The rhythm of "ICM" created by the French is very slow, but sometimes slow is fast.
Written by: BUBBLE
The concept of "Internet Capital Markets", which was preached by Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, became hot on Solana after the explosion of Believe, while the market capitalization of Collaterize token COLLAT, another RWA project with an "ICM" concept, broke through $90 million in recent days and is now back to $54 million, and has continued to consolidate around $9 million since its launch in January. Finally, on May 18, Solana co-creator Toly retweeted Collaterize's App Demo video, which skyrocketed the token and brought the market back to the RWA project of the two former Microsoft employees.
What is ICM?
A few years ago, Solana proposed the vision of building an "on-chain Nasdaq," but as Nasdaq itself began to explore on-chain solutions, the narrative gradually shifted towards the more crypto-native "Internet Capital Market (ICM)." ICM serves as an alternative to the traditional capital market (TCM), allowing entrepreneurs to bypass venture capital and IPOs, and directly raise funds from the network community through tokenization. The Solana project represented by Believe App has made it easy to complete project issuance and investment on X.
Today, "ICM" has replaced "On-chain Nasdaq" and become the core narrative of Solana. Lily Liu, the chairperson of the Solana Foundation, has emphasized multiple times that the goal of ICM is to build global financial infrastructure, allowing 5.5 billion internet users to participate in the capital market without barriers. The Solana team is also working hard to establish it as a key infrastructure for on-chain ICM.
At the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of the Solana ecosystem Superteam, mentioned two concepts in the Solana 2025 marketing memorandum: "Internet Capital Markets" and "F.A.T. Protocol Engineering." He believes that in 2024, companies will directly go public "on the internet" and will be able to reach over a billion investors who hold private keys — they vote for their desired future with the funds in their hands, not limited to stocks, but covering all asset classes, cultures, and philosophies worth owning.
Data shows that the number of private equity firms needing to obtain liquidity has skyrocketed from fewer than 8,000 in 2005 to a demand of 30,000 by 2024, making "going public on the internet" seem urgent.
!
Despite the ongoing criticisms, such as lack of regulation, low project thresholds, and the ease of releasing misleading tokens, ICM still has strong potential for mass adoption, especially in promoting Web3 to Web2 users through a simple user experience, fiat payment gateways, and viral storytelling. To achieve long-term development, platforms like Believe need to move beyond short-term hype by promoting founder accountability mechanisms, optimizing token economic models, building DAO governance, and achieving real utility, thereby transforming ICM from a meme craze into a new paradigm of capital formation. After a series of product updates, including Pumpfun, Timefun, and Believe, the market now needs a more open and permissionless financing and trading ecosystem that covers a variety of assets, from meme coins to NFTs to startups, and Collaterize extends ICM's business into RWA within this concept.
RWA also has its own Bonding Curve - Collaterize
The founders of Collaterize are two Frenchmen, Paul Antoine Arrighi and Pierre Hoffman, who both previously worked at Microsoft. Paul launched his own startup project, OneClight, in 2015, which mainly functions similarly to Onkey, allowing users to pass through web pages without the need to "input a password." However, after a year, the project did not make much progress, so in 2017, Paul went to Microsoft to start another four-year career.
Another founder, Pierre, also joined Microsoft in the same year, responsible for managing Microsoft partners and ensuring the accurate deployment of software asset management services in both the public and private sectors. After only working for a year, he left Microsoft and joined the IOTA Foundation to oversee business development.
Paul Antoine Arrighi showcases Collaterize's app at AWS Demo Day
Pierre Hoffman once said, "RWA can achieve some functionalities that were previously impossible, such as liquidity, programmability, or broader access, and therefore it makes sense. We are starting to see early cases in this regard, especially with publicly traded RWAs such as U.S. Treasury bonds or stocks, but there are greater opportunities in private assets, as these assets currently cannot enter more liquid markets."
The development status of the RWA sector in the United States, Hong Kong, and France where the Collaterize project is based
Hoffman further stated, "If we can put these assets on-chain, within the appropriate framework and maintain transparency, we can allow the market to determine which assets have sufficient value to be traded, pledged, and utilized. It feels a bit too early now, but the fundamentals are gradually emerging." This statement aligns with the concept of "everything on-chain" mentioned by David Sacks, the White House's head of cryptocurrency affairs, and the types of assets supported in their documentation also reflect Collaterize's ambitions to some extent.
Collaterize supports the ability to tokenize any RWA, from baseball cards to real estate, from company equity to tokens. Notably, this protocol adopts a dynamic bond curve, and once the target is reached, the asset can be traded on Meteora, which has currently reviewed this bond curve scheme. The Solana-based protocol charges a 1% fee for transactions and a 5% fee when migrating to Meteora. Additionally, 15% of the fees will go into the Meteora liquidity pool.
Of course, the process of creating tokens is not as easy as the Bonding Curve model of Believe or Pumpfun, and there will be relatively strict reviews during the token launch under Collaterize. First, applicants need to hold 100,000 $COLLAT and then submit their application. Collaterize will assess whether the company has multiple dimensions of sustainability, including having a clear business model and growth plan, the ability to generate stable income and expand into new markets; having a good profit record and predictable cash flow, etc. In addition, specific high-value collectibles and luxury goods may be considered as assets, provided that they have authoritative appraisals, clear provenance, and insurance storage guarantees.
According to publicly available information, the highest value product currently collaborated by Collaterize is the upcoming property "Token" located in France. This collaboration is the first product launched after the partnership between Collaterize and ARP (Asset Realty Partners), which announced its cooperation with Collaterize at the MIPIM "International Real Estate Exhibition" in March 2025.
Founded in 2006, this comprehensive real estate service company has quite a reputation, headquartered in Paris, France, and established by Pascal Roth. After nearly 20 years working at a German mortgage bank, he created ARP to provide professional real estate services, and the group currently manages billions of euros in assets.
This is not their first attempt at "fragmenting real estate assets". In 2020, they entered the real estate crowdfunding market through their subsidiary Beefordeal, which allows investors to participate in real estate projects with a minimum investment of 1,000 euros, offering a potential return of about 10%. As of 2023, the platform has raised over 11 million euros in total.
!
However, even with such a luxurious lineup of collaborations in the real world, Collaterize cannot escape a paradox. At this stage, Crypto Native users instinctively reject the censorship mechanisms, leading them to dismiss compliant asset protocols, while traditional asset users do not accept the interfaces and asset forms of Crypto, thus creating a market paradox of "compliance and user demand misalignment."
According to on-chain information from Collaterize, the blockchain's activity remained very low four months after the project's establishment, with only 70,000 total transactions (tx) to date and just 381 total addresses. Compared to this figure, it even has fewer holders than a meme coin with a market value in the hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, RWA still has a long development period ahead, and while the market potential behind it is $75 trillion, there is significant uncertainty regarding regulations, infrastructure, and scrutiny.
But the new era always requires new explorers, and Collaterize, as one of them, is also searching for the treasures that may exist in this boundless ocean.
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Why did Collaterize rise 10 times in May with former Microsoft employees launching the "ICM concept"?
Written by: BUBBLE
The concept of "Internet Capital Markets", which was preached by Lily Liu, chairman of the Solana Foundation, became hot on Solana after the explosion of Believe, while the market capitalization of Collaterize token COLLAT, another RWA project with an "ICM" concept, broke through $90 million in recent days and is now back to $54 million, and has continued to consolidate around $9 million since its launch in January. Finally, on May 18, Solana co-creator Toly retweeted Collaterize's App Demo video, which skyrocketed the token and brought the market back to the RWA project of the two former Microsoft employees.
What is ICM?
A few years ago, Solana proposed the vision of building an "on-chain Nasdaq," but as Nasdaq itself began to explore on-chain solutions, the narrative gradually shifted towards the more crypto-native "Internet Capital Market (ICM)." ICM serves as an alternative to the traditional capital market (TCM), allowing entrepreneurs to bypass venture capital and IPOs, and directly raise funds from the network community through tokenization. The Solana project represented by Believe App has made it easy to complete project issuance and investment on X.
Today, "ICM" has replaced "On-chain Nasdaq" and become the core narrative of Solana. Lily Liu, the chairperson of the Solana Foundation, has emphasized multiple times that the goal of ICM is to build global financial infrastructure, allowing 5.5 billion internet users to participate in the capital market without barriers. The Solana team is also working hard to establish it as a key infrastructure for on-chain ICM.
At the end of December 2024, Akshay BD, head of the Solana ecosystem Superteam, mentioned two concepts in the Solana 2025 marketing memorandum: "Internet Capital Markets" and "F.A.T. Protocol Engineering." He believes that in 2024, companies will directly go public "on the internet" and will be able to reach over a billion investors who hold private keys — they vote for their desired future with the funds in their hands, not limited to stocks, but covering all asset classes, cultures, and philosophies worth owning.
Data shows that the number of private equity firms needing to obtain liquidity has skyrocketed from fewer than 8,000 in 2005 to a demand of 30,000 by 2024, making "going public on the internet" seem urgent.
!
Despite the ongoing criticisms, such as lack of regulation, low project thresholds, and the ease of releasing misleading tokens, ICM still has strong potential for mass adoption, especially in promoting Web3 to Web2 users through a simple user experience, fiat payment gateways, and viral storytelling. To achieve long-term development, platforms like Believe need to move beyond short-term hype by promoting founder accountability mechanisms, optimizing token economic models, building DAO governance, and achieving real utility, thereby transforming ICM from a meme craze into a new paradigm of capital formation. After a series of product updates, including Pumpfun, Timefun, and Believe, the market now needs a more open and permissionless financing and trading ecosystem that covers a variety of assets, from meme coins to NFTs to startups, and Collaterize extends ICM's business into RWA within this concept.
RWA also has its own Bonding Curve - Collaterize
The founders of Collaterize are two Frenchmen, Paul Antoine Arrighi and Pierre Hoffman, who both previously worked at Microsoft. Paul launched his own startup project, OneClight, in 2015, which mainly functions similarly to Onkey, allowing users to pass through web pages without the need to "input a password." However, after a year, the project did not make much progress, so in 2017, Paul went to Microsoft to start another four-year career.
Another founder, Pierre, also joined Microsoft in the same year, responsible for managing Microsoft partners and ensuring the accurate deployment of software asset management services in both the public and private sectors. After only working for a year, he left Microsoft and joined the IOTA Foundation to oversee business development.
Paul Antoine Arrighi showcases Collaterize's app at AWS Demo Day
Pierre Hoffman once said, "RWA can achieve some functionalities that were previously impossible, such as liquidity, programmability, or broader access, and therefore it makes sense. We are starting to see early cases in this regard, especially with publicly traded RWAs such as U.S. Treasury bonds or stocks, but there are greater opportunities in private assets, as these assets currently cannot enter more liquid markets."
The development status of the RWA sector in the United States, Hong Kong, and France where the Collaterize project is based
Hoffman further stated, "If we can put these assets on-chain, within the appropriate framework and maintain transparency, we can allow the market to determine which assets have sufficient value to be traded, pledged, and utilized. It feels a bit too early now, but the fundamentals are gradually emerging." This statement aligns with the concept of "everything on-chain" mentioned by David Sacks, the White House's head of cryptocurrency affairs, and the types of assets supported in their documentation also reflect Collaterize's ambitions to some extent.
Collaterize supports the ability to tokenize any RWA, from baseball cards to real estate, from company equity to tokens. Notably, this protocol adopts a dynamic bond curve, and once the target is reached, the asset can be traded on Meteora, which has currently reviewed this bond curve scheme. The Solana-based protocol charges a 1% fee for transactions and a 5% fee when migrating to Meteora. Additionally, 15% of the fees will go into the Meteora liquidity pool.
Of course, the process of creating tokens is not as easy as the Bonding Curve model of Believe or Pumpfun, and there will be relatively strict reviews during the token launch under Collaterize. First, applicants need to hold 100,000 $COLLAT and then submit their application. Collaterize will assess whether the company has multiple dimensions of sustainability, including having a clear business model and growth plan, the ability to generate stable income and expand into new markets; having a good profit record and predictable cash flow, etc. In addition, specific high-value collectibles and luxury goods may be considered as assets, provided that they have authoritative appraisals, clear provenance, and insurance storage guarantees.
According to publicly available information, the highest value product currently collaborated by Collaterize is the upcoming property "Token" located in France. This collaboration is the first product launched after the partnership between Collaterize and ARP (Asset Realty Partners), which announced its cooperation with Collaterize at the MIPIM "International Real Estate Exhibition" in March 2025.
Founded in 2006, this comprehensive real estate service company has quite a reputation, headquartered in Paris, France, and established by Pascal Roth. After nearly 20 years working at a German mortgage bank, he created ARP to provide professional real estate services, and the group currently manages billions of euros in assets.
This is not their first attempt at "fragmenting real estate assets". In 2020, they entered the real estate crowdfunding market through their subsidiary Beefordeal, which allows investors to participate in real estate projects with a minimum investment of 1,000 euros, offering a potential return of about 10%. As of 2023, the platform has raised over 11 million euros in total.
!
However, even with such a luxurious lineup of collaborations in the real world, Collaterize cannot escape a paradox. At this stage, Crypto Native users instinctively reject the censorship mechanisms, leading them to dismiss compliant asset protocols, while traditional asset users do not accept the interfaces and asset forms of Crypto, thus creating a market paradox of "compliance and user demand misalignment."
According to on-chain information from Collaterize, the blockchain's activity remained very low four months after the project's establishment, with only 70,000 total transactions (tx) to date and just 381 total addresses. Compared to this figure, it even has fewer holders than a meme coin with a market value in the hundreds of thousands. Nevertheless, RWA still has a long development period ahead, and while the market potential behind it is $75 trillion, there is significant uncertainty regarding regulations, infrastructure, and scrutiny.
But the new era always requires new explorers, and Collaterize, as one of them, is also searching for the treasures that may exist in this boundless ocean.