RWA (Real World Assets) has been hyped by various capital sources as the next wave in DeFi over the past few years, and a bunch of RWA protocols have also emerged on BNB Chain. Lista DAO, holding USD1 stablecoins and yield-generating assets, seems naturally suited to this wave. But things are not that simple.

Looking deeper, the RWA ecosystem on BNB Chain is actually fragmented—issuers and financial entities operate independently without true integration.

What does the issuance layer do? It involves bringing traditional assets like real estate, invoices, and government bonds onto the chain and tokenizing them. This layer addresses hard issues like compliance and rights confirmation. The financialization layer is where DeFi truly plays—providing lending, trading, and derivatives support for these tokenized assets. At first glance, protocols like Lista can easily handle this.

The key problem arises: the liquidity of RWA tokens produced at the issuance layer is terrible. The risk structure is opaque, and valuations are like blind boxes—completely unsuitable for direct use as high-quality collateral within DeFi systems.

This pushes Lista DAO into a dead end. Which path to choose? Is it willing to serve as infrastructure, acting as a connector between issuers and DeFi? Or does it go all-in as an application hub, taking on the risks and rewards of RWA itself? The resource investment, risk hedging, and value distribution between these two paths are worlds apart. This is not just a tactical choice but one that impacts the entire ecosystem's competitiveness.