As Wall Street firms race to bring stocks, bonds and credit products onto the blockchain rails, a new Ethereum-based marketplace backed by Animoca Brands aims to turn tokenized assets into something crypto investors can use in decentralized finance (DeFi).
NUVA, developed by Animoca and Nuva Labs, is connecting around $19 billion in real-world tokenized assets originating in the Provenance blockchain ecosystem, including private credit and Treasury-linked products linked to Figure Technologies Solutions (FIGR), the blockchain company founded by former SoFi CEO Mike Cagney.
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Real-world tokenized assets have become one of the fastest growing sectors of cryptocurrencies. Asset managers and fintech companies see blockchain rails as a way to modernize the way financial products are issued, traded, and used as collateral. The broader market for tokenized assets could reach trillions of dollars over the next decade, according to multiple industry forecasts.
NUVA was designed as a distribution layer for tokenized assets, allowing them to go beyond closed financial networks and into DeFi markets, giving average retail users access to assets often limited to institutional investors.
It debuts two flagship products: a Treasury-linked yield vault called nvYLDS, linked to Figure’s SEC-regulated YLDS stablecoin with a supply of over $500 million, and nvPRIME, a token linked to Figure’s $18.4 billion home equity lines of credit (HELOC) portfolio. While the former offers investors a money market yield, the latter offers a high single-digit yield (over 7% currently) that is primarily accessible to institutions and accredited investors in traditional finance.
Anthony Moro, CEO of Nuva Labs and former BNY executive, said the goal is to create a market for native blockchain financial assets rather than packaged versions of traditional products.
“No one really has that unified global distribution layer for native blockchain assets,” Moro said in an interview. “We thought what was missing was a platform where users could access institutional-grade assets in a simple, composable format.”
Users deposit stablecoins into vaults and receive ERC-20 tokens that represent ownership of the underlying assets. Those tokens can then be traded, lent, or posted as collateral on Ethereum-based DeFi protocols.
As the NUVA platform expands, Moro said, “Let’s pursue a broad range of assets that are available to everyone in an easy-to-use, self-directed and self-custodial manner, eliminating Wall Street’s limited access, delays and high fees.”
Moro argued that many existing tokenization models are still too reliant on off-chain infrastructure and manual reconciliation.
“The way to tokenize assets is not a digital twin,” he said. “The Figure loan itself is digital native. There is no filing cabinet somewhere that holds the actual record.”
Figure has become one of the largest issuers of blockchain-based private credit products through the Provenance network. Moro said the broader vision is to eventually bring a range of tokenized assets to NUVA from multiple issuers and expand to other blockchains beyond Ethereum.
“The cheapest, fastest and safest will win,” said Moro. “This is how all financial assets eventually go on-chain.”
