At the inaugural Hong Kong Web3 Festival attended by over 10,000 web3 community members, developers, entrepreneurs, and media partners, Chainlink Labs Chief Ecosystem Growth Officer Adelyn Zhou delivered a keynote speech on how the fast-moving tokenized asset space, enabled by Chainlink’s web3 services platform, is poised to become the future of finance.
Tokenized assets are blockchain-based assets that represent real-world tradable assets and confer a number of opportunities, such as fractionalization and programmability, that exponentially increase the accessibility and utility of illiquid, tangible assets.
Citing a recent report from the Boston Consulting Group, which projects the asset tokenization market could surpass $16 trillion by 2030, Zhou emphasized numerous possibilities for tokenizing “literally anything” on-chain.
“Whether it’s stocks and equities, to IP and copyright, to fine works of art, to precious metals like gold and silver, or even to that really nice 23-year-old bottle of Pappy Van Winkle locked in your spirits cabinet – yes, even that can be tokenized,” she said.
Having worked in the web3 space since before the birth of decentralized finance (DeFi), Zhou said web3 technology has now matured to support tokenized assets as the next form of finance. She believes the benefits of tokenization – reduced costs, better transparency, increased accessibility, and enhanced liquidity – will fuel innovative financial products and systems so advanced they are still inconceivable today.
She highlighted two Chainlink products – Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), slated for release this year, and Proof of Reserve – that play a key role in overcoming two of the biggest hurdles – connectivity and verification – on the road toward the future of tokenized finance.
While CCIP is being developed as secure middleware that would allow tokenized assets to flow freely throughout the entire multi-blockchain economy, Proof of Reserve allows on-chain assets such as $2 billion stablecoin TUSD to publicly verify how their assets are collateralized in real time.
Working with Chainlink’s diverse ecosystem of over 1,700 projects building new use cases across industries such as DeFi, insurance, gaming, and NFTs, Zhou said interest in tokenized assets extends beyond small startups to some of the oldest and largest tech giants in the world.
From her point of view, trillions of dollars circulating in the world’s traditional markets are “ripe for innovation” in the tokenized economy.
“We are at a transformational time,” she concluded. “We are at the cusp of innovation. There is so much happening here.”
Watch Adelyn Zhou’s full keynote speech at the inaugural Hong Kong Web3 Festival.