Ten dairy cows on a farm in Paraná, Brazil, recently backed a R$100,000 rural credit deal. The animals, valued at about R$120,000, wore smart collars that tracked health, activity and location, with each cow tied to a digital identity used in the financing process. The credit was issued through Brazil’s CPR-F rural credit structure and registered on B3. Some reports described the deal as livestock tokenization, while later reporting noted that the key financial instrument itself did not trade as a crypto token.
The distinction does not weaken the example. It makes it more useful. The cows had always been assets; the collars made them easier to track as collateral. A lender could get fresh data on whether an animal was still on the farm, whether its health had changed and whether the same cow might be pledged elsewhere, instead of relying only on another physical inspection.
That gets to a problem the RWA market now has to solve. The first wave of tokenization focused on getting assets onto blockchain rails. Treasury products, funds, private credit and securities can now be issued and moved onchain. Once that part works, investors start asking harder questions about what backs the token, who controls the assets and what happens when something goes wrong.
Seeing the Token Is the Easy Part
Ondo’s USDY gives a useful example of how those questions can be answered.
USDY is backed mainly by short-term U.S. Treasuries and bank deposits. Ondo publishes daily and monthly attestation reports, along with the value of USDY outstanding, the value of the underlying assets and the collateralization ratio. Its product page also shows the makeup of the portfolio rather than stopping at a broad label such as “Treasury-backed.”
The structure behind those numbers matters just as much. USDY is issued through a special-purpose entity designed to be bankruptcy remote. Ankura Trust serves as Verification Agent and Collateral Agent, with a role in checking the asset base and acting for holders if the terms of the debt are breached. Ondo’s original USDY structure also used an equity buffer to provide overcollateralization against moves in Treasury prices.
A public blockchain can show how many tokens exist and where they move. That record does not prove on its own that the issuer holds enough assets to back them. USDY deals with that gap by putting reserve data, legal claims and outside oversight around the token.
This changes what a user can check. Instead of taking “backed by Treasuries” at face value, the user can compare token liabilities with reported assets and see who has responsibility for checking the collateral.
Trust Also Depends on Who Does What
BlackRock’s BUIDL shows another part of the structure.
BlackRock Financial Management manages the fund. BNY Mellon serves as custodian and administrator. Securitize acts as transfer agent and tokenization platform, manages the tokenized shares, and reports on subscriptions, redemptions and distributions. PwC was named as the fund’s auditor for its first reporting period.
Those roles deal with different parts of the product. The manager decides how the fund is run. The custodian holds the assets. The transfer agent keeps ownership records and processes changes tied to the securities. The auditor checks financial information from outside the management chain.
The blockchain record sits on top of a familiar institutional structure: investors can still see who controls the underlying assets and whose records have legal weight. Custody, administration and ownership records remain part of the product even as the fund interest becomes easier to hold and move onchain.
BUIDL has since moved beyond being a tokenized fund that sits in a wallet. In April 2026, OKX, BlackRock and Standard Chartered announced a framework that lets eligible institutional clients use BUIDL as trading collateral while the asset stays in regulated off-exchange custody at Standard Chartered. That gives the token a job inside a wider financial workflow while keeping the custody role separate from the trading venue.
The point is practical. If tokenized assets are going to be used as collateral, treasury assets or settlement instruments, users need to know whose books matter when ownership, custody and redemption are tested under stress.
The Token Has to Carry the Rights People Think They Bought
Ondo’s U.S. tokenized securities launch in July 2026 pushes the issue further.
The company launched custodial tokenized versions of U.S.-listed securities, starting with BlackRock’s iShares Core S&P 500 ETF, IVV, and Micron shares. Broadridge was brought in to support proxy voting and regulatory disclosures so holders can receive shareholder communications through established market infrastructure.
This matters because price exposure is only one part of owning a security. Voting, disclosures and the legal record of ownership also shape what an investor owns. A token that tracks a stock price can look like a stock in a wallet while carrying a very different set of rights.
That becomes even more important as tokenization spreads to assets with more complex claims. Users need to know whether a token gives them direct ownership, a secured claim, an interest in a fund or exposure created through another contract. The legal structure is what tells them which of those rights the token actually carries.
Risk Has to Show Up Before the Buy Button
Once the backing and legal structure are clear, the next problem is easier to define: what risk is the user taking to earn the return?
An 8% yield can come from assets with very different credit, liquidity and leverage profiles. A product page that shows only APY pushes most of that difference out of sight. The user can see the output while knowing little about what produced it.
Plume has been moving more of that information into the product layer through Nest. In its Q1 2026 update, Plume said each redesigned Nest vault surfaces real-time NAV, asset composition, counterparty exposure, redemption mechanics and historical performance. The same interface is meant to show users how their capital is deployed and where returns come from.
That gives the investor something concrete to read before putting money into a vault. A high share of one counterparty becomes visible. Redemption terms can be checked against the liquidity of the assets. Changes in NAV can be seen next to the return being offered.
Plume also applies controls around who can use certain products and how activity is screened. Its documentation describes identity checks that can support KYC, KYB and investor eligibility requirements where needed. At the network level, Plume says it uses Forta, Predicate, TRM and Chainalysis for sanctions screening, AML monitoring and wallet-risk checks.
That does not tell an investor whether a vault will perform well. It gives the product a clearer operating boundary and makes some risks easier to see before capital goes in.
Regulation Can Move Into the Onchain Workflow
Plume has also been working to connect onchain token records with regulated securities records. Kimber Transfer Agency LLC filed its Form TA-1 with the SEC in 2025, and Plume-related congressional testimony in March 2026 described an onchain transfer-agent system that maps issuance, transfers and cancellations into records used for regulatory reporting. The value is straightforward: the token record stays tied to the ownership record the legal system already recognizes.
A Report Can Still Go Stale
The next problem is time.
An attestation can show that reserves matched liabilities when the report was produced. A portfolio can change after that. A borrower can weaken, collateral can fall in value, liquidity can dry up, or the number of tokens outstanding can move while the underlying reserve has not caught up.
Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve shows one way to cut that lag. The system can bring reserve data into smart contracts so the amount of reported collateral can be checked against onchain supply. Its Secure Mint design can use that data inside minting logic, and Chainlink says developers can set circuit breakers that stop actions when reserves fall below a set level.
That makes the data part of the control system. A reserve report can tell a holder that something changed after the fact. A smart contract with a live reserve feed can be set to block new issuance when the backing falls short.
The same idea can reach beyond reserve balances. NAV, collateral values and other risk inputs can feed into onchain rules when the underlying data is reliable enough. That gives tokenized products a way to react faster than a quarterly report cycle.
Hard Assets Make the Gaps Bigger
Treasury products make much of this work easier. The issuer is known, market prices are easy to find, and there is a deep market for the underlying securities. A fund holding short-term Treasuries can give investors a fairly clean view of what sits behind the token.
Private credit asks for more work. A user may need current information on the borrower, collateral coverage, missed payments and whether the portfolio has become too concentrated. A token can trade around the clock even when the loans behind it cannot be sold quickly.
Real estate adds another set of questions around title, liens, valuation, rental cash flow and enforcement. Receivables depend on who owes the money and whether invoices are being paid on time. For livestock, the lender may care about something as basic as whether the collateral is still alive and still where the borrower says it is.
This is where the Brazilian cows become more than a strange headline. Their value as collateral depended in part on facts that were costly to check. Once those facts became easier to track, the lender had a better basis for deciding how much credit to extend.
When the backing gets harder to see, the evidence around it has to get better.