At a time when the blockchain industry continues to seek integration with the real world, Plume is trying to break boundaries and allow traditional assets to flow freely on the chain. This article records the entrepreneurial journey of Chris, co-founder of Plume, from Silicon Valley to the crypto world, and how he recompiled "real world assets" into blockchain language.

In the midst of this year’s ETHDenver, I met Plume co-founder Chris at a coffee shop in downtown Denver. He looked like a successful person in traditional finance, with a velvet coat and meticulously combed hair, but he talked to me in the most cypherpunk way about his "epic crash" at this time last year.

“We rented out the entire venue for Plume’s first big event ever, and it rained so hard that the roof collapsed. The six people left huddled in the leaky bar, and the bartender toasted to the hole in the roof and said, ‘Welcome to the real world.’ ”

This entrepreneur who tries to "compile" real assets into encrypted language always seems to encounter metaphors unexpectedly; just like the blockchain ecosystem Plume he created, it is also saying to the entire Web3 world: " Welcome to the real world. "

Let’s talk about starting a business

In Plume's public information, Chris's introduction is very professional: "Chris is our co-founder and CEO, an experienced executive. Prior to joining us, he was a partner (Principal) at Scale Venture Partners. He also has an outstanding career in the technology industry. He has served as VP of Product at Rainforest QA and Director of Product at Coupa Software. Previously, he successfully founded Xpenser, which was later acquired by Coupa."

But it wasn’t until Chris started telling his story that I realized he was a very “sharp” founder . He speaks very fast, almost at the limit of the speed that can be understood; he dresses like a Wall Street guy in the traditional financial industry, but he knows anti-Wall Street user needs and product concepts like the back of his hand.

What is puzzling is that every time he answers a question in the interview, he always seems to bring up a metaphorical story that is far off the topic. Just when I am wondering whether he is the kind of founder who speaks without thinking, he can get back to the original question. Then I am surprised to find that the seemingly unrelated story just now actually proves a certain point in his logic.

All in all, listening to him talk is a very tiring thing . After listening to his highly information-dense story, my most obvious feeling is that he must have been a rebellious teenager who gave his parents a lot of headaches when he was young.

The story of this co-founder of Plume is also very much like a Silicon Valley-style "rebellion script" - from a young man who made dating software and campus applications, to accidentally achieving financial freedom through an expense management tool, to leaving the 200-person team he built, and finally diving into the deep waters of the crypto world.

"All of our minds were filled with the usual needs of college students: dating, homework, and terrible food in the cafeteria," Chris said ruthlessly of his entrepreneurial attempt in 2014. "We all failed because these ideas were something anyone could do, but no one really needed them." The turning point came when he and his team decided to "build tools for themselves": a software that uses mobile phones to take photos to record accounts and automatically categorize expenses. This crude product, designed to solve the problem of "who forgot to claim coffee money", accidentally hit the cusp of corporate expense management.

The twist of fate happened in a very darkly humorous way: when the CEO of Coupa, an enterprise expense management platform, walked into their messy office in a suit and tie, Chris was huddled in a conference room full of takeout boxes with engineers to modify the program code. “He started by asking about acquisition intentions, and we almost thought we were being scammed.” The deal finalized at McDonald’s eventually allowed the team to join Coupa with their products. Within three years, the entire company expanded from 200 to 2,000 people, and revenue soared from $5 million to nearly $100 million.

After leaving this huge team, he worked as an angel investor and participated in the establishment of the software testing platform Reinforce QA. It was the latter that gave him a glimpse into the possibilities of the crypto world: the platform’s 60,000 testers are spread across emerging markets such as Latin America and Eastern Europe, but the high friction costs of cross-border payments make instant rewards a luxury.

People in some countries had to wait two weeks to get $5 after completing the test, which caused testers in that country to collectively abandon the product, further making cross-border software testing in that region impossible. So, he started researching Bitcoin payment channels.

Even after entering the venture capital industry, Chris still felt that VC was essentially about "selling money" and it was difficult to truly create value. "It's hard to make the dollar greener," he said . He is more fascinated by the underlying logic of the crypto world: permissionless financial protocols, global asset flows, and risk-resistant value exchanges. When FTX's collapse caused an industry earthquake, he instead pulled his co-founder Teddy into the market against the trend: "Everyone thinks that crypto is over, but what we see is the historical cracks in the on-chain of real assets."

Looking back now, everything was foreshadowed - the young entrepreneur who wrote the failed dating app and the CEO who is now "compiling" real estate and bonds into encrypted tokens are the same person at heart. “ In the past, we wanted to solve the pain of college students not being able to date, and now we want to solve the suffocation of asset liquidity . But this time,” he pointed to Plume’s ecosystem page, “we no longer have only hungry college students as users.”

Why do we need to do the RWA project?

"The RWA (real world asset encryption) project is just putting old wine in new bottles." Someone on the X platform once commented on the RWA project like this. But Chris obviously doesn't want to repeat this routine. Plume, which he leads, is more like a "real-world asset converter", aiming to directly address the most fundamental pain points of the crypto ecosystem: how to truly integrate traditional assets into the on-chain world and flow freely like native tokens.

Plume's solution is like a "crypto compiler" . It has built a complete blockchain technology stack - from underlying protocols to development tools, from liquidity pools to community governance, packaging all links into a "permissionless" standardized process.

Any organization or individual who wants to put real assets on the chain can "compile" these assets into a crypto-native form simply through Plume's standardized process. “In traditional finance, putting assets on the chain requires layers of approval and reliance on the endorsement of centralized institutions, but we want to make this process as permissionless and frictionless as sending a tweet,” said Chris.

“Just like stablecoins put the U.S. dollar on the blockchain, we want all real assets to ‘speak the language of blockchain.’”

The success of stablecoins has long verified this logic. When people use USDT to fight inflation in Argentina, or use USDC to complete cross-border remittances, no one cares about the bank accounts and fiat currency reserves behind them - they are essentially on-chain dollars, but they perfectly inherit the freedom and censorship resistance of crypto assets. “Stablecoin is the ‘first lesson’ of RWA, but it should not be the only lesson.” Chris tried to expand this model to a wider range of fields. “ Why can’t we turn a building, a treasury bond, or even the future income rights of a cup of coffee into crypto assets that are divisible and programmable like stablecoins?”

Such an ambition requires breaking the "black box" of traditional finance: in reality, real estate transactions require intermediaries, appraisals and lengthy legal processes; the bond market is monopolized by institutional investors; and the circulation and pricing of artworks is a closed, small-circle game. Plume's ecosystem attempts to reconstruct the rules with smart contracts: an apartment in Miami can be tokenized into 1 million shares, and retail investors in Tokyo can hold 0.001% of it with just a few clicks; every resale of a famous painting can automatically distribute dividends to the initial investor through on-chain records. They want to free real assets from the "gravity" of the physical world and gain real liquidity in the crypto world.

In traditional finance, the value of assets relies on certification by authoritative institutions, while Plume's ecosystem is closer to "group consensus" - smart contracts automatically execute rules, on-chain information is transparent and traceable, and liquidity is naturally formed by the decentralized market. Chris believes that if a country's bonds plummet in the traditional market due to policy changes, holders can instantly exchange them for gold tokens or real estate shares through Plume, "just like exchanging ETH for USDC on Uniswap. This is the freedom supported by the crypto field."

"The future of the crypto industry lies not in internal circulation, but in swallowing up a bigger reality." Chris's ultimate vision is very grand - the world's real estate worth $400 trillion and traditional financial assets worth hundreds of trillions of dollars, even if only 0.1% is on the chain, it will be enough to expand the entire crypto market tenfold. “ When real assets are truly integrated into the blockchain, the way finance is played will change completely.”

RWA: An Influence Economy

When most people mention RWA (real world assets), they usually think of putting a pair of limited edition sneakers, a house or other physical assets on the chain and presenting them in digital form. But in Plume's view, the core value of RWA goes far beyond that. What is really important is not tokenization itself, but how to make it easier for users to interact with the real world . The objects of such interaction are not necessarily limited to certain physical assets.

Chris gave an example:

A typical case is Worldcoin. On the surface, it is a biometric-based identity authentication tool where users complete KYC through iris scanning. But if you observe the market dynamics of Worldcoin tokens, you will find that it is not just an identity authentication project, but more like a tokenized embodiment of Sam Altman’s personal brand. When Sam Altman was fired from OpenAI, Worldcoin tokens plummeted; when he returned, the price rose; when Worldcoin 2.0 was released, the token price rose again; and when AI competitor Anthropic launched a new product, Worldcoin prices fell again.

A similar phenomenon also occurs in financial products such as IBIT (iShares Bitcoin Trust). The price of IBIT is not only affected by the Bitcoin market, but also related to the decision-making and image of BlackRock and its CEO Larry Fink . It seems that what is bought is not a cryptocurrency, but a highly volatile derivative of Wall Street rhetoric. Even in traditional financial markets, NVIDIA's stock price is seen as a proxy for AI industry sentiment. Expectations for growth in the AI ​​industry have directly pushed up NVIDIA, but this growth is not entirely based on fundamentals, but is part of market sentiment.

This phenomenon is also evident in the native field of Web3. The meme coin market has emerged as another form of real-world emotional expression, but the execution of these tokens is often very chaotic and lacks stability. While people are willing to buy Worldcoin, this is often because it is tied to Sam Altman's personal influence rather than its underlying technology. And if someone wants to bet on the growth of the AI ​​industry, buying NVIDIA may not be a good idea because its stock price is affected by both market sentiment and AI industry fundamentals.

Worse still, in the decentralized world, this interaction with the real world is often dominated by high speculation and scams. For example, before Trump released his own token, there were dozens of different Trump tokens on the market, but most of them were scams and might have been Rug by the project party before users found truly valuable tokens. Even relatively mature tokens may not be able to truly reflect changes in the real world and are often manipulated by the market.

People do want to interact with the real world through blockchain, but the existing ways are not ideal.

Chris concluded that the current RWA market mainly presents two extremes:

• The closed traditional financial system - dominated by large financial institutions such as BlackRock and Apollo, is strictly regulated, has low transparency, and is difficult for ordinary users to enter.
• The decentralized speculative market - filled with meme coins and unsecured high-risk contract markets, although open, lacks security and users often face huge losses.

Plume wants to build a bridge between these two extremes. On one end of the bridge is a BlackRock-style closed vault, and on the other end is a Trump token gambling table, and on the bridge runs a hybrid asset that has been "encrypted" : it includes traditional RWAs such as apartment rental income rights, as well as abstract rights such as the Sam Altman Industry Impact Index.

Why can’t NVIDIA’s AI expectations be broken down into tokens? Or make the hawkish and dovish tendencies of the US Federal Reserve's interest rate meetings into a prediction market? There is also a need to enable users to interact with the real world more safely and efficiently while avoiding the limitations of centralized finance and the disorder of decentralized markets. Separating the technical and information modes can not only expand the application scenarios of RWA, but also make the performance of real-world assets on the blockchain more reasonable and transparent.

Why is Plume an RWA chain? Can’t Ethereum do RWA?

Moving real-world assets (RWA) onto the blockchain sounds like a simple task. But those who have actually done it know that just the stepping stone is enough to bring most projects to their knees. Under the current industry model, an RWA project requires at least 6 months and up to 18-24 months to complete infrastructure such as asset verification, compliance management, and data synchronization. Teams often need to find multiple service providers to solve problems such as custody, legal compliance, and data oracle integration, which is extremely time-consuming and financially costly. However, the existing blockchain architecture is mainly oriented towards crypto-native assets and is not optimized for RWA, so it cannot effectively handle these problems.

Plume's solution is simple: if every RWA project has to reinvent the wheel, then standardize and modularize the wheel and weld it directly into the underlying blockchain. They natively integrate several major functions at the protocol layer:

• Asset Verification System : Through the hybrid verification of off-chain institutions and on-chain oracles, it ensures that the real estate, bonds or commodities on the chain are real and have clear ownership;
• Ownership management : The technology for putting assets on the blockchain must be convenient enough, and it must also automatically restrict trading permissions for specific assets (for example, only qualified investors can participate) according to the regulatory requirements of different jurisdictions;
• Data synchronization : Real-time tracking of changes in the status of real assets (such as rent payments, bond interest payments), and triggering smart contracts to automatically execute profit distribution.

This is the functionality that Plume's core modules Arc and Nexus can cover.

“The existing public chain is like an assembly line that can only process digital building blocks, but we want to build a composite production line that can process steel, wood, and concrete.” Chris used the example of real estate tokenization: In the traditional model, the project party needs to connect with the custodian bank to verify the property rights, contact the law firm to design a compliance framework, and purchase oracle services to track rental flows; with Plume, these functions are pre-installed as “on-chain plug-ins”, and developers only need to call the interface to complete the entire process from asset chaining to liquidity pool construction.

The business model of this logic is that it reduces the development of RWA from "customizing a space shuttle" to "assembling Lego bricks." Chris's ultimate benchmark is AWS: "This reminds me of software development in the 1990s. At that time, if a startup wanted to develop software, it first needed to raise $10 million, and the first step was not to write code, but to buy servers, databases, and hardware devices to build its own infrastructure.

Only after completing these basic tasks can we actually start developing the product. Today, you only need to swipe a credit card and spend 25 cents on AWS (Amazon Cloud) to start a server, start writing code directly, and quickly bring a product to market. This infrastructure innovation has spawned a large number of SaaS software and innovative products in the Web2 era. We believe that the process of putting RWA assets on the chain should be the same. When the cost of putting assets on-chain drops from millions of dollars to a few thousand dollars, you will see real explosive innovation. "

Plume Ecosystem’s “Atypical RWA Experiment”

In Plume's ecological sandbox, there is a protocol that allows users to give Pikachu cards 20x leverage . Chris used a protocol called Racks as an example to show how Plume can help projects use leverage on different asset classes.

Traditionally, if users want to open a 20x leverage on Pokémon cards, they first need to tokenize the cards and ensure that there is sufficient liquidity support on the chain. Racks takes a more efficient approach - it does not require the actual tokenization of Pokémon cards, but instead establishes a trading market based on data flow. In other words, the system only needs to introduce relevant information of the asset into the chain, such as market transaction price, scarcity and other key indicators, to provide users with corresponding leverage trading functions. This model greatly improves market efficiency while avoiding the high costs and complex compliance issues involved in traditional RWA asset chain.

Another example is Culture, whose core concept is to build indexes based on data flows rather than directly tokenizing real assets. Chris explained that Culture indexes data streams from different regions. This project allows users to " long on Africa and short on Latin America ". The reference indicators include GDP growth rate, prime rate, consumer price index (CPI), public support rate and other factors. After weighted calculation, it finally generates an index token representing the regional economic prospects.

This approach can be extended to cover more areas, including pop culture, food trends, climate and environmental data, etc. “Suppose you are someone who is extremely optimistic about a certain type of food. You can buy the future influence of a certain anchor or the growth trend of a certain type of Asian cuisine in the global market without having to look for a complicated marketing agent,” Chris said. He believes that these innovations represent an entirely new market category and are highly consistent with Plume's overall vision. “What these teams are doing is completely in line with the narrative direction we are promoting, and we not only support them technically, but also help them grow in marketing and ecosystem integration.”

There is no right way that is easy.

Compliance boundaries and market distrust

The birth of new concepts is often accompanied by resistance. Imagine the situation when Uber first launched: it was "illegal" in many cities because the taxi industry's licensing system had a firm grip on the market and both governments and industry giants were hostile to it. However, what ultimately drove the legal change was the real demand of the market - people wanted more convenient and flexible ways to travel, and Uber simply provided the tools.

Plume is in a similar situation. Almost no one was interested in the early RWA track. "It was even difficult for us to arrange meetings with investors or exchanges." The only real concern was the blockchain protocol itself. This means that Plume not only has to build the infrastructure, but also needs to convince the market to accept its existence.

However, past failures in the RWA track have made the market skeptical about the concept. Chris told us that RWA’s history is not glorious, and the quality of past projects has been uneven, with many being immature concepts or even outright failures. More importantly, the path taken by Plume is completely different from traditional financial RWA projects. Many RWA projects hope to operate in the TradFi (traditional finance) way, but Chris believes that this model is essentially a dead end because it ignores the actual needs of the crypto market. Plume does not want to "allow institutions to enter the market" , but to make RWA a truly crypto-native track that can be freely accessed by all users, not just institutional investors.

This involves the issue of compliance.

Many people think of compliance as a binary choice – either follow the rules completely or ignore them completely . But Chris thinks this view is too simplistic. “You do need to accept compliance requirements, but more importantly, you need to accept them intelligently.”

He used Uber as an example again, saying that when Uber entered the market, it not only needed to fight against regulation, but also create market demand. In many places, it operated in a way that was inconsistent with the laws of the time, but this was not because there was anything wrong with Uber itself, but because the laws had not kept up with the pace of innovation. When user demand is strong enough, the rules will change.

"The essence of the law is to protect people, not to prevent innovation." Chris emphasized that regulation is indeed necessary, but it should not be an obstacle to development, but a framework to guide innovation in the right direction, just as the SEC has now modified the rules of encryption and stopped litigation.

Plume chose a pragmatic approach - ensuring compliance without sacrificing user experience. This is similar to how MakerDAO handles US Treasuries. In the traditional financial model, if users want to hold U.S. Treasury bonds, they need to go through a compliance platform such as Ondo Finance, complete KYC verification, and become a qualified investor. The minimum investment amount may be US$100,000 or even US$1 million, and redemption can only be made once a quarter.

What was the worst experience? "Imagine that you need to go through KYC certification, wait three days to pass it, and also need to do liveness detection, identity verification, and even need to link a bank account." Chris explained that during this process, users may have already lost patience and turned to other solutions. The market often discusses the "Intention Economy", but the reality is that if the process is too cumbersome, people simply won't do it.

MakerDAO adopts another approach: they use the DAI mechanism to allow users to indirectly obtain treasury bond returns without having to directly purchase treasury bonds. This approach not only meets market demand, but also bypasses the complex processes of traditional finance, meets compliance requirements, and provides a more convenient experience for end users. Plume takes a similar approach, not imposing a compliance framework but instead providing tools that allow asset issuers to find the solution that best suits their needs.

Biggest challenge: Making the market understand the true value of RWA

Chris believes that the crypto market's enthusiasm for the concept of "institutions" in RWA is falling into a dangerous self-deception. When BlackRock CEO Larry Fink declared that "Bitcoin is digital gold", people cheered that the floodgates of institutional funds were about to open and the crypto market would surely soar. “For them, this is the logic of investing in the RWA track because they believe these big institutions will bring in huge capital inflows. But this is neither correct nor completely ignores the true significance of the RWA track.”

“Many people believe that if BlackRock and Fidelity enter the market, the RWA market should be built around them, which has led to many projects operating on the idea of ​​‘letting more traditional institutions in’, ‘complying with regulations’, ‘obtaining regulatory approvals’, and even purchasing financial licenses here and there. But the problem is that these things do not essentially create truly valuable assets; they are just the market’s mechanical following of the narrative of “institutional entry.” "

If we look back at all the successful products in the crypto industry, we will find that their core logic always revolves around product-market fit. Many RWA projects on the market believe that as long as they can "tokenize $1 billion in assets", they have proven their value. But Chris told us that the TVL of these projects is usually less than $10 million, indicating that the actual market demand is extremely limited.

In contrast, projects that truly have product-market fit, such as Hyperliquid, have seen their trading volume and coin price increase exponentially in just two months, even attracting more attention than Binance. These projects were successful not because they catered to the narrative of institutional entry, but because they provided products that the market really needed.

“If you remove the dates from the news headlines of each market cycle and rearrange them, you can’t tell which year they belong to, because the market narratives of each cycle are strikingly similar. ” Chris poured cold water on the 600 attendees at the RWA conference hosted by Plume in Denver, “The entry of institutions in each cycle is basically a signal of the market top. But people always forget this and think again and again that the entry of institutions can save the crypto industry.” The fact is that most institutions have not brought actual changes to the crypto market; Google has repeatedly mentioned blockchain and RWA in recent years, but its impact on the industry is almost negligible.

What we really need to pay attention to is whether there is real demand in the market, not whether institutions enter the market or not. “We hope to help people avoid this mental trap so they can truly understand what’s actually happening in the market instead of being swayed by short-term noise.”

From TGE to mainnet, what are the team’s considerations for the timeline?

When Plume's TGE meets Trump's Meme Carnival

The launch date of Plume’s token was chosen quite dramatically - the day after the US presidential inauguration . It was originally intended to take off with the help of loosened policies, but it ran into the collective carnival of Trump and his wife’s Meme coin. During those days, the K-line chart of the crypto market showed complete polarization. All exchange assets, DeFi assets, and on-chain assets plummeted rapidly. Only TRUMP and MELANIA rose like a rocket.

The craze for Meme coins drained market liquidity, and the launch of Plume’s tokens was like holding an academic lecture in a nightclub. But the team gritted their teeth and pressed the start button. What they are betting on is another reality: when the Trump Token soared from $3 to $80 and then fell back to $20, someone would always remember that there should be something "real" behind the asset.

Chris told the team that after the party, those who got rich overnight and those who went swimming naked would have to find a place to save their money.

The data confirms this contrast. According to Coingecko, the price of Plume has been fluctuating since its launch, but at a time when Meme coin's weekly trading volume plummeted by 80%, Plume tokens have maintained a level 20% higher than the issue price . Compared to the curse of falling as soon as it was listed on a major exchange this year, Plume’s performance is better than most projects that have achieved the Grand Slam on exchanges.

This storm also made Plume see its own ecological niche clearly, which is to be the "reality converter" in the crypto world. They found that the earnings patterns of RWA and meme coins are almost completely opposite, just as the worlds of Bitcoin users and P Xiaojiang hardly overlap . Chris told us that he believes the market turmoil in Meme will only help Plume in the long term, thanks to the characteristics of RWA.

Plume mainnet is expected to be launched soon

When asked about the mainnet issue that everyone is concerned about, Chris revealed that Plume's mainnet will most likely be launched soon, but he made it clear: "This is just the beginning, the real test is every day after the mainnet is launched." At present, the team is fully committed to promoting cooperation with a number of financial institutions and physical assets. Some cases have entered the final technical testing stage, and more details will be gradually revealed after the mainnet is launched.

“Instead of listening to us describe it here, it’s better to experience it yourself.” Chris told us that Plume’s value proposition is simple: “After the mainnet is launched, real income and capital flow will begin to enter the system. When users see actual income in their accounts, they will truly understand the value of Plume and its position in the entire industry.

Is the token the product, or is RWA the product?

A few months ago, when Movement chose to issue tokens before launching the mainnet, it was attacked by many community users on the X platform. One of the famous views was: "The reason they issued tokens first is because they know that tokens are products, not the network itself. " The implication is that in order not to miss the time window, tokens are issued first for users to pursue. What about the follow-up of the product? Neither the team nor the users care.

Since Plume will also implement this order, I specifically asked Chris this tricky question. Faced with this question, Chris said bluntly: "We do regard tokens as part of the product, because Plume tokens may be the first RWA tokens that users come into contact with." In Plume's token design, real yield, on-chain economic utility, ecological index, network governance rights, etc. are all the core logic of the Plume ecosystem, but Chris believes that this is only part of the product, but by no means the only product.

This design is not intended to encourage speculation. He explained that compared to Circle's issuance of USDC, which only requires centralized decision-making, the path chosen by the team for Plume is somewhat different; in a decentralized system, they believe that the reasonable way to launch the network is to first establish an ecosystem through the testnet stage, guide liquidity allocation and decentralized governance through tokens, and ultimately allow liquidity to grow naturally in community consensus, rather than allowing tokens to become chips for speculative gameplay.