Brevan Howard Digital and Nomura’s Laser Digital were part of the $20 million Series A funding round for Plume, the layer 1 permissionless blockchain focused on the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA). Other investors included Lightspeed Faction, Haun Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Hashkey, 280 Capital, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel and Reciprocal Ventures.
The blockchain plans to launch in the new year, but already has 180 protocols leveraging the network, which it says represent $4 billion in assets. He coined the name RWAfi, as a play on the concept of DeFi. Where DeFi provides opportunities to earn yield, borrow, lend, trade and more, based on native crypto assets, Plume aims to provide the same functionality for tokenized assets in its ecosystem “ Composable RWAfi”.
At launch, its target market is crypto-natives, but with the Series A, it is already interested in institutions. Although blockchain is permissionless, it has a built-in AML compliance mechanism that includes a network of compliance partners. It claims its Arc tokenization engine supports regulatory requirements and has already signed agreements with regulated secondary trading platforms including Texture Capital, tZERO, Openfinance and Archax.
This week, it signed an agreement with Singapore-regulated DigiFT, which is the main distributor of the UBS uMint USD money market fund. Although uMint is native to Ethereum, the goal is to make it available to Plume users.
“Seamlessly connecting institutional assets to DeFi is a key part of our RWAfi vision. Through DigiFT’s regulated rails, we can offer proven institutional products like UBS’s money market fund directly to users and DeFi protocols,” said Chris Yin, CEO of Plume Network.
