VCs are betting on it—but can Multiliquid really become the RWA version of Curve?

By Mach, Forestight News

On October 16th, Multiliquid, the institutional-grade tokenized asset liquidity protocol under Uniform Labs, completed its seed round of financing. The round was led by Polychain, with participation from Strobe Ventures, CMT Digital, Metalayer Ventures, Generative Ventures, and Circle Ventures. Including its previously completed Pre-seed round, the project has raised a total of $8 million.

Will Beeson, the protocol's founder and CEO, told The Block that the protocol has begun processing pilot transactions and plans to add more liquidity providers in the fourth quarter. He also confirmed that there are currently no plans to issue tokens.

RWA track curve?

Multiliquid itself does not issue assets, but attempts to build an instant conversion channel between existing blue-chip tokenized products and stablecoins.

Holders can exchange tokenized money market funds or government bond products for USDC with one click, or vice versa. The entire process is completed in a single transaction, and settlement is based on the fund's net asset value, without having to wait for the traditional redemption window.

In traditional capital markets, redemptions of money market funds and short-term government bonds typically require T+1 settlement or even longer. Even after traditional assets are mapped onto the blockchain, most products are still subject to the physical time lag of the traditional financial T+1 redemption mechanism, causing friction for institutional users when they need to quickly adjust their positions or liquidate assets.

Multiliquid's operating mechanism is similar to Curve's efficient exchange between different stablecoins. The difference is that it deals with permissioned, compliant tokenized funds, rather than completely open crypto assets.

The agreement primarily serves institutional users, including treasuries that need flexible fund allocation, capital providers willing to offer secondary liquidity, and asset issuers who wish to provide holders with a more convenient exit path.

According to data from RWA.xyz, as of mid-October, the distributed on-chain value of tokenized real-world assets had reached nearly $39 billion, a significant expansion from the beginning of the year. Among these, tokenized US Treasury bonds and money market funds remained the largest single category, with a size between $14.8 billion and $15.5 billion.

BlackRock's BUIDL, Circle's USDC, Ondo's USDY, and Franklin Templeton's related products account for the majority of the market share. Despite rapid growth in issuance, most assets still exist in permissioned form, limiting secondary market trading and actual liquidity utilization. The proportion of tokenized government bonds entering open DeFi lending or collateral scenarios remains low, and institutions still face friction in achieving efficient on-chain rebalancing and collateral management.

This trend also explains why liquidity infrastructure is gaining attention. As the scale of tokenized assets expands, the advantages of on-chain configurations cannot be fully realized if redemption and conversion still rely on traditional processes. The market currently needs tools that can connect products from different issuers with stablecoins and provide instant settlement within a compliant framework, rather than simply adding new issuance platforms.

The Multiliquid protocol currently targets three main types of institutional users: treasury managers who need to deploy idle stablecoins to yield assets and redeem them at any time; capital providers willing to offer secondary liquidity for blue-chip tokenized assets; and asset issuers who want to provide holders with 24/7 programmatic exits and aim to avoid the costs and capital depletion associated with building underlying liquidity pools. Currently, the protocol's revenue model is based on a basis point fee per transaction.

Team Background

According to official information, the Multiliquid team has a background in traditional finance and institutional business.

Will Beeson co-founded Allica Bank, a UK challenger bank, and later served as Chief Product Officer of Libera, Standard Chartered Bank's tokenized asset platform. During this time, he led the development of institutional tokenization infrastructure and participated in the launch of ULTRA, an investment-grade tokenized money market fund under Wellington Management.

Angelo D'Alessandro, Chief Operating Officer of Multiliquid, has nearly 30 years of experience in financial services and previously founded and led buddybank, a digital bank under UniCredit.

Chief Business Officer Michal Benedykcinski has over 15 years of experience in capital markets and private equity. He previously served as SVP at Arca and was responsible for institutional partnerships at Hedera.

Regarding the financing structure, the Pre-seed round is expected to be completed in a SAFE format between May and June 2025, while the Seed round will be completed in a priced equity round between April and June 2026. Specific amounts and valuations for each round have not been disclosed. The funds will primarily be used to expand the protocol engineering team, attract more liquidity and trading venue partners, and integrate more tokenized cash and government bond products into the EVM network and Solana.

From a market perspective, institutional demand for on-chain government bonds, money market funds, and other products is increasing, but liquidity and settlement efficiency remain constraints. Multiliquid has chosen to focus on the instant conversion between assets and stablecoins, rather than the issuance end. This approach is closer to the on-chain counterparts of repurchase agreements and overnight liquidity tools in the traditional market.

The agreement is still in its early stages, and specific data on transaction volume and institutional clients have not yet been released. The key indicator for monitoring its progress will be whether it can continue to attract more asset managers and generate verifiable liquidity in terms of actual fund size.

Source:Global Cybersecurity Alliance (GCSA)
Website:www.gcsa.org