Plume aims to enable people to seamlessly and compliantly integrate real-world assets (RWAs) such as real estate and collectibles onto blockchains.
As blockchain competes for mainstream acceptance in the United States Congress, compliance-oriented crypto projects are optimistic about the potential for a favorable regulatory environment to ignite a surge in blockchain-based real-world assets (RWAs).
Plume, a promising startup, has secured $10 million in seed funding to launch the first layer-2 blockchain specifically designed for RWAs. This funding round was led by Haun Ventures, with contributions from Galaxy Ventures, Superscrypt, A Capital, SV Angel, Portal Ventures, and Reciprocal Ventures.
Plume’s Ethereum-based blockchain aims to simplify the process of bringing off-chain assets onto blockchains. Its protocol streamlines the complex paperwork, custodial requirements, and other tasks necessary to tokenize assets like real estate, art, and certain financial instruments.
“The RWA industry is one of the fastest-growing verticals in crypto today, but a crucial gap remains – there hasn’t been a permissionless blockchain with full-stack RWA infrastructure for compliant asset deployment,” the company stated to CoinDesk. “Plume’s robust DeFi ecosystem enables users to earn yield, borrow, lend, trade, and speculate with leverage on RWAs.”
Plume leverages Arbitrum Nitro, a framework for building layer-2 “rollup” chains that efficiently write transactions to Ethereum with low fees. This technology ensures seamless interoperability and asset swapping across other chains in the Arbitrum Orbit ecosystem.
“When we talked to protocols, they all said it takes six months to two years to get an asset on-chain before coding for their protocol,” said Plume co-founder Chris Yin in an interview with CoinDesk. “That’s an inefficient approach – we need to standardize it.”
Plume offers comprehensive features for tokenizing assets, including setting up entities, managing custody, handling wallets, automating processes, managing cap tables, on/off-ramping, and performing KYC. “We integrate these products, provide a user-friendly UI, and ensure modularity,” explained Yin.
Currently, over 80 projects are deploying RWAs on Plume’s private test network, covering collectibles, private credit, and real estate. Yin expects to open the testnet to the public within a month, with a full release to follow.