Rayls x Animoca Brands AMA recap: Robby Yung on why tokenised real-world assets are "everything"

On Friday 28 November, Robby Yung, CEO of Investments at Animoca Brands, joined Marcos Viriato, CEO and co-founder of Parfin, the main developer of Rayls, for a live AMA on X about the new partnership between Animoca Brands and Rayls, formalised in a memorandum of understanding (MOU). Alex Buelau, Parfin's co-founder and CPTO, also joined but dropped out with connection problems. The big idea: tokenisation is a movement to open up access to assets, and real-world assets (RWAs) are not one sector of Web3 but, in Robby's words, "actually everything". This recap covers the main themes, the best quotes and what comes next.

What does Animoca Brands bring to the partnership?

Robby explained that Animoca Brands started out as a video game company before it discovered blockchain, so building and talking to online communities is in its DNA. That is the experience it wants to bring to Rayls: helping grow communities around products and ecosystems, and meeting people where they are, whether they care most about financial returns, security or belonging to a layer 1 ecosystem.

"The real sort of secret sauce of Web3, which is not so secret, is the network effects that we get by the fact that all of this stuff that we create and that we tokenise can ultimately be interoperable."

Animoca Brands also brings its investment portfolio of more than 600 companies. Robby said Animoca tries to support portfolio companies beyond capital, from tokenomics and go-to-market advice to introductions to partners like Rayls. That opens the door for infrastructure providers, asset managers, financial services firms and consumer companies across the portfolio to work with Rayls. Marcos added that Animoca's tokenomics team had already given Rayls sharp, practical feedback. Robby's reply: "We have probably the longest list of things not to do of anybody in the space."

For the full scope of the MOU, read Animoca Brands' announcement of the partnership.

How do real-world assets fit Animoca's vision for Web3?

For Robby, RWAs are a natural extension of what drew Animoca to Web3 in the first place: true, verifiable digital ownership. As a gaming company, Animoca was in the business of intellectual property, and blockchain let it pass real ownership of digital items to its customers.

"RWAs are just the extension of that, because ultimately this is all about a big movement to democratise access to assets, period."

Tokenisation means something that used to sit in a physical vault can be made available to anyone with a smartphone, subject to KYC. Marcos recalled buying his first bitcoin and moving it from an exchange to his own wallet: coming from traditional markets, where a stock or bond stays locked inside the bank, it was the first time he felt he truly held an asset. If you are new to the topic, start with our explainer on how real-world asset tokenisation can transform financial markets.

Why should everyone have access to the same assets?

Robby argued that traditional finance stratifies investors into institutions, high-net-worth individuals and retail, through regulation and industry practice, and that this is often unfair.

"Since when is having enough money above a certain threshold evidence that you can make a sound financial decision? Those two are not, in my experience, linked."

He added that institutions want to reach more customers too, but have been held back by technical and regulatory constraints that date back to paper-based marketplaces. Tokenisation removes the technical part of that barrier. Subject to proper KYC, Robby said, "I should not care whether you are a fund manager or a family office or you're an individual."

Where does the real-world yield come from?

Marcos gave examples of the kinds of assets Rayls is working to bring onchain:

• Trade finance: Latin American exporters shipping commodities to Asia wait around 60 days to be paid. Tokenising those receivables lets investors around the world finance the producer and earn a yield that comes from a real, existing business.
• Commodity warrants: a large agricultural producer holding hundreds of millions of dollars of stored, insured goods can tokenise the warehouse warrant, so investors finance the stock while the producer waits for a better time to sell.
• Onchain notes: Rayls plans notes backed by commodities such as soybeans, corn, cattle and minerals, as well as commercial and credit card receivables.

Robby summed up the appeal: commodities offer "yield that is quite stable and has a history of, I don't know, a thousand years", and "literally people in every nation around the world understand agriculture". He also noted that, as a former Australian-listed company, Animoca often met investors who wanted its shares but couldn't easily buy them. Rayls, he said, is solving that same access problem for real-world assets. See how we are building a new financial operating system for real-world assets.

What can a Pokémon card marketplace teach us about RWAs?

Robby shared a retail example of tokenisation at work. Courtyard vaults physical trading cards, mostly Pokémon, in an insured facility in the US and issues a token for each one. Collectors who could once only trade in person can now trade globally around the clock, and Robby said the platform does around $40 million a month in trading volume, more NFT volume than any other marketplace.

"If this works for something as incredibly niche and specific and small, to be honest, as Pokémon, imagine what it does for agricultural commodities."

He also cited a figure from a stablecoin panel at the conference he was attending in London: around 20% of US bank cash deposits earn no interest. Tokenised RWAs could give people access to stable, real-world yield instead.

Why does composability matter?

For Robby, the most exciting part is what happens after an asset is tokenised. An institutional-grade asset issued via Rayls doesn't have to be a passive investment:

"I could vault those tokens and then issue tokens against those tokens and create a completely new product, just on the fact that [there's an] institutional-grade asset coming via Rayls at the heart of it."

Marcos described this as bringing DeFi to TradFi and to institutional investors, the model behind the upcoming Rayls Public Chain. For the wider shift, read the inflection point for institutional DeFi.

How will decentralised identity and privacy unlock tokenisation?

Asked what's next for Animoca Brands, Robby pointed to Moca Network, its decentralised identity platform, which aims to give people ownership of their own data. Today's KYC is crude, he said: proving your age means showing an ID that also reveals your address, citizenship, height and weight. Zero-knowledge proofs can fix that, and Robby noted that Rayls is actively deploying them; read more in introducing Rayls Enygma. Marcos agreed: proving eligibility or jurisdiction without disclosing personal data is key to letting more people access tokenised assets.

What's next for Animoca Brands and Rayls?

Robby closed with his message to the community:

"RWAs, in my view, is going to be the biggest... It's almost unfair to call it the biggest sector of Web3 because it's not really a sector. It's actually everything."

He called stablecoins "a fantastic first step" that gives the industry a settlement layer, and said the real excitement is "the everything else" that Rayls is bringing onchain. Marcos thanked Robby for joining. To catch up on how RLS works, read about Rayls tokenomics.

Don't miss the next AMA. Follow Rayls on X and join our Discord. Building or investing in tokenised assets? Explore the Rayls Public Chain or talk to the institutional team.

Listen back to the full AMA on X