Why Bringing Real-World Assets Onchain Is Important

Variant is optimistic about real-world assets (RWAs) onchain and argues that tokenizing them offers several concrete benefits despite investor and entrepreneur skepticism. The benefits cited include broader access to offchain assets, yield for DAOs that cannot open banking or brokerage accounts, and composability with DeFi, such as using tokenized U.S. Treasuries as collateral to borrow stablecoins. The article also says stablecoins have a market capitalization above $100 billion but little of their underlying yield reaches holders, and it points to Goldfinch, a protocol that channels debt investments to small and medium-sized enterprises in emerging markets.