Polkadot’s Web3 Foundation To Invest $1M In On-Chain Treasuries

The Web3 Foundation, the organization behind the Polkadot network, is the latest crypto development team to invest treasury assets into real-world assets.

On Nov. 29, the Web3 Foundation announced it will make a pilot investment of $1M into U.S. treasuries bills brought on-chain via Anemoy, an asset manager on Centrifuge Chain, a real-world asset (RWA)-focussed Polkadot parachain.

“This partnership demonstrates Web3 Foundation’s commitment to supporting the growth and innovation of real-world assets on Polkadot’s infrastructure,” the Web3 Foundation said.

“With this collaboration between Centrifuge and Web3 Foundation, the stage is set for significant growth and innovation for real-world assets using Polkadot’s infrastructure and technology,” said Lucas Vogelsang, the co-founder of Centrifuge.

The Web3 Foundation will invest the funds into Anemoy’s forthcoming Liquid Short Treasury Fund, which is intended to enable DAOs and other investors to access exposure to short-term U.S. treasury bill yields.

Fabian Gompf, the Web3 Foundation’s recently-appointed chief executive, hinted that the organization plans on substantially increasing its RWA allocation in the future. “$1M is a start, and we fully expect to quickly grow beyond that.”

On-chain RWA adoption

The news comes as RWAs are enjoying growing adoption across web3.

MakerDAO led the charge last year, with its governance passing a proposal last September to inject up to 500M USDC into U.S treasuries via the investment management group, Monetalis. MakerDAO’s RWA exposure grew from $17M to $640M in 2022, with the project also launching a $100M vault for the 151-year-old Huntingdon Valley Bank.

Despite comprising just 10% of its asset holdings, RWAs drove nearly half of MakerDAO’s revenue for the year. Maker has continued to increase its RWA exposure, now totalling $2.8B, according to Daistats. Maker’s RWA portfolio includes nearly $144M invested in pools operating on Centrifuge’s Tinlake dApp.

In July, MakerDAO estimated 79% of its fee revenue from the preceding 12 months was derived from real-world assets.

Also in July, Avalanche launched a $50M fund to invest in natively tokenized assets, including RWAs such as equity, credit, and real estate assets.

In August, Frax announced plans to custody on-chain RWAs including treasury bills and other traditional financial assets.

Centrifuge expands RWA offerings

Anemoy Capital was introduced in August by Martin Quensel, a Centrifuge co-founder and director of Anemoy.

Anemoy is the first asset issuer native to Centrifuge Chain, a Layer 1 Polkadot parachain, promising to migrate a “broad spectrum of credit assets on-chain” and bridge the gap between TradFi and DeFi.

In September, Centrifuge announced testnet deployments for its new RWA Liquidity Pools on Base and Arbitrum, two leading Ethereum Layer 2 networks.

“As we continue to see increased demand for real-world asset investments, we’re looking forward to providing Base users with access to a diversified pool of institutional grade assets through our work with Centrifuge,” said Jesse Pollak, the creator of Base and head of protocols at Coinbase.

Centrifuge also onboarded Anemoy Capital’s first pool offering exposure to on-chain treasuries around the same time.