look and feel to me a lot like early day structured products, mutual funds, ETFs, and the more products you have on chain to offer these vault curators, the more diversified type of basket of yield I think they can offer, which I think is really, really interesting. Um but yeah it's you know securityize is happy to have vault curators participate in our products as long as they can KYB and have the appropriate operational cadence to pass

check the boxes. Uh can we talk about distribution for a second if sort of yield is how these assets find holders? um who are the customers and you each might have slightly different answers to this and I know there's a lot of products out there that are uh catering towards a variety of different family offices, funds, institutions, individual retail, whatever you might uh be. Can you each talk about your take just in our last couple minutes? Distribution, how that grows, who you think it is.

It could be for your company or it could be like more broadly how does that sort of uh yield generation take off?

Sure, I can start. Um, you know, I think early days it was a lot of foundations that had huge balance sheets, usually, you know,

cryptonative,

correct? Yes. Crypton,

the only ones willing to take that risk. Yeah.

Or the ones who wanted to be associated with a large asset issuer and who were probably overindex to their underlying uh token. So something like a a treasury product from a BlackRock not only helps legitimize the underlying chain, but also is probably a treasury management tool they didn't have previously. And then it really steps out further to figure out different types of collateral use cases. We've made our tokenized money market products available as trading collateral on large centralized exchanges. So if I can earn treasury yield as trading collateral against my futures positions, my per instead of leveraging something um that isn't as reputable or um was non-yielding in the first place is a very interesting use case.

And then without going through the entire list, I think it's more DeFi native allocators where as Pay had mentioned, October 10th happened. I think there was a little bit of this distrust in DeFi yields and so having repeatable yields from reputable asset managers became more attractive than it had been previously and the ability to borrow against those assets, redeploy or leverage loop because in crypto we love leverage um became more and more of a use case. So Ryan, quick take on that.

Yeah, very similar. So uh the probably the only part to add is that um you know we're also seeing I think I think what what was said on the um you know sort of there's a better understanding of kind of that risk versus reward. You were seeing outsiz risk being taken earlier and and you know some some issues occurring there. So I now now think they're looking at kind of the regulated product and you know whether it's a money market fund or other yieldbearing asset that maybe provides more yield but in a regulated environment um we're seeing a lot of traction there while we're maintaining the you know being able to stay on chain.

Okay. Yeah. I think there's uh there are already like pretty clear leaders and not winners but leaders in the distribution. Um I guess like that that platform layer. Um I I think we we find ourselves talking a lot to largest exchanges, wallets, custodian, qualified custodians for different types of end users, whether that be retail investors, uh DeFi native users or institutional family offices, funds, hedge funds, right?

Like it's very wide variety of them, but they all have different hurdle rate and expectations and return aspect as well. Um I think ultimately this space is going to what kind of assets going to get on chain and be distributed uh and enhanced and yoda in that process is going to largely dependent on what the market the end users distribution leader is telling you. So, um, yeah, it's it's it's exciting to be able to help exchanges and figure out the offering, the earn program or a yield product. And it's exciting to be working with asset managers and tokenization platforms to um, leverage their background and expertise in like offchain portfolio construction and risk management skills.

Awesome. Kyle, Ryan Pay, thank you so much. Uh, better cheers to you all for sticking it out till 6 pm. Uh, Ian, thank you for having us.