During the 2026 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival, Nina Rong, Executive Director of Growth at BNB Chain, shared insights and updates on BNB Chain’s current developments and perspectives in the RWA space at the “BNB Institutional Capital & RWA Forum.” The forum was co-hosted by Hash Global and the Greater Bay Area Financial Professionals Association, with BNB Chain as the blockchain partner and YZi Labs providing strategic support. The transcript was compiled and published by Jiuming Gongshe.
FROM ISSUANCE TO ADOPTION｜Speech Notes
First and foremost, thank you all for being here today, and thank you to General KK for the invitation that has brought us all together. Let me briefly introduce myself—I’m Nina, Head of the BNB Chain blockchain ecosystem. Today, I’d like to share with you our infrastructure and market developments around RWA.
First, let me give an overall overview of the current state of RWA development—everyone has already felt how hot RWA has become. The entire RWA sector has been thriving since last year, and there are now nearly $400 billion in assets on-chain. On-chain RWA assets are primarily divided into two types: one consists of native on-chain assets that can be interacted with directly on the blockchain, and the other uses blockchain merely as a ledger to record asset transfers.
Why are people interested in RWA? Many already know that, on one hand, traditional funds can typically only be traded during business hours on weekdays, whereas with RWA, we aim to enable 24/7 trading on-chain. On the other hand, physical assets often face geographic restrictions, and blockchain technology can help investors overcome these regional limitations.
Let’s briefly introduce the current state of RWA on BNB Chain. We are the second-largest RWA infrastructure after Ethereum, with over $3.8 billion in assets circulating within our ecosystem and 46,000 real users holding various types of RWA assets on our chain. Our close partners include well-known names such as BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, and Vanguard, while our issuance partners include Securitize, Ondo, Centrifuge, and China Merchants Bank International.
Dollar-denominated stablecoins have been extremely popular recently! BNB is, in fact, a very large chain today. The total amount of stablecoins held by users on the BNB Chain has already exceeded $17.5 billion, and we have 67 million real users who choose to hold their stablecoins on BNB Chain. Many may not realize that 34% of all global stablecoin transfers and transactions occur on the BNB Chain. Here, we’ve listed some well-known stablecoins, such as USDT and USD1. RWA issuance primarily involves these steps: first, deploying the smart contract on the chain; second, managing on-chain liquidity after issuance. In Hong Kong, where the regulatory environment is relatively clear, these are not the most challenging aspects.
The hardest question is actually whether anyone will buy this asset at all. So every financial institution looking to issue RWA will inevitably ask first: Do you think this asset has a market? They will definitely ask: Who will take my asset? The massive BNB ecosystem already has a huge user base, and many have chosen BNB Chain as their primary platform for RWA usage. On-chain, there are two main functions: decentralized finance and trading. Let’s start with decentralized finance. Everyone is moving toward RWA-backed lending and borrowing—today, we also have a close partner, Venus, and we’ll share details about our lending platform with the panelists. Thus, lending and borrowing is the largest use case for RWA. Second, to enable lending and borrowing, you need stablecoin liquidity, because no one will want to collateralize RWA and borrow another illiquid asset—they’ll want to collateralize RWA and borrow a liquid asset, which is a stablecoin.
Finally, there’s the yield of this asset—if you want to encourage people to engage with decentralized finance products, there must be yield involved. RWA can be divided into two types: high-yield and high-volatility. In the DeFi space, we hope to see more high-yield assets. Today, we’ve also seen project teams offering high-yield gold-related products, which we find very interesting. We want more high-yield assets to enter the BNB ecosystem, and we’re willing to leverage our ecosystem partners’ resources to help bring these high-yield assets to our 800 million users. On the other hand, we also aim to enable more trading of assets—for example, gold is a classic asset that doesn’t generate interest like government bonds, but it has strong volatility, creating demand for trading. We will help such assets connect with traders. For instance, we have wallet partners like Trust Wallet, which has 220 million global users, and well-known platforms like Ondo, which have brought U.S. stocks on-chain for trading, achieving a trading volume of $3.7 billion and offering 260 tokens, with 82% of on-chain trades occurring on their platform. Ultimately, the distribution of RWA and its application in DeFi are the greatest drivers and sources of confidence for the continued growth of this sector.
We believe this vision can be achieved together with our ecosystem partners, and we are confident that the future of RWA will continue to grow even stronger. Thank you!