RWA is really hot right now.

From the Hong Kong Web3 Carnival in early April to the recent Web3 lawyer circle, everyone is talking about RWA. It is not without reason, after all, RWA is a more reliable and secure way of "issuing coins".

A few days ago, Mankiw talked with you about China's new RWA projects, such as "Mankiw Research | Decoding China's Mainland Characteristics of RWA: Practical Characteristics, Risk Analysis and Optimization Paths", and also shared with you the current RWA gameplay, such as "Mankiw Lawyer | The Divided Web3 World, There Are At Least Three RWAs".

However, when it comes to RWA precedents and leaders, we have to turn our attention to the United States. The most representative one is probably Ondo. In particular, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) met with Ondo in the past two days to discuss the compliance issuance of tokenized securities, which really gave Ondo another big S on its report card.

*Source: SEC document screenshot

Therefore, in this article, based on Ondo's RWA model, Attorney Mankiw will talk to you about the gameplay of RWA in the United States.

Disassembly of Ondo RWA Model

The reason why Ondo is called the leading RWA project in the industry is that, in Mankiw's opinion, the most important point is that when most projects are still thinking about "what real assets to use to issue coins and raise funds", Ondo has already moved assets such as U.S. Treasury bonds and money market funds onto the chain and integrated them into the DeFi gameplay.

Take the token USDY (Ondo US Dollar Yield Token) issued by Ondo as an example. The real assets behind it are short-term US Treasury bonds and bank deposits, which means:

First, the asset has real income support.USDY is essentially a yield-based stablecoin, and investors can enjoy the income brought by US Treasury bonds or bank deposits every day;

Second, transparency and security are guaranteed. The underlying logic of the asset, such as custody, auditing, and profit distribution, still follows the compliance standards of traditional finance.

In addition, USDY adopts a bankruptcy isolation structure, and the reserve assets are completely separated from the issuing entity. Once an extreme situation occurs, investors have priority to claim the reserve assets. In addition to USDY, Ondo also issued OUSG, which is anchored to the US short-term Treasury bond fund, and its logic is similar to USDY.

Therefore, lawyer Mankiw believes that, to a certain extent, Ondo is more like moving the wealth management products and liquidation mechanisms of traditional finance to the chain, while ensuring that the returns and risks are controllable, it also gives liquidity to the assets on the chain.

Speaking of asset liquidity, we have to mention another product of the Ondo team, Flux Finance.

If issuing coins is only the first step of RWA, then how to make RWA tokens flow on the chain is the key to value-added. So, there is Flux Finance, a lending protocol exclusive to RWA.

The difference between Flux and common lending protocols (Compound, Aave) is that it allows users to use these tokenized government bonds (such as OUSG) as collateral to lend stablecoins such as USDC.

Then, the question is: Treasury bonds are 100% securities, will they violate US regulations if they are placed in DeFi?

Ondo's solution is a licensing system: not everyone can use OUSG for lending, you must pass a compliance review to ensure that you are a qualified investor. In other words, through a centralized review system, the disordered state of "any asset can be mortgaged" in DeFi is avoided, ensuring that on-chain lending activities are also carried out within a compliance framework.

This design is tantamount to setting a template for the compliance of the entire on-chain RWA+DeFi in the future.

In fact, up to this point, the gameplay of RWA has become a closed loop. But Ondo is still expanding its territory in the field of RWA - RWA is so popular that all projects want to do RWA, so how to issue it and where to circulate it? There must be an infrastructure.

Yes, Ondo is also busy at the infrastructure level. It has built its own chain, Ondo Chain, which is specially tailored for RWA. The core gameplay is:

• Permissioned validators, traditional financial institutions such as Franklin Templeton and WisdomTree serve as network nodes to ensure the security and compliance of the network;

• Open application layer, any developer can issue RWA tokens and make dApps on this chain;

• text="">Built-in oracle + cross-chain bridge,on-chain asset prices and interest rates are directly fed by verification nodes.

Such an architecture can not only meet the security and regulatory requirements of institutions, but also ensure the native openness of Web3.

Of course, with the infrastructure for everyone to issue coins, token standards must also be arranged. Therefore, Ondo announced plans to build Ondo Global Markets (Ondo GM) in 2024.

At the beginning, Ondo GM's design was relatively traditional, following the "brokerage instruction model". The tokens represent the position instructions issued by investors at traditional brokerages, and the overall structure is licensed and closed.

However, according to the Ondo blog post in February 2025, after in-depth exchanges with developers, TradFi institutions, and US regulatory officials, Ondo GM is redesigning the tokenization framework to make RWA tokens similar to stablecoins, where the tokens themselves circulate freely, but the distribution layer has embedded compliance licensing logic. In this way, any token issuer can issue compliant and flexible RWA tokens through Ondo GM.

To sum up, while others are still studying how to issue RWA assets, Ondo has already started to build a full-link system for how to smoothly graft RWA assets from the traditional financial world to the chain.

Ondo for US RWA

After talking about Ondo's RWA model, let's go a level higher and see what problems Ondo has solved and what progress it has promoted in the US RWA industry?

Attorney Mankiw believes that we can start from the following two levels:

• Market level

In the current industry, many people talk about RWA, and more narratives stay at the step of "helping traditional companies to issue coins and raise funds." But lawyer Mankiw believes that the real value of RWA has never been just issuing coins. For high-quality assets, exploring RWA is to allow assets that already have value to obtain higher liquidity opportunities and efficiency of use. The threshold is relatively loose compared to ABS, REITS, etc., and the programmable characteristics of tokens can be used to find more ways to activate asset combinations in the future. .

At this point, Ondo's design has set a standard for the industry.

Whether it is the two RWA tokens it has issued or the Ondo GM that is being built, they are building a new financial market that circulates 7*24 hours a day, mints and redeems at any time, breaking the traditional financial rule of "only opening during working hours".

Of course, circulation is only the first step. Traditional financial products are not in circulation, but their liquidity is often limited to specific time and specific platforms, and cross-market and cross-asset gameplay is basically locked. Just like you bought gold ETFs and bond funds, although these assets are "flowing" in your account, what can you do? At most, you can wait for the price to rise or fall, or change the platform to buy and sell. If you want to participate in some lending, income, derivatives and other gameplay, it is basically impossible.

Ondo's RWA design is to break these "walls". Especially the DeFi gameplay, which can pull these tokenized traditional financial assets into various application scenarios on the chain. To put it bluntly, it is to allow these assets that can only "lie down and earn" to be reorganized and increased in value on the chain, which may be the direction of exploring the true value of RWA.

• Compliance level

The logic at the market level is actually very easy to implement, as long as there is technology and funds. But in the US market, compliance is the key threshold for moving securities assets onto the chain, especially in the past few years when the US SEC has been pressing hard.

Therefore, Ondo can grow bigger and stronger under such a background, and there must be a certain degree of compliance.

First, when visiting the Ondo platform, lawyer Mankiw found that many products cannot be used under US IP, such as tokens. This means that Ondo has avoided the high-pressure areas of US supervision by actively setting limits on US users in product design.

Of course, simply blocking US IPs is not enough. Because the anchored assets come from the US market, Ondo must strictly follow US compliance standards in the links directly linked to funds such as custody, auditing, and bankruptcy isolation, even if the users are from overseas. Therefore, Ondo has taken measures in these links, such as: entrusting assets to trust institutions regulated by the United States (such as Ankura Trust), strictly reviewing the licenses and qualifications of lending methods, designing a bankruptcy isolation mechanism, and protecting investors' priority claims.

But the problem is that with the overseas market, what about the US market?

In 2025, Ondo, in conjunction with Davis Polk Law Firm, negotiated with the US SEC on the compliance of tokenized securities, and thus came up with the "wrapped security token" solution mentioned by lawyer Mankiw above, that is, embedding permission control at the distribution layer, exploring registration exemptions, market structure exemptions and other paths, trying to make tokenized securities find legal space in the US market.

That is to say, Ondo used the existing compliance framework to steadily penetrate the non-US market; on the other hand, it took the initiative to communicate with US regulators, trying to explore the possibility of RWA asset compliance in a high-pressure environment.

Mankiw's practical advice

After talking so much, let's get back to the most critical question: How does RWA work in the United States?

Attorney Mankiw's advice is: Don't fantasize about getting it all in one go,Avoidance + exploration, balance + step-by-step, is the most realistic approach:

First, the market is not short of products, but it lacks "ways to survive".The US securities market is large in size and high in asset quality, which is indeed an ideal pool for RWA. However, the regulatory barriers are also high, from securities laws, market structure, to brokers, and anti-money laundering, each link is a "minefield". Although the crypto-friendly SEC chairman is now in power, no one knows where the regulatory direction will turn next. Therefore, it is better to land in the non-US market first, and ensure that the asset side complies with the regulation.

Second, I want to learn to design more gameplay, but I also need to pay attention to the boundaries. Especially DeFi gameplay, although it is very rich, but in the US market, the more fancy the gameplay, the more sensitive the supervision. In addition, don't always think about the decentralized path. Facts have proved that if you want to comply with regulations, you still need centralized participation, especially in high-risk scenarios such as lending and derivatives. Centralized restrictions make the gameplay safer and more transparent.

Third, talk more with regulators and pave the way in advance. Don't think about bypassing it, you can't bypass it. The US market supervision is strong. If you want to expand, you must have your own compliance layout, including cooperating with law firms in advance, or forming your own legal team, and actively talking to the US SEC to explore compliance paths.

In short, first dig the two major moats of market and compliance, and then slowly find a way to break through. Don't think about getting rich overnight.