Former Standard Chartered Executive Launches New RWA L1 Chain for “Serious Finance Apps”

ZIGChain:- RWAs (Real-World Assets) are absolutely a hot trend in crypto right now. With the tokenized equities making news in the past days, they are becoming a core pillar of the next phase of institutional and DeFi growth.

Amidst the ongoing trend, new Layer-1 blockchain called ZIGChain made its mainnet launch recently on June 25. The purpose-built chain is built specifically for applications across RWAs, DeFi and automated Investment Protocols.

The chain is built and co-founded by former Standard Chartered Executive, Rafay Gadig along with Bart Bordallo who calls the launch as “we’re taking a meaningful step toward bringing the transparent Investment infrastructure by focusing deep on real-world assets for long-term, scalable wealth generation”.

The New L1 RWA ZigChain Promises Wealth Generation for Everyone

The layer 1 blockchain ZIGChain aims to serve as the native platform for helping builders build innovative wealth-generation Protocols. The founders already run Zignaly, a well-known social investing and profit-sharing platform with over 500,000 users globally.

It contains a modular tech stack called the Warlth Management Engine for delegated Investment. It allows developers to access the Cosmos Sdk and build smart contracts with Rust.

The gas fees would involve its native ZIG token whose 56% is hold by exisiting community. With the mainnet launch, it is ending its testnet phase what has seen the deployment of many applications already. These include:

1. Oroswap, an AI-powered conversational DEX;

2. Valdora Finance, a native liquid staking protocol;

3. Permapod, a lending protocol designed to accept RWAs as collateral; and

4. Nawa Finance, a Sharia-compliant DeFi aggregator.

These projects represent the early wave of builders who are already leveraging ZIGChain’s infrastructure to bring new decentralized financial tools to market.

Also Read: Gemini-Dinari Launch Tokenized Equity Shares

Blockchains Battle for Real-World Assets As TVL Heats Up

It is interesting to note that the ZIGChain mainnet comes as the total on-chain RWA value reaches approximately $23–24 billion as of writing. That marks a 260% surge from about $8.6 billion at the start of the year.

According to Coingape’s Q2 Crypto Report, in Q2 2025 alone, $2.4 billion worth of RWA were issued on the blockchain, accounting for 50% of all in the first half of 2025. 

When looking at the blockchain distribution of RWAs, Ethereum dominates, hosting roughly $7.5 billion across 335 products. This makes it capture 59% of the market shares while dominating in tokenized Treasuries, institutional funds, and stable RWAs. Most institutional RWA issuers — e.g. BlackRock BUIDL, Franklin Templeton, Ondo, Matrixdock — are still Ethereum-native.

The other Ethereum Layer-2 – ZKsync Era – is leading at the second place, witnessing RWAs jumping to $2.2 billion by Q2 2025.

Aptos has also seen around $544 million in RWAs by Q2 2025. Its RWA growth is attributed to partnerships with TradFi players like JP Morgan and fintechs in Asia. Solana is gaining traction too in emerging use cases such as tokenized carbon credits, real estate, and RWAs via Jupiter & Drift.

Thus, the newly launched ZIGChain is having its mainnet launch in the time when the layer-1chains are vying for RWAs on their infrastructure.

Also Read: Aptos Launches Web3 Cloud Protocol