Conversation with Plume Founder Chris Yin: How to Build a Crypto-Native RWA Ecosystem?

Chainfeeds Guide:

RWA is not simply about bringing real-world assets into the crypto space. We are building an entirely new world and market, where cryptocurrencies and physical economic assets will merge into one, with no clear boundaries.

Source:

Author:

ChainCatcher

Opinion:

Chris Yin: That's absolutely right. There are several reasons why our perspective on the industry is unique. Take Figure as an example: one major advantage of the RWA sector is its positive-sum nature. When the market experiences explosive growth, there won't be just one winner; in the future, many successful companies and development paths will emerge. We respect all participants, which is beneficial for the industry as a whole. Companies like Figure use blockchain to solve TradFi pain points: improving the efficiency of home equity loans by addressing process and cost, making home equity lines of credit (HELOC) more efficient. Our approach is quite the opposite. We are betting on the growth of the crypto economy, not on the transformation of traditional financial products. In our view, the transformation of traditional finance is a result, not a goal. Today's crypto world already carries trillions of dollars in assets and has a huge and continuously growing user base—and this ecosystem is still expanding. As the scale grows, user needs will naturally evolve. Therefore, we are not "internally renovating" existing products, but are committed to exploring and building a brand new world. This philosophical orientation gives rise to completely different processes and products. We deeply practice crypto principles: liquidity, composability, and ease of use, and we focus more on total revenue rather than cost control. People enter the crypto space not to save money—but to make money. This is the fundamental logic behind BTC and meme coins: users are seeking yield growth and upside potential. From this perspective, we do not start from the traditional financial experience—that model, which requires KYC, is cumbersome to operate, and has restricted transfers, actually offers very limited improvement to end-user returns. But our methodology is: how can we completely transform products into a crypto-native experience? For example, with on-chain treasury products now, such as USDS or Maker's newly launched Sky product: I can go directly to Uniswap or the Maker website, use stablecoins to click deposit or swap, and it's equivalent to holding treasuries. This is a completely different experience. This transformation is significant. USDS currently has a total value locked of about 4 to 5 billion dollars, and it has full ecosystem composability, becoming a standard value storage method alongside other yield-bearing stablecoins. This difference drives usage, trading volume, and demand growth, and gives rise to more upper-layer applications. In contrast, HELOC or US short-term treasury products that are simply brought on-chain in the traditional financial way require users to: meet the qualified investor criteria (a 5 million dollar capital threshold), trade within limited time windows, trade in increments of 100,000 dollars, and complete KYC certification. Take BlackRock's BUIDL fund (managed by Securitize) as an example: although it performs well and has a total value locked of 2 to 3 billion dollars, its scale is still smaller than USDS, and more importantly, the number of holders is extremely small—only a few dozen.