RWAs are coming to TON. What does this mean?

Max Crown (the new CEO of TON Foundation) has been hinting for the second day in a row that an interesting announcement related to RWA (real-world assets) will be made at the Token2049 conference. Previously, this area was underrepresented in TON, so for those who haven't kept up, it's time to understand: what are RWAs, and what can they bring to the ecosystem? We explain in our #howtoton section.

The basic idea of RWAs is simple. Besides cryptocurrencies, people invest in other assets like gold, real estate, paintings, stocks, bonds, and so on. What if we assign tokens to these assets, allowing ownership rights to be managed in the crypto world? For instance, could we sell not just digital art but also traditional physical paintings on an NFT marketplace? The term RWA has come to refer to any such 'real-world assets' in tokenized form.

Why is this necessary when people already successfully buy paintings, gold, and stocks through other means? What benefits can blockchain add? It turns out, quite a few:

· We've already mentioned that this allows the ownership of a single asset (like a painting) to be distributed among many people.
· While stocks are typically traded during market hours, tokens are available 24/7.
· It becomes convenient to use these assets in crypto operations. For example, a user might own bonds and use them as collateral to borrow Toncoin.

RWAs can also enhance the lives of crypto enthusiasts, enabling them to interact with a wide range of assets without leaving their favorite ecosystem. For instance, in the last few months, while cryptocurrencies experienced a downturn, gold was doing much better. Wouldn't it be handy during such times to shift some funds into gold with just a few clicks within your TON wallet?

However, RWAs have proven most popular in the form of stablecoins. Essentially, a stablecoin is also a tokenized real-world asset, most commonly US dollar. The demand for these has clearly been high. In this format, RWAs have already entered the TON ecosystem with the introduction of USDT.

Theoretically, the application of RWAs could be very broad, some people were floating ideas like transferring all real estate ownership rights to blockchain for transparency. In practice, however, only a fraction of these imaginative ideas have been realized. Governments are not rushing to update property registries, and not all assets are easily available in tokenized form.

Therefore, it's hard to predict exactly what will be announced at Token2049, which types of RWAs it will involve, or how it will impact TON users. We'll keep an eye on developments and share all the details.

@thedailyton