From decrypt by Liz Napolitano

Stablecoin giant Tether has launched Hadron, a tokenization platform for digital and real-world assets, amid a boom in tokenizing financial instruments on decentralized networks. 

Hadron lets users tokenize various assets, from stocks and bonds to stablecoins and loyalty points, Tether said Thursday in a statement.

The platform also offers tools for issuing and managing the full life cycle of digital tokenized assets, with the aim of facilitating the process of tokenizing assets for both individual and institutional investors, according to the company.

Real-world asset tokenization is the process of converting ownership rights of physical assets into digital tokens on a blockchain.

The tokens represent fractional or full ownership of the asset, allowing it to be bought, sold, or traded more easily in digital markets while providing increased liquidity, transparency, and accessibility.

“Traditional finance institutions have always pushed for closed ecosystems that are opaque to citizens,” Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino said in the statement. “By leveraging all of Tether’s technology—which today has already secured 125 billion dollars—we’re making asset tokenization easier, secure, and scalable.”

Hadron supports tokenizing digital securities such as equities, bonds, and funds; fiat-pegged and commodity-backed stablecoins; and Alloy by Tethered Assets assets.

Tethered Assets are designed to track a reference asset’s price "through stabilization strategies," including over-collateralization with "liquid assets and secondary market liquidity pools," per Tether's website.

The company also plans to offer tokenization for digital asset-collateralized tokens, including basket-collateralized products. 

Currently serving several institutions in beta, the platform's team is also in discussions to work with several developing nation-states, a Tether representative told Decrypt.

The Tether-linked platform operates with asset issuance and burning and capital market management, in addition to abiding by Know Your Customer (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) guidelines and other regulatory requirements, the company said in a statement.  

Hadron’s launch comes amid a surge in real-world asset tokenization.

RWA's total value locked stands at $6.591 billion, which is up roughly 12% since the same time last year, DeFiLlama data shows. 

Hadron is just one of several crypto-native players attempting to get a piece of the RWA pie.

In early October, Midas launched two tokenized investment products based on mTBill and mBasis, respectively.

Meanwhile, Elmnts, a tokenized investment platform for funds backed by mineral rights royalties, launched on Solana later that month.

DeFi protocol Ondo also started leveraging the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL) tokenized money market fund for its derivative products earlier this year.