The concept of "Internet Capital Markets", which was preached by Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, became hot on Solana after the explosion of Believe, while the market capitalization of Collaterize token, Collaterize Token, another RWA project with an "ICM" concept, broke through $90 million in recent days and has now recovered to $54 million, and has continued to consolidate around $9 million since its launch in January. Finally, on May 18, Solana co-creator Toly retweeted Collaterize's App Demo video, which skyrocketed the token and brought the market back to the RWA project of the two former Microsoft employees.
What is ICM?
A few years ago, Solana put forward the vision of building an "on-chain NASDAQ", but as NASDAQ itself explores the on-chain, the narrative focus has gradually shifted to the more crypto-native "Internet Capital Market (ICM)". ICM is an alternative to traditional capital markets (TCMs), enabling entrepreneurs to raise funds directly from the online community through tokenization, bypassing VCs and IPOs. The Solana project, represented by the Believe App, makes it easy to complete project issuance and investment on X.
Today, "ICM" has replaced "on-chain NASDAQ" as the core narrative of Solana. Lily Liu, Chairman of the Solana Foundation, has repeatedly emphasized that ICM's goal is to build a global financial infrastructure that will enable 5.5 billion internet users to participate in capital markets without barriers. The Solana team is also working hard to build it as a critical infrastructure for on-chain ICM.
At the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of the Solana ecosystem Superteam, mentioned the concepts of "Internet Capital Market" and "F.A.T. Protocol Engineering" in the Solana 2025 marketing memo. He believes that by 2024, companies will be listed directly "on the Internet" and will have access to more than a billion investors with private keys – who are using their money to vote for their desired future, not just stocks, but all asset classes, cultures, and ideas that deserve to be owned.
And the data shows that from less than 8,000 private equity firms in 2005 that needed liquidity from somewhere to 30,000 in 2024, it seems that "going public on the Internet" is becoming imminent.
Despite the many criticisms that persist such as lack of regulation, low barriers to entry, and the ease of issuing misleading tokens, ICM still has strong potential for mass adoption, especially in promoting Web3 to Web2 users through a clean user experience, fiat payment on-ramp, and viral narratives. To achieve long-term growth, platforms like Believe need to move beyond the short-term hype to drive founder accountability, optimize the token economic model, build DAO governance, and deliver real utility to truly transform ICM from a meme boom to a new paradigm of capital formation. After a series of product updates such as Pumpfun, Timefun, and Believe, the market now needs a more open, permissionless financing and trading ecosystem, covering a variety of assets from meme coins to NFTs to start-up projects, and Collaterize is extending ICM's business to RWA in this concept.
RWA also has its own Bonding Curve – Collaterize
Collaterize was founded by two Frenchmen, Paul Antoine Arrighi and Pierre Hoffman, both of whom worked for Microsoft, and Paul had started his own startup project OneClight in 2015, which was similar to Onkey, allowing users to access the web without having to "enter a password". A year later, the project didn't make much progress, and in 2017 Paul moved on to another four-year career at Microsoft.
Another founder, Pierre, joined Microsoft in the same year to manage Microsoft partners and ensure the accurate deployment of software asset management services in both the public and private sectors. After only one year at Microsoft, Pierre joined the IOTA Foundation to lead business development.
Paul Antoine Arrighi showcases Collaterize's app at AWS Demo Day
Pierre Hoffman has said, "RWA makes sense because it enables some of the things that were not possible before, such as mobility, programmability, or broader access. We're starting to see early cases of this, especially on publicly traded RWAs like Treasuries or equities, but there are greater opportunities in private assets that don't have access to more liquid markets at the moment."
Developments in the RWA sector in the United States, Hong Kong, and France, where Collaterize is located
Hoffman further said, "If we can get these assets on-chain, in the right framework, and with transparency. We can let the market decide which assets have enough value to trade, collateral and use. It feels like it's too early, but the fundamentals are emerging", echoing the concept of "everything on the chain" mentioned by David Sacks, the head of crypto at the White House, and the types of assets supported in their documentation are somewhat indicative of Collaterize's ambitions.
Collaterize supports the ability to tokenize any RWA, from baseball cards to real estate, from company equity to tokens. The more unique version of this protocol is the use of a dynamic bond curve, which allows the asset to be traded on Meteora once the target is reached, and the bond curve scheme has been reviewed by Meteora. Solana-based protocols charge a 1% fee on transactions and a 5% fee when migrating to Meteora. Another 15% of the fees will go into the Meteora liquidity pool.
Of course, the process of creating a token is not as easy as Believe or Pumpfun's Bonding Curve model, and it will go through a relatively strict review by Collaterize when the token is listed. First, applicants need to hold 100,000 $COLLAT and submit their applications, Collaterize will approve whether the company is sustainable across multiple dimensions, including having a clear business model and growth plan, generating stable revenue and expanding into new markets; Have a good track record of profitability and predictable cash flow, etc. In addition, certain high-value collectibles and luxury goods may be considered as assets, provided they are protected by authoritative appraisals, clear provenance, and insurance storage.
According to public information, it can be known that the highest-value product of Collaterize's current cooperation is the upcoming issuance of real estate "Token" in France, which is the first product launched by Collaterize after the cooperation with ARP (Asset Realty Partners), which announced its cooperation with Collaterize at the MIPIM "International Real Estate Exhibition" in March 2025.
Founded in 2006, this integrated real estate services company is also a small company, headquartered in Paris, France, and founded by Pascal Roth. After nearly 20 years at a German mortgage bank, he created ARP to provide professional real estate services, and the group currently manages billions of euros in assets.
And this is not the first time they have tried to "fragment real estate assets", having entered the real estate crowdfunding market in 2020 through its holding subsidiary Beefordeal, a platform that allows investors to participate in real estate projects with a minimum capital of €1,000, offering a potential return of around 10%, and as of 2023, the platform has raised more than €11 million.
But even with such a lavish lineup of real-world collaborations, Collaterize can't escape a paradox. At this stage, Crypto Native users will instinctively reject the review mechanism, causing them to reject the compliant asset protocol, while traditional asset users do not accept the interface and asset form of Crypto, thus forming such a market paradox of "double mismatch between compliance and user needs".
According to Collaterize's on-chain information, the activity of the blockchain is still very low four months after the establishment of the project, until today, the total number of transactions tx is only 70,000, and the total number of addresses is only 381, if you only compare this value, it is not even as good as the number of holders of a meme coin with a market value of hundreds of thousands. In any case, RWA still has a long period of development, and although the market potential of $75 trillion behind it is limitless, there is a great deal of uncertainty in terms of regulations, infrastructure, and scrutiny.
But new times always need new explorers, and Collaterize, as a member of it, is also looking for "possible" treasures in this endless ocean.
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