Real World Assets Will Benefit From Permissionless Data Flows

Real World Assets (RWA) have gained a lot of attention and are often discussed as the next big thing in crypto with predictions suggesting it could grow into a $16 Trillion dollar opportunity by 2030.

At their core, RWAs revolve around creating a virtual investment vehicle on the blockchain that links to anything other than a crypto token or an NFT. Think of physical assets like real estate, precious metals, commodities like gold and oil, art, collectibles, and even intangible assets that live off-chain

The key challenge for Real World Assets is ensuring that physical assets can be conclusively proven to exist and accurately represent their value on-chain.

The Real World On-Chain

The current data integration framework involves three main players: the asset originator, an auditor, and the data consumer (end users). This process is complicated, centralized, and time-consuming, with added costs at each step.

However, a challenge arises when we try to integrate data for RWAs. These assets require a lot of custom data integrations. For example, the role of an auditor is to serve as a trusted third party that verifies ownership of on-chain, tokenized RWAs. In the case of real estate, you may even need a notary to verify the authenticity of a title deed for a property before it goes through the process of tokenization. But notaries don't just hand over data; Oracles have to jump through hoops to connect with them, bring them on board, and get them to agree to provide data through them.

It's like a long chain of handshakes before we can even access or query the data on the blockchain. This slows things down and adds extra costs and points of failure.

Permissionless Data Layers are Key

This is where the permissionless data layer comes in. Rather than dealing with intermediary oracles, a data layer allows data providers and custodians to plug in directly. This eliminates the need for complicated contracts with fixed prices and terms before sharing data on the blockchain. This direct exchange also removes the deeds that come with contract negotiations which get passed down to projects needing the data and eventually users. In a permissionless system, data providers also have greater control over what they bring to the table, and the contract is between them and the underlying code.

For example, SEDA is a data transport layer that simplifies the process for data providers to seamlessly integrate their data. It removes the centralization that happens around intermediaries and time and cost-consuming multi-step processes to get off-chain data on-chain.

As a result, it saves both time and expenses, significantly reducing the hurdles that real-world asset data providers, builders, and consumers typically face when trying to get their data on-chain. In addition, being multichain means that data providers aren’t limited by specific ecosystems.

Easier Access Means More Diversity

Removing these hurdles creates the potential for any organization or individual to take on the role of a data provider. This opens up the opportunity for a wider variety of sources of information, as it extends opportunities beyond those who can invest significant time and money.

A broader pool of data leads to a better understanding of the real value and status of various assets. This diversity of perspective and data points forms a more accurate and comprehensive representation of the real world on-chain.

SEDA plays an important role in fostering this deeper level of accuracy and availability through its permissionless plug-in approach. This enables data providers to deploy data feeds on-chain and users to plug into any feed on any chain.

To realize the full potential of Real World Asset Tokenization, there can’t be a reliance on intermediaries, permissioned infrastructure, and physical contracts.

For Web3 to be permissionless and provide the real-world use cases it is capable of, it has to start right at the foundation with a decentralized, open data transport layer.