Plume, a tokenization platform supporting digital real-world assets (RWAs), recently shared an update on the platform’s performance.
Plume was founded in 2023 as a layer 2 blockchain focused on RWAs. The company was founded by CEO Chris Yin, previously at Rainforest and Scale Ventures; CBO Teddy Pornprinya, previously at Coinbase and Binance; and CTO Eugene Shen, a former engineer at dydx and Robinhood.
Plume received a $10 million seed round in 2024, led by Haun Ventures. A $20 million Series A followed later that year.
The Plume mainnet was fully launched in June 2025.
During a hearing before the House Financial Services Committee on tokenization, B. Salman Banaei, GC of Plume, shared insights into Plume’s development since it went live last year. Banaei previously worked at both the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, so he understands the nuances of financial regulation quite well.
According to Baineai, since last June, Plume has attracted over 220 tokenization projects, including top firms pursuing tokenization, such as Apollo, Hamilton Lane, and WisdomTree. To date, Plume has enabled over $350 million in distributed asset value and approximately 260,000 RWA wallets. Plume reportedly represents almost half of all global non-stablecoin RWA wallets.
Banaei believes that “Tokenization can allow for more timely and effective asset transfers and safe custody. It can improve market efficiencies and reduce dependencies on third-party intermediaries.”
For this reason, it is imperative that the US support tokenization. He provided six principles for policymakers to pursue in support of tokenization. These are:
- Tokenized assets should enable the same or better outcomes, and systems should replicate or exceed the investor protections achieved by existing regulation.
- Accountability—entities that have an essential role in delivering financial services should be accountable.
- Prioritization—policy attention should focus on asset classes where tokenization delivers the greatest net benefit.
- Do no harm—reforms to well-functioning markets should be carefully calibrated to avoid fragmenting existing liquidity.
- Durability—regulatory change should provide lasting legal certainty, not time-limited exemptions
- Proportionality – regulatory requirements should be calibrated to the actual risks posed by a given activity.
Baineai also shared his perspective as to why tokenization is not growing exponentially in the US.
- Regulatory uncertainty is a significant barrier to tokenization adoption, with 66% of institutional investors citing this as a reason not to invest in digital assets.
- Punitive capital surcharges for global banks for tokenized assets on permissionless blockchains under Basel is a formidable deterrent to institutional adoption.
- Only recently has stablecoin legislation come online, and in many cases, it is still in the implementation phase – as in the U.S., for example, but also Hong Kong and elsewhere
- Tokenized securities on public blockchains have only recently become permissible.
- The macroeconomic rate environment has blunted the value proposition of onchain capital markets even for native crypto users. U.S. money market funds returned stable yields of 4.2–5.3% APY over 2023–2024, while base stablecoin lending rates cluster around 3-4%, removing the arbitrage incentive that would otherwise pull new capital onchain.
- Liquidity fragmentation across chains has materially impaired market development.
- Limited selection of yield-bearing tokenized assets makes onchain capital markets less attractive, reducing their appeal to institutional investors.
Most insiders foresee a future in which all securities are tokenized and a new generation of novel assets can emerge as investable
opportunities. What is missing is the bespoke rules and approval of policymakers.
