Internet Capital Markets, a concept preached by Solana Foundation Chairman Lily Liu, became popular on Solana after the explosion of Believe. Another RWA project with the ICM concept, Collaterizes token COLLAT, has seen its market value break through $90 million recently and has now fallen back to $54 million. It has been consolidating around $9 million since its launch in January and finally broke out on May 18. Toly, one of the co-founders of Solana, forwarded Collaterizes App Demo video, causing the token to soar and also drawing the markets attention back to the RWA projects of these two former Microsoft employees.
What is ICM?
A few years ago, Solana proposed the vision of building a Nasdaq on the chain, but as Nasdaq itself explored the chain, the narrative focus gradually shifted to the more crypto-native Internet Capital Market (ICM). As an alternative to the traditional capital market (TCM), ICM enables entrepreneurs to bypass venture capital and IPOs and directly raise funds from the online community through tokenization. Solana projects represented by Believe App have made it easy to complete project issuance and investment on X.
Today, ICM has replaced Nasdaq on the chain and become the core narrative of Solana. Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, has repeatedly emphasized that the goal of ICM is to build a global financial infrastructure so that 5.5 billion Internet users can participate in the capital market without barriers. The Solana team is also working hard to build it into the key infrastructure of ICM on the chain.
At the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of Solana Ecosystem Superteam, mentioned the concepts of Internet Capital Market and FAT Protocol Engineering in the Solana 2025 marketing memo. He believes that in 2024, companies will be directly listed on the Internet and will be able to access more than one billion investors holding private keys - they use the funds in their hands to vote for the future they want, not just stocks, but all asset classes, cultures and concepts worth having.
Data shows that in 2005, there were less than 8,000 private equity companies that needed to obtain liquidity from somewhere, but by 2024, the demand had skyrocketed to 30,000. It seems that listing on the Internet has become imminent.
Despite many criticisms, such as lack of regulation, low project threshold, and easy release of misleading tokens, ICM still has strong potential for mass adoption, especially in promoting Web3 to Web2 users through simple user experience, fiat payment portals, and viral narratives. In order to achieve long-term development, platforms like Believe need to jump out of short-term speculation, promote founder accountability mechanisms, optimize token economic models, build DAO governance, and achieve real utility, so as to truly transform ICM from a meme craze to a new capital formation paradigm. After a series of product updates such as Pumpfun, Timefun, and Believe, the market currently needs a more open, permissionless financing and trading ecosystem, covering various assets from meme coins to NFTs to startup projects, and Collaterize extends ICMs business to RWA in this concept.
RWA also has its own Bonding Curve——Collaterize
Collaterize was founded by Paul Antoine Arrighi and Pierre Hoffman, two Frenchmen who had worked at Microsoft. Paul started his own startup project, OneClight, in 2015. Its main function was similar to Onkey, which allowed users to access web pages without having to enter a password. However, the project did not make much progress after a year, so in 2017 Paul went to Microsoft to start another 4-year career.
Another founder, Pierre, also joined Microsoft in the same year, responsible for managing Microsoft partners and ensuring the accurate deployment of software asset management services in the public and private sectors. However, he left Microsoft after only one year of work, and after leaving, Pierre joined the IOTA Foundation to be responsible for business development.
Paul Antoine Arrighi demonstrates Collaterize App at AWS Demo Day
Pierre Hoffman once said, RWA is meaningful because it enables some functions that were not possible before, such as liquidity, programmability, or wider access. We are beginning to see early cases in this regard, especially in publicly traded RWAs such as US Treasuries or stocks, but there are greater opportunities in private assets because these assets currently cannot enter liquid markets.
The development of the RWA field in the United States, Hong Kong, and France where the Collaterize project is located
Hoffman further said, If we can put these assets on the chain, under the appropriate framework, and maintain transparency, we can let the market decide which assets have enough value to be traded, pledged, and used. It feels too early now, but the fundamentals are gradually emerging. This coincides with the concept of everything on the chain mentioned by David Sacks, the head of White House encryption affairs, and the types of assets supported in their documents also show the ambition of Collaterize to some extent.
Collaterize supports the ability to tokenize any RWA, from baseball cards to real estate, from company equity to tokens. The protocol uses a dynamic bond curve, and once the target is reached, the asset can be traded on Meteora. Meteora has reviewed the bond curve plan. The Solana-based protocol charges a 1% fee for 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 tokens is not as easy as Believe or Pumpfuns Bonding Curve model. When the token is launched, it will undergo a relatively strict review by Collaterize. First, the applicant needs to hold 100,000 $COLLAT and then submit an application. Collaterize will review whether the company has sustainability in multiple dimensions, including a clear business model and growth plan, the ability to generate stable income and expand into new markets; a good profit record and predictable cash flow, etc. In addition, certain high-value collectibles and luxury goods can be considered as assets, provided that they have authoritative evaluations, clear provenance, and insurance storage.
According to public information, the highest-value product currently being developed by Collaterize is the upcoming real estate “Token” in France. This collaboration is the first product launched after Collaterize’s collaboration with ARP (Asset Realty Partners). ARP announced its collaboration with Collaterize at the MIPIM “International Real Estate Show” in March 2025.
This comprehensive real estate services company, founded in 2006 and headquartered in Paris, France, was founded by Pascal Roth. After working at a German mortgage bank for nearly 20 years, he founded ARP to provide professional real estate services. The group currently manages billions of euros in assets.
This is not their first attempt at fragmented real estate assets. In 2020, it entered the real estate crowdfunding market through its holding subsidiary Beefordeal. The platform allows investors to participate in real estate projects with a minimum investment of 1,000 euros, providing a potential return of approximately 10%. As of 2023, the platform has raised more than 11 million euros in total.
However, even with such a luxurious lineup of real-world partners, Collaterize still cannot escape a paradox. At the current stage, Crypto Native users will instinctively reject the review mechanism, which leads to their rejection of compliant asset protocols, while traditional asset users do not accept Cryptos interface and asset form, thus forming a market paradox of double misalignment of compliance and user needs.
According to the on-chain information of Collaterize, the activity of the blockchain is still very low four months after the establishment of the project. As of today, the total transaction tx is only 70,000 times, and the total number of addresses is only 381. If we only compare this number, it is not even as many as the number of holders of a Meme coin with a market value of hundreds of thousands. However, RWA still has a long development period. Although the market potential of 75 trillion US dollars is unlimited, there is great uncertainty in regulations, infrastructure and review.
But new times always need new explorers, and Collaterize, as one of them, is also looking for possible treasures in this vast ocean.
