The Rise of RWB New Narrative: Moving from "Asset Tokenization" to "Business Tokenization"

Original text sourced from Odaily Odaily Daily News Wenser

Undoubtedly, RWA (Real World Assets) has become one of the hottest topics in the crypto market. Data from RWA.xyz shows that the total market value of global RWA assets (including stablecoins) is approaching 32 billion USD, with the number of on-chain holders exceeding 400,000 and a monthly growth rate of up to 9.22%.

At the same time, a new concept called RWB is quietly emerging and gradually moving from the crypto space to the mainstream. What is RWB? What are its similarities and differences with RWA? Can it take over from RWA and become the next narrative in the industry? Odaily will explain it all to the readers.

RWB Introduction: Real World Business or Just Another Marketing Buzzword?

RWA stands for Real World Assets; while RWB has different interpretations.

The currently widely accepted explanation is Real World Business, which refers to the transformation of operational businesses in the real world (such as physical enterprises, supply chains, or service processes) through blockchain tokenization, allowing investors to hold “business equity tokens” to share in business profits or decision-making power. It extends RWA from static assets to dynamic business models, supporting micro-financing, community-driven initiatives, and decentralized governance.

Another way to say this is Real World Blockchain, which refers to the practical application of blockchain technology in real-world scenarios (such as supply chain, transportation, or identity verification), emphasizing practicality and cross-industry integration rather than pure financial speculation. Commonly found in projects like the Real World Blockchain Association (RWBA), focusing on the infrastructure support for RWA.

There is a more niche explanation, which is Real World Behavior, referring to the tokenization of users' “real behavior data” on the blockchain (such as behavior points or AI training data), especially for applications in travel scenarios. This mainly combines blockchain technology with the sharing economy, the Internet of Things, and intelligent transportation systems to optimize travel-related services.

In short, the different explanations above correspond to different modes:

• The first type can be understood as tokenizing actual business and processes on the blockchain, mainly for business financing;
• The second type leans more towards a technical solution, primarily serving the on-chain of information data;
• The third type is similar to blockchain technology as an auxiliary, focusing on quantifying behavioral data and integrating it with systems such as the sharing economy and the Internet of Things.

At present, the RWB concept is still in the early stages of development, and there is no consensus or clear definition between the cryptocurrency industry and traditional industries.

RWA is asset tokenization, RWB is business tokenization.

Regarding the comparison between RWA and RWB, Coinstreet's founder and CEO Samson Lee previously published a lengthy article titled “Paradigm Innovation in Financial Markets: The Competitive Evolution of RWA and RWB — A Dual-Track Strategy in the Wave of Tokenization” in April of this year. Although it did not receive much attention or large-scale discussion in the industry, its viewpoints still have certain reference significance.

At present, the value of RWB lies in digitizing business operations, product sales, revenue streams, commercial contracts, intellectual property, and customer rights on the blockchain, indirectly bypassing the regulatory issues related to securities financing, providing new financing channels for small and medium-sized enterprises, and offering new investment targets for ordinary investors, thereby lowering the investment threshold to some extent.

In addition, RWB further expands the scope of real-world business, where intellectual property, operating income, and various business products are all objects that can be tokenized on the blockchain. Thus, not only can real-world assets related to RWA be quantified, digitized, and tokenized; but also future income, decision rights, revenue dividends, and other virtual assets and rights related to RWB can be transformed through blockchain technology, thus achieving tokenization and digitization.

Taking the emerging coffee chain brand BeanFi mentioned by Samson in the text as an example, it is said that the company tokenized 10% of its operating income for the next five years and completed a financing of 20 million USD in just 3 hours, with over 50,000 retail investors participating. (Odaily Note: This information has not been confirmed by actual sources, and another article mentioned that the financing amount for this case was only 500,000 USD. Based on the information available, the project may have already failed.)

It has been proven that, unlike the relatively mature narratives and business models of RWA with actual cases, the true implementation of RWB is still some distance away.

RWB has not yet gained mainstream attention, but Binance and Sequoia have started to bet on it.

It is worth mentioning that while searching for information related to RWB, the author unexpectedly discovered a project called Talex Chain, which was selected along with projects such as Four.meme, Meet 48, and Balance for Binance's MVB Accelerator Program Season 8 in October 2024. According to the introduction on the founder's X platform account, this project may also have received support from the well-known investment firm Sequoia.

MVB 8 List

The project's founder Chari and his team also wrote a series of articles about the RWB business model. They proposed a fiat-based token issuance model called PoP (Proof of Purchase) and cited Binance founder CZ's views on “trading mining” as a backing for the model. They also mentioned: “There is no problem with trading mining. It is a kind of Proof of Purchase. However, merely pushing up the token price to attract more people to participate in mining will only lead to ineffective volume manipulation. This will affect the team's and users' judgment of the project. If we can ignore the price collapse and focus on iterating the product experience, in the end, users will use it well and repurchase tokens with normal transaction fees, then what's the problem? Very crypto native. Co-construction and sharing.”

It is evident that the Talex project views trading mining as a major case for the issuance of RWB. Users contribute transaction fees to the platform through trading interactions, and the platform uses the fee income to repurchase platform tokens. Users then receive rewards through incentives in platform tokens, thus achieving an “ecological closed loop.”

However, it should be pointed out that this model still heavily relies on the continuous inflow of external funds, which tests not only the platform's product optimization and user experience but also whether the platform's token price can be maintained and whether the entire incentive system can operate stably.

Additionally, it is quite interesting that the Talex platform currently resembles a creator economy platform that integrates short dramas, e-books, anime, and other content. Whether it can attract more attention resources and liquidity through content in the future remains uncertain.

Conclusion: RWB is more like a cornerstone for providing liquidity for real-world business.

Regardless, although the RWB concept has not received much attention yet and faces a series of risks such as regulatory compliance and asset management, it does provide a new idea for financing small and medium-sized enterprises. Just like the gravel used to lay the foundation during road construction, RWB may serve as a basis for providing flexible funding to companies that operate real businesses in the real world, while participants gain corresponding emotional value, loyalty incentives, and economic returns.

As for whether it can open up a new development path in the tokenization process on traditional financial asset chains, it remains to be seen with time.

Source: Odaily