The influx of investor funding into crypto’s “real world assets” sector shows no signs of slowing, with MANTRA Chain, a planned network for transferring tokenized real estate and other assets, raising $11 million.
MANTRA, a Middle East-focused project, is nearing completion on obtaining licenses from Dubai’s crypto regulator VARA, according to founder John Patrick Mullin.These approvals will be critical to MANTRA’s efforts to develop and host a suite of compliance-focused solutions for issuing and trading RWAs.Many companies in the industry and beyond believe RWAs will become a multibillion-dollar business by the end of the decade.For this to happen, much of the trade in “traditional” asset classes that are widely popular among investors (real estate, stocks, and possibly even art) will have to shift to blockchains. It hasn’t happened yet.
Nonetheless, organizations such as MANTRA have amassed funds to corner this industry before it takes off.Part of that entails determining who may engage in RWA trading, whether it is a free-for-all (like meme coin trading) or more structured (like the stock market).
The vision Mullin described to CoinDesk is a more restrictive or “permissioned” environment. “You do have to go through an on-boarding process to get into this walled garden,” Mullin said. “But once you’re in, you’re in.”
Shorooq Partners, an early-stage technology investor, led MANTRA’s round, which also included Three Point Capital, Forte Securities, Virtuzone, Hex Trust, and GameFi Ventures, according to the news release.Mullin said he intends to start on another fundraising roadshow soon.
The MANTRA network is not yet operational, hence no RWAs can be issued or traded at this time.However, it is envisaged for Cosmos, a network of closely linked but separate blockchains.According to MANTRA papers, Cosmos does not yet have a specific “app-chain” for trading tokenized RWAs.Mullin stated that once launched, MANTRA will target the “crypto native” community, or those who are already familiar with cryptocurrency, decentralized exchanges, on-chain borrowing and lending, and so on.
Nonetheless, Mullin, who stated that he had to reorient his prior crypto business ideas following the many industry implosions of 2022, acknowledged the difficulties associated in developing a durable product for RWAs, a sector that, despite its lofty forecasts, has yet to take off.
“Right now we’re seemingly in a bull market but three months ago it wasn’t,” he said.
He’s choosing what he views as the safest option in an extremely dangerous landscape: “create and become the platform that other people use to build their own RWA businesses.”
“We don’t want to exchange every asset, we don’t want to build every dapp, we have to be at the protocol level, too,” he said.