KONET Deep Dive: How a Payment-Type Layer 1 Connects RWA, Digital Assets, and On-Chain Financial Ecosystems?

The crypto industry is undergoing a profound shift from “asset definitions” to “asset paradigms.”

Over the past decade, digital assets were almost synonymous with Bitcoin and Ethereum—crypto tokens made up the overwhelming majority of this emerging market. However, the picture for 2026 looks entirely different. New asset categories—on-chain claims, in-game assets, tokenized real-world assets (Real-World Assets, RWA), and digital entitlement credentials—are rapidly flowing into the on-chain ecosystem. Since the beginning of 2025, the size of tokenized RWA on-chain has grown by 589%, exceeding $31.4 billion. As of June 30, 2026, the publicly distributed RWA market size excluding stablecoins reached $32.65 billion, up about 50.7% from the start of the year.

Asset boundaries are expanding—but is the infrastructure supporting the circulation of these assets already ready? Asset issuance, ownership confirmation, transaction flow and application connectivity—these four links form the complete lifecycle of digital assets from “being created” to “being used.” This article starts from the evolution of digital asset definitions, analyzes the core issues that blockchain infrastructure needs to address, and, taking KONET as an example, explores practical directions for digital asset application infrastructure.

Digital asset definitions are being rewritten

If we go back to 2017, the market’s understanding of “digital assets” was highly unified—they were cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin as a store of value, Ethereum as a smart contract platform, and thousands of tokens built around speculation and narratives together made up the full landscape of digital assets.

But this perception was quickly shattered between 2024 and 2026.

On-chain claims are becoming a new member of the digital asset universe. From soulbound tokens (Soulbound Token, SBT) to decentralized identity (Decentralized Identity, DID) systems, non-financial attribute assets such as on-chain behavior records, credit scoring, and skill certifications are starting to gain market recognition. The value of these assets is not in the trading consideration, but in the reputation, permissions, or credentials they represent—digital expressions of “rights to use,” rather than “ownership.”

Game assets moving on-chain also cannot be ignored. From Axie Infinity to StepN, from single in-game items to asset standards for cross-game interoperability, the financial attributes and utility attributes of game assets are blending. According to DappRadar data, in the first half of 2026, the monthly average number of active wallets for on-chain games has remained above 3 million, and the total value of in-game assets exceeds $4.5 billion.

RWA assets are the most explosive category in this wave of expansion. Tokenized U.S. treasuries grew from $9.07 billion to $14.82 billion in the first half of 2026, an increase of about 63.4%. Tokenized stocks rose from $670 million to $1.80 billion over the same period, while the number of holders increased from 122,000 to 395,000. Research by a16z Crypto shows that tokenized stocks rose from $329 million to $1.7 billion over the past year, with most of the incremental growth coming from assets newly onboarded on-chain. This market is shifting from experiments within the crypto circle to an entry point for Wall Street.

Digital entitlements cover a broader range of entitlement-type assets, including carbon credit, intellectual property revenue rights, membership rights, and profit distribution rights. Their common feature is that their value does not depend on the volatility of the underlying crypto market; instead, it is anchored to some real-world cash flow or usage value.

From BTC and ETH to on-chain claims, game assets, RWA, and digital entitlements, the definition of digital assets is expanding from “crypto-native assets” to “digital property rights that can represent value on-chain.” This is not only an increase in asset categories, but a fundamental shift in asset logic—from speculation-driven to utility-driven, and from circulating within the crypto ecosystem to interfacing with real-economy systems.

Four-layer capability requirements for blockchain infrastructure

As asset categories expand, requirements for the underlying infrastructure are also upgrading. For digital assets to move from “being created” to “being used,” at least four layers of infrastructure capabilities are needed.

Asset issuance is the starting point. Whether it’s issuing a new crypto token, creating an on-chain claim, or tokenizing a U.S. treasury, you need a standardized issuance framework. Ethereum’s standards such as ERC-20, ERC-721, and ERC-1155 address issuance issues for fungible and non-fungible assets, but when it comes to the compliance needed for RWA—KYC/AML integration (know your customer/anti-money laundering), permission management, and more—existing standards still fall short. In July 2026, SBI Group, together with DigiFT and Startale Group, launched a proof of concept for tokenized securities based on the Japanese yen stablecoin JPYSC. On an Ethereum testnet, it demonstrated instant settlement and automated dividend distribution for a tokenized Japanese stock fund. This marks institutional-grade asset issuance moving from theory to practice.

Ownership confirmation is the prerequisite for asset transfer. Blockchain’s immutability is naturally suitable for ownership recordkeeping, but the challenge is: how do on-chain records establish an effective correspondence with off-chain legal rights? On July 15, 2026, DTCC, along with 25 institutions including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, and BlackRock, completed a live-trade pilot of tokenized securities. Assets such as Microsoft stock, Invesco QQQ, and SPDR S&P 500 ETF were converted into blockchain tokens. Last year, DTCC handled securities trades totaling $47 trillion, with custodial assets of about $114 trillion. When institutions begin migrating ownership confirmation onto-chain, compliance and interoperability requirements for infrastructure will be raised to an entirely new level.

Transaction flow determines asset liquidity and market depth. Traditional centralized exchanges have efficiency advantages, but they suffer from single points of failure and transparency issues. Decentralized exchanges solve transparency problems, but still face bottlenecks in liquidity aggregation and cross-chain trading. More importantly, as asset types expand from homogeneous tokens to heterogeneous assets such as RWA, claims, and entitlements, transaction flow needs more flexible matching engines and pricing mechanisms. According to RWA market half-year reports, in the first half of 2026, the number of holders of publicly distributed RWA assets increased from 579,000 to 947,000, up about 63.6% over six months. Transaction-flow infrastructure must be able to support this rapid expansion in user scale.

Application connectivity is the final stage for realizing the value of digital assets. The purpose of asset issuance is to be used—whether as a payment instrument, collateral, a governance credential, or a carrier of revenue rights. Application connectivity means blockchain infrastructure must build smooth data and value interaction channels with DeFi protocols, payment systems, game engines, enterprise ERP (enterprise resource planning) systems, and more. Broadridge’s survey shows that 84% of financial institutions list asset tokenization as a strategic priority, and 68% of respondents believe tokenization will at least partially reshape financial markets within the next three to five years. This implies that demand for application connectivity will come not only from crypto-native projects, but also from IT system overhauls by traditional financial institutions.

KONET: One practical direction for digital asset application infrastructure

Against the backdrop of digital assets evolving from “crypto tokens” into “diverse assets,” KONET offers a worth-watching sample of an infrastructure practice.

Positioning and architecture. KONET is a high-performance Proof-of-Stake (Proof-of-Stake) Layer 1 blockchain with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility. Unlike most Layer 1 networks that focus on general smart contract development, KONET’s positioning places greater emphasis on infrastructure for payment and settlement scenarios. Its ecosystem consists of multiple core modules: the KONET mainnet, the native token KONET, an on-chain receipt system, KONWallet, a cross-chain bridge, and KONET LAB.

Value in the asset issuance dimension. KONET’s EVM compatibility means developers can migrate asset issuance standards from the Ethereum ecosystem (ERC-20, ERC-721, etc.) at low cost, while its focus on payment scenarios gives issued assets inherent settlement-efficiency advantages. The KONET network adopts a near-instant finality design, enabling transactions to be settled within seconds. For payment-type assets or in-game assets that require high-frequency turnover, this efficiency advantage is practically meaningful.

Practical implementation in the ownership confirmation and transaction flow dimensions. One of KONET’s differentiating features is its on-chain receipt system. Every payment transaction generates a verifiable and tamper-proof on-chain record. This mechanism not only serves transparency requirements for payment scenarios, but also provides a standardized framework for proof of ownership across a broader range of asset types—whether it is records of RWA revenue distribution or the issuance and verification of on-chain claims. At the transaction-flow layer, KONET’s cross-chain bridge design enables asset interoperability with other blockchain networks, to a degree mitigating the liquidity fragmentation problem across multi-chain ecosystems.

Exploration in the application connectivity dimension. KONET’s ecosystem building focuses on payments, settlement, verification, and commercial applications. Its KONET LAB development platform aims to lower the technical barrier for enterprises to integrate blockchain payments and asset management. From industry trends, Web3’s core driving force is shifting from asset speculation toward real-world applications centered on stablecoins and asset tokenization. KONET builds an application connectivity layer with payments as the entry point, aligning directionally with this trend.

Market performance and scale. As of July 23, 2026, according to Gate market data, KONET is priced at $0.023920, with a market cap of approximately $11.0082 million, ranking 1,021st. Its increase over the past 7 days is 41.60%, its change over the past 30 days is -28.81%, and its increase over the past year is 4.21%. The 24-hour trading volume is $35.4k, and the total supply is 1.00 billion tokens. Market sentiment is neutral. At this scale, KONET is a small-to-mid project in the crypto market, but there is a structural alignment between its positioning in payment infrastructure and the trend toward digital asset diversification.

It should be noted that KONET’s current market performance is still influenced by overall crypto market sentiment. On July 23, 2026, Bitcoin was around $65,797, with a 24-hour drop of 0.78%; Ethereum was around $1,925.92. The broader market is in a choppy range, and price volatility is generally more pronounced for tokens with smaller market capitalizations. KONET’s -28.81% drop over the last 30 days alongside its +41.60% gain over the last 7 days indicates relatively high price elasticity. This reflects both the upside potential when the market recognizes its direction, and the downside risks under relatively limited liquidity conditions.

Conclusion

The boundaries of digital assets are rapidly pushing outward. From BTC and ETH to on-chain claims, game assets, RWA, and digital entitlements, this expansion is not only a richer set of asset categories—it is also a structural transformation across the entire crypto industry from “asset speculation” to “asset utility.”

This transition places systematic demands on blockchain infrastructure: asset issuance needs compliance frameworks and standardized protocols; ownership confirmation needs legal linkage between on-chain and off-chain systems; transaction flow needs to support flexible pricing and efficient clearing for heterogeneous assets; and application connectivity needs to connect the data-and-value pathways between the crypto ecosystem and traditional commercial systems.

As a Layer 1 blockchain focused on payment and settlement scenarios, KONET provides concrete practical paths across dimensions such as standardized asset issuance, an on-chain receipt mechanism for ownership confirmation, cross-chain interoperability for transaction flow, and a developer ecosystem for application connectivity. Its EVM compatibility and near-instant finality design give it some infrastructure value in the trend toward digital asset diversification.

Of course, infrastructure competition for tokenized digital assets is still at an early stage. Ethereum continues to lead in the institutional-grade tokenized asset market, with regulated products running on-chain at about $15.5 billion. Solana, leveraging high performance and low fees, attracts collaborations from institutions such as SBI Holdings. Emerging Layer 1 and Layer 2 projects are also continuing to explore within their respective niches. Whether KONET can build a sufficiently deep moat in the vertical payment scenario still needs to be observed as its ecosystem expands, developer adoption progresses, and market validation continues.

What can be confirmed is that the evolution of digital assets from “crypto tokens” to “on-chain finance” will not stop. Infrastructure competition, at its core, is about different answers to the question of how future digital assets are created, confirmed, transferred, and used—and this question is only just beginning to be addressed seriously.

FAQ

Q: What is digital asset tokenization?

Digital asset tokenization is the process of expressing and recording the ownership or revenue rights of real-world assets (such as stocks, bonds, real estate, and artworks, etc.) or digital-native entitlements (such as on-chain claims and game assets) in the form of blockchain tokens. Tokenization makes assets programmable, divisible, and tradable 24/7, while also reducing settlement costs and time.

Q: How large is the RWA tokenization market currently?

As of June 30, 2026, the publicly distributed RWA market size excluding stablecoins reached $32.65 billion. The size of on-chain tokenized RWA has grown by 589% since the beginning of 2025 and has surpassed $31.4 billion. Forecasts indicate that by 2030, the overall tokenized asset market may expand to between $10 trillion and $18 trillion.

Q: What role does KONET play in digital asset infrastructure?

KONET is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain focusing on payment and settlement scenarios. Its core functions include stablecoin settlement, an on-chain receipt system, near-instant transaction finality, and cross-chain asset interoperability. In the context of digital assets expanding from crypto tokens to diverse assets, KONET is positioned to support the infrastructure layer for payments, verification, and commercial applications.

Q: What is the attitude of traditional financial institutions toward asset tokenization?

According to a Broadridge survey in July 2026 of 200 North American financial services executives, 84% of financial institutions list asset tokenization as a strategic priority. 68% of respondents believe tokenization will at least partially reshape financial markets within the next three to five years. Institutions such as BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Franklin Templeton have launched tokenized funds or settlement services.

Q: What are the main challenges facing digital asset tokenization?

The main challenges include: regulatory uncertainty (listed as the most common obstacle), the operational complexity of integrating blockchain technology into existing financial systems, insufficient real on-chain activity for tokenized assets (56% of tokenized RWA has zero weekly on-chain activity), and structural issues where on-chain liquidity is concentrated in a small number of leading assets.