Katherine Ross

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Apollo is doubling down on its push into real-world assets.&nbsp;



And, yes, I know we’ve been talking about RWAs a lot, but there are different layers to what’s being built in this space right now. We have institutions jumping in and out of FOMO, but then there is a group that is arguably crypto native and using this more bullish period to expand their footprints in crypto. This is the latter.&nbsp;



You see, Apollo is betting on Plume, the RWA network.&nbsp;



Here’s what I can tell you: Apollo made a strategic investment of around seven figures (the team at Plume wouldn’t disclose the full amount). The investment follows Plume’s $20 million Series A that was announced at the end of last year.&nbsp;



And, perhaps most importantly, Plume co-founder Teddy Pornprinya told me that the mainnet launch is slated for this quarter. I pushed to get a better sense of the timing, but Pornprinya only affirmed that it was “imminent.”



The team and Apollo have been working closely on ACRED, which is <a href="https://blockworks.co/news/apollo-securitize-partnership-institutional-adoption">Apollo’s offering with Securitize</a>, as well as “other initiatives.”



Apollo’s investment marks the first time it has made an investment into a specific RWA chain. Pornprinya called Plume an RWAfi, which piqued my curiosity.&nbsp;



While Plume’s generally known for its RWA work, Pornprinya said they have a core focus on the DeFi side of things, hence the “RWAfi” labeling.



There are “three core focus areas for us: One is on the infrastructure technology side, two is on distribution, and three is on composability — which is essentially leveraging our DeFi native team to build these different use cases,” he said.



To make RWAs more attractive to users onchain, you have to make them more crypto, Pornprinya told me. Hence the focus on developers and, of course, aiding builders on the go-to-market side of things — a notoriously challenging part of being in crypto. 



Pornprinya told me that, in his experience, Apollo is one of the more crypto-native institutions, especially with Christine Moy leading its charge into digital assets. Instead of evaluating where to go in crypto — like many institutions currently are — Apollo’s “pretty open” to getting involved on the “permissionless side of things” and innovating with RWAs.



“It&#8217;s no longer just holding a tokenized asset and just making passive yield from it. It&#8217;s taking that asset, throwing it into the DeFi ecosystem, and making more use of that asset and unlocking more liquidity for additional opportunities,” Pornprinya said.



By the numbers, Plume has roughly 200 projects currently working with them. They launched an eight-week testnet over the summer, which had roughly 18 million wallets, four million of which were unique. Mind you, that was eight months ago, but it makes me curious about the numbers we can expect out of the mainnet once it launches.



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