Microsoft-affiliated entrepreneurs enter RWA: Collaterize aims to reconstruct the trillion-dollar market with a "dynamic bond curve".

Reprint: Daisy, Mars Finance

The concept of "Internet Capital Markets", which was preached by Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, became hot on Solana after the explosion of Believe, while the market capitalization of Collaterize token COLLAT, another RWA project with an "ICM" concept, broke through $90 million in recent days and is now back to $54 million, and has continued to consolidate around $9 million since its launch in January. Finally, on May 18, Solana co-creator Toly retweeted Collaterize's App Demo video, which skyrocketed the token and brought the market back to the RWA project of the two former Microsoft employees.

What is ICM?

A few years ago, Solana proposed the vision of building an "on-chain Nasdaq," but as Nasdaq itself began exploring on-chain solutions, the narrative gradually shifted towards a more crypto-native "Internet Capital Market (ICM)." ICM serves as an alternative to the traditional capital market (TCM), enabling entrepreneurs to bypass venture capital and IPOs to raise funds directly from the network community through tokenization. Projects on Solana, represented by Believe App, have made it easy to launch projects and attract investments on X.

Today, "ICM" has replaced "on-chain Nasdaq" as the core narrative of Solana. Lily Liu, the chair of the Solana Foundation, has repeatedly emphasized that the goal of ICM is to create a global financial infrastructure that allows 5.5 billion internet users to participate in the capital markets without barriers. The Solana team is also working hard to build it as the key infrastructure for on-chain ICM.

At the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of the Solana ecosystem Superteam, mentioned the concepts of "Internet Capital Market" and "F.A.T. Protocol Engineering" in the Solana 2025 marketing memo. He believes that by 2024, companies will be listed directly "on the Internet" and will have access to more than a billion investors with private keys – who are using their money to vote for their desired future, not just stocks, but all asset classes, cultures, and ideas that deserve to be owned.

Data shows that the number of private equity firms needing to obtain liquidity has surged from less than 8,000 in 2005 to a demand of 30,000 by 2024, making "going public on the internet" seem urgent.

Despite many criticisms, such as lack of regulation, low barriers to entry, and the tendency to issue misleading tokens, ICM still has strong potential for mass adoption, especially in promoting Web3 to Web2 users through a clean user experience, fiat payment on-ramp, and viral narratives. To achieve long-term growth, platforms like Believe need to move beyond the short-term hype to drive founder accountability, optimize the token economic model, build DAO governance, and deliver real utility to truly transform ICM from a meme boom to a new paradigm of capital formation. After a series of product updates such as Pumpfun, Timefun, and Believe, the market now needs a more open, permissionless financing and trading ecosystem, covering a variety of assets from meme coins to NFTs to start-up projects, and Collaterize is extending ICM's business to RWA in this concept.

RWA also has its own Bonding Curve - Collaterize

The founders of Collaterize are two Frenchmen, Paul Antoine Arrighi and Pierre Hoffman, both of whom formerly worked at Microsoft. Paul initiated his own startup project, OneClight, in 2015, which primarily functioned similarly to Onkey, allowing users to access webpages without the need to "input a password." However, after a year, the project did not make significant progress, and in 2017, Paul went on to start another four-year career at Microsoft.

Another founder, Pierre, joined Microsoft in the same year, responsible for managing Microsoft partners and ensuring the accurate deployment of software asset management services in both the public and private sectors. Just a year after working there, he left Microsoft and joined the IOTA Foundation to handle business development.

Paul Antoine Arrighi showcased the Collaterize app at AWS Demo Day.

Pierre Hoffman once stated that "RWA can achieve some functionalities that were previously impossible, such as liquidity, programmability, or broader access, making it meaningful. We are beginning to see early cases in this area, especially in publicly traded RWAs like U.S. Treasury bonds or stocks, but there are greater opportunities in private assets, as these assets currently cannot enter more liquid markets."

The development status of the RWA sector in the United States, Hong Kong, and France where the Collaterize project is located.

Hoffman further stated, "If we can put these assets on-chain, within an appropriate framework, and maintain transparency, we can let the market decide which assets have sufficient value to be traded, collateralized, and used. It feels a bit premature now, but the fundamentals are gradually emerging." This aligns with the concept of "everything on-chain" that David Sacks, head of cryptocurrency affairs at the White House, has mentioned, and the types of assets supported in their documentation also reflect Collaterize's ambitions to some extent.

Collaterize supports the tokenization of any RWA, from baseball cards to real estate, from company equity to tokens. Notably, this protocol adopts a dynamic bond curve, and once the target is reached, assets can be traded on Meteora, which has currently reviewed this bond curve plan. The Solana-based protocol charges a 1% fee for transactions and a 5% fee when migrating to Meteora. Additionally, 15% of the fees will enter the Meteora liquidity pool.

Of course, the process of creating a token is not as easy as Believe or Pumpfun's Bonding Curve model, and it will go through a relatively strict review by Collaterize when the token goes live. First, the applicant needs to hold 100,000 $COLLAT and submit the application, Collaterize will review whether the company has multiple dimensions of sustainability, including having a clear business model and growth plan, being able to generate stable revenue and expand into new markets; Have a good track record of profitability and predictable cash flow, etc. In addition, certain high-value collectibles and luxury goods can be considered as assets, provided they are protected by authoritative appraisals, clear provenance, and insurance storage.

According to publicly available information, the highest value product currently collaborating with Collaterize is the upcoming real estate "Token" located in France. This collaboration is the first product launched after the partnership between Collaterize and ARP (Asset Realty Partners). ARP announced its collaboration with Collaterize at the MIPIM "International Real Estate Exhibition" in March 2025.

This comprehensive real estate service company, established in 2006, has quite a reputation. Headquartered in Paris, France, it was founded by Pascal Roth. After nearly 20 years working at a German mortgage bank, he created ARP to provide professional real estate services, and the group currently manages billions of euros in assets.

And this is not the first time they have tried to "fragment real estate assets", they entered the real estate crowdfunding market in 2020 through their holding subsidiary Beefordeal, a platform that allows investors to participate in real estate projects with a minimum capital of 1,000 euros, offering a potential return of about 10%, and as of 2023, the platform has raised more than 11 million euros.

However, even with such a luxurious lineup of collaborations in the real world, Collaterize cannot escape a paradox. At the current stage, Crypto Native users instinctively reject the censorship mechanisms, leading them to resist compliant asset protocols, while traditional asset users do not accept the interfaces and asset forms of Crypto, thus creating a market paradox of "compliance and user demand being misaligned."

According to on-chain information from Collaterize, the blockchain's activity level remains very low four months after the project's establishment. As of today, the total transaction count is only 70,000, and the total number of addresses is just 381. When comparing this figure alone, it is even less than the number of holders of a meme coin with a market value in the hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, RWA still has a rather long development period ahead. The market potential behind it is $75 trillion, which is limitless, but there is significant uncertainty regarding regulations, infrastructure, and scrutiny.

But a new era always requires new explorers, and Collaterize, as one of them, is also searching for the treasures that may exist in this boundless ocean.