Defactor’s 2025
Recently, Defactor’s co-founder Sharif Bouktila appeared on an X-Space with Rypto to discuss Defactor’s 2025 milestones and our plans for 2026. Here’s a breakdown for those who missed it;
RWA.io Collaboration
By the end of 2025, Defactor’s progress could be measured less by announcements and more by where its work showed up. One of the clearest examples was its collaboration on the RWA.io research paper. That contribution came from the practical side of the market rather than the abstract one. While the report sets out to examine fragmentation, interoperability, and on-chain risk as systemic challenges, Defactor contributed from the vantage point of a team already navigating those realities in production. The paper traces how capital, data, and assets fracture across chains and why that fragmentation quietly erodes efficiency, trust, and scale. Grounded in implementation insight rather than theory alone, the research frames interoperability not as a feature, but as a prerequisite, reflecting the structural choices Defactor made throughout 2025 as RWAs moved from ignition to endurance.
Overall, the questions the paper raises around structure, interoperability, and risk will continue to define the next phase of RWAs, shaping what gets built long after discussions end.
RWAs Need Their “EDI Moment”
During the X Space, Sharif referenced RWAs needing their own “EDI moment,” it was more than an analogy. Electronic Data Interchange standardized global trade. By giving companies a shared language for orders, invoices, and settlement, EDI removed friction from cross-border commerce and allowed scale to happen without coordination at every step, something largely taken for granted in 2025. RWAs face a similar challenge today. Assets can be tokenized, but without common standards for how they move, settle, and remain compliant across systems, growth stays fragmented and therefore inefficient. Contrary to RWA's more anarchic roots, which are always good for lighting the firework, rapid experimentation, fast growth, and attention by default. What RWA lacks is not ignition, but the structure needed to carry that energy forward once the industry takes flight.
RWAs won’t reach global scale through more launches, they’ll scale when shared standards make movement, settlement, and trust routine rather than remarkable.
Forming Financial Rails
The discussion on Defactor.io picked up where the firework analogy leaves off. Ignition was never the problem, RWAs have always been good at producing the initial burst. What Defactor.io provides is everything that comes after: the structure that holds the shape of the explosion long enough for it to mean something. Moving beyond an API-only approach, Defactor.io brings tokenization, capital formation, and liquidity into a single platform designed for real use, not spectacle. Now in final testing and launching first on Base, it allows teams to mint asset-backed tokens, raise capital through launch pools, list on Base-native DEXs, and access lending and borrowing from day one. Already stress-tested with Defactor’s own capital and powering roughly 40 pools on RWA.io, the platform reflects a simple belief Sharif returned to: as assets move on-chain, liquidity must follow. Credit is what keeps the fire burning and without it, the light fades too quickly.
As RWAs move on-chain at scale, the focus turns to how assets are issued, funded, and kept liquid over time. By bringing token minting, capital formation, lending, and borrowing into a single platform, Defactor.io is being built with real markets in mind.
Access, the Missing Multiplier
We then turned to the question of access, the focus shifted away from infrastructure and toward who it ultimately serves. One of Defactor’s goals is to open the long tail of participation, especially for underbanked users and emerging economies that have historically been locked out of investment opportunities. The recent rapid adoption of stablecoins in these regions is indicative that the demand is already there: people want reliable, digital ways to store value and participate in global markets. RWAs extend that path forward by connecting those users to real, yield-bearing assets in a trusted, transparent way. Even at the smallest scale, the idea of a one-dollar RWA for example, the implication is the same: given sufficient infrastructure, RWAs can lower barriers without breaking trust.
You can hear a firework even when you’re far from where it was launched, but access is what determines whether you ever see the light. For RWAs, expanding trusted, low-barrier participation is how the impact travels beyond the center and reaches everyone else.
RWAs for $1: Expanding the Space
Participation has always been the quiet fault line in RWAs. Not whether assets could be tokenized, but who was actually allowed to take part once they were. Sharif’s comments on RWAs for a single dollar cut straight to that tension. For too long, tokenized markets have been built like private clubs, walled gardens with high minimums, heavy processes, and unspoken assumptions about who belongs. The idea of a first RWA for $1, with limited KYC, flips that script. It opens the door to real gold, real silver, real yield, and real property without asking people to arrive in a top hat and tails. Widespread participation means that once people can take part, markets stop being theoretical.
Fireworks expand outward when they explode, the impact isn’t meant to stay concentrated at the center. RWAs work the same way: real scale comes when participation spreads and reaches everyone watching from afar.
Backing Builders, Not Buzz
The next topic covered was the Defactor Accelerator Grant Programme, the emphasis was unmistakably practical. This wasn’t framed as funding for ideas in search of a market, but as support for teams that already understand what they’re building and why. Defactor brings more than capital to the table; it brings tooling, experience, and the kind of technical support that only comes from launching and operating RWA infrastructure firsthand. The grants are designed for business-led teams with a clear plan, where technology is the enabler rather than the pitch. In a space crowded with experiments, the programme reflects a simple criterion: real projects, real use cases, and launches built to survive contact with the market.
The Programme is here to back builders with a business plan first and gives them the infrastructure needed to launch properly.
Governance, Infrastructure, and $REAL
When Sharif spoke about the $REAL token, the focus wasn’t on speculation, but on coordination. $REAL is designed to function as the backbone of the Defactor ecosystem — a governance layer, a fee collector, and a mechanism for long-term alignment. Built fully EVM-compatible, the system is structured so that as Defactor expands across chains, value doesn’t fragment. Fees route back, governance remains coherent, and incentives stay aligned. The result is a flywheel: more usage strengthens the ecosystem, stronger infrastructure attracts more builders, and governance evolves alongside real economic activity. It’s less about a token in isolation, and more about a system that knows where its gravity lives.
With $REAL, we won’t chase activity; we’ll capture it, align it, and recycle it back into the ecosystem that creates it.
Looking Ahead: The Future of RWAs
When the discussion looked ahead to the future of RWAs, the primary word was momentum. RWAs, Sharif suggested, may end up filling the gap left behind when ICOs failed to mature, not by promising faster speculation, but by offering earlier, clearer access to real economic value. Early-stage equity, revenue-generating businesses, and privately held assets can now be tokenized in ways that were previously impossible. In the U.S. alone, millions of companies already have investors; RWAs simply widen the lens, making participation less exclusive and capital formation more efficient. As capital begins to move faster on-chain and as AI enters the fray to coordinate, price, and allocate it, the balance shifts. Retail investors are no longer destined to arrive at the exit. For the first time, they have a realistic opportunity to participate earlier, alongside the systems that are being built to support them. Defactor’s position in this future is clear: infrastructure first, access by default, and alignment over extraction.
RWAs aren’t about recreating old markets on-chain; they’re about reshaping who gets to participate and when.
Conclusion:
For the longest time, the point has been made that RWAs aren’t about recreating old markets on-chain, they’re about reshaping who gets to participate, and when. This is the point 2025 has proven, and 2026 will likely solidify. Much like fireworks, the first burst gets attention, but what matters is how far the light travels and how long it stays visible. With the right infrastructure, access, and alignment, RWAs don’t just explode; they expand, letting the light travel farther than it ever could before.
