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 tokenizing real worlds assets (RWA). Other investors included Lightspeed Faction, Haun Ventures, Galaxy Ventures, Hashkey, 280 Capital, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel and Reciprocal Ventures.
The blockchain is planning to launch in the new year, but already has 180 protocols building on the network, which it claims to represent $4 billion in assets. It has coined the name RWAfi, as a play on the concept of DeFi. Where DeFi offers opportunities to earn yield, borrow, lend, trade and more, based on native crypto assets, Plume aims to provide the same functionalities for tokenized assets in its ‘composable RWAfi’ ecosystem.
At launch its target market is crypto natives, but with the Series A it is already eyeing institutions. While the blockchain is permissionless, it has a built-in AML compliance mechanism that includes a network of compliance partners. It says its tokenization engine Arc supports regulatory requirements, and has already signed agreements with regulated secondary trading venues including Texture Capital, tZERO, Openfinance and Archax.
This week it signed a deal with DigiFT the Singapore regulated firm which is the primary distributor for the UBS uMint USD money market fund. While uMint is native to Ethereum, the goal is to make it available to Plume users.
“Connecting institutional assets seamlessly with DeFi is a key part of our RWAfi vision. Through DigiFT’s regulated rails, we can bring battle-tested institutional products like UBS’s money market fund directly to DeFi users and protocols,” said Chris Yin, CEO of Plume Network.
