RWAiFi Summit 2025 in Dubai Successfully Concluded: Highlights and Review of the Intersection of AI, RWA, and Decentralized Finance

The RWAiFi Summit 2025, hosted by GAIB, Plume, and StakeStone, successfully concluded on April 30 during Token 2049 in Dubai.

The summit attracted more than 1,900 registrants, more than 400 attendees, and gathered 17 top projects, covering OpenLedger, Sahara AI, Aethir, Solv, Kite AI, Lagrange, Symbiotic, OpenEden, Maple Finance, Mind Network, ICN Protocol, Tranchess, Balloon and other projects. A number of top investment institutions such as Hack VC, Spartan Group, Animoca Brands, MH Ventures, Bullish, CMCC Global, and L 2 Iterative Ventures discussed the future of AI, RWA, and DeFi with many global AI experts and financial innovators.

Event Highlights:

This summit features 4 core roundtables that delve into cutting-edge topics in the industry. Below are some of the insightful views and insights from the guests:

Roundtable Discussion 1: AiFi: On-Chain Finance and Real Returns

Host: Keira (MH Venture Portfolio Manager)

Guest:

Kony (GAIB CEO) pointed out that in the AI era, the real profits mainly flow to underlying computing power assets, such as cloud service providers and data centers. Ordinary investors find it difficult to participate directly and can usually only get involved indirectly by purchasing stocks of companies like Nvidia. GAIB is promoting the financialization and tokenization of these computing assets, allowing investors to participate directly and share in the profits.

Kartik (Aethir Strategy Lead) stated that Aethir is a computing power market based on collateralized computing resources, where the actual income generated from users renting GPUs will be proportionally distributed to participants. This mechanism is based on real customers and transactions, inherently possessing the attribute of "real yield," providing sustainable and low-cost support for projects that require economic security.

Felix (Symbiotic Head of Ecosystem) emphasizes that "composability" is the key for crypto systems to surpass traditional centralized models. Through modular financial and incentive components, Symbiotic facilitates the free combination of new types of assets and protocols, helping RWA and computing resources to collaborate efficiently and accelerate implementation in the Web 3 ecosystem.

Seb (Managing Director of Impossible Cloud Network) pointed out that ICN is a key bridge connecting Web 2 and Web 3, establishing a "pay-as-you-go" mechanism to ensure that every party in the ecosystem participates based on real demand, thus forming a sustainable computing power network driven by enterprise customers with an on-chain revenue closed loop.

Roundtable Discussion 2: Unlocking RWA Value: The Path to On-Chain Asset Innovation

Host: Johanna (IDG Capital Web 3 Investment)

Guest:

Jeremy (CEO of OpenEden) announced that OpenEden has launched a stable asset supported by the yields of U.S. Treasury bonds, with plans to further expand to emerging market users in the future, and to provide access paths for cryptocurrency wallets to high-quality U.S. dollar assets.

Jing (Solv CBO) pointed out that now is the best time to engage in RWA, as global regulation is forming a critical framework period. The industry should actively participate in shaping the financial rules for the next five to ten years, as product and market demand have fully matured. A recent product launched by Solv even received Sharia compliance certification from Saudi Arabia, demonstrating the localization capabilities and real user appeal of RWA products in regional markets.

Jack (Plume Ecosystem) emphasizes that now is the golden period to bring various new assets on-chain. As the position of the crypto market in the global financial system becomes increasingly solid, more and more "non-technical" finance professionals hope to leverage crypto technology to drive asset innovation. He hopes that the future of the crypto market can transform into a "democratized capital market," promoting the integration of public and private markets and breaking down investment barriers.

Roundtable Discussion 3: DeFi Liquidity and RWA Value: New Opportunities in On-Chain Finance

Host: Lionel Pek (Spartan Group Executive Director)

Guest:

Ivan (CMO of Stakestone) pointed out that compared to traditional markets, the "capital usage cost" of DeFi is more flexible. From an ETH-based perspective, users obtain additional income through staking; from a USD-based perspective, the capital volatility caused by ETH's own fluctuations should be considered. Therefore, Stakestone supports stablecoins as pre-deposited assets to help users hedge against ETH volatility risks, thereby reducing overall capital costs.

Martin (Maple Head of Growth) calls on the industry to promote a unified risk control and asset pricing system, and advocates for supporting cross-asset, cross-chain collateralization and liquidity mechanisms (cross-margining) to facilitate the capital release and scaling of RWA.

Omar (Lagrange CSO) emphasized that DeFi liquidity can essentially be viewed as a "new type of venture capital" that can activate underlying assets with high potential that have not yet been fully discovered and financed. Through DeFi, small amounts of capital can be quickly mobilized to activate application scenarios such as market making and warehousing leasing, while reducing the overall capital volatility in the industry.

Roundtable Discussion 4: AI Ecosystem: Building a True Future Foundation

Host: Mackenzie (Animoca Brands Portfolio Manager)

Guest:

Katerina (Sahara Operations Lead) stated that Sahara focuses on addressing the issue of large centralized companies dominating the current AI industry, where data contributors lack compensation. They aim to break the status quo of "silent contributions," allowing developers, small teams, and individual users to fairly participate in the value distribution of the AI lifecycle, promoting a more open and equitable AI economy.

Lei Lei (KiteAI VP) pointed out that blockchain and smart contracts can introduce governance and audit mechanisms for AI systems, such as service level agreements (SLAs), scoring mechanisms, dispute resolution processes, and even explore behavior-based "insurance and penalty mechanisms." These mechanisms will make the behavior of AI agents more controllable, traceable, and verifiable, but emphasize the importance of privacy protection, requiring a balance between the verifiability of model training data and user privacy.

Christian (CEO of Mind Network) emphasized that blockchain inherently possesses advantages of "open participation" and "economic accessibility," allowing individual users or non-institutional investors to participate earlier in AI-related protocols and projects, and share in the economic benefits brought by technological growth. Unlike traditional AI giants such as OpenAI and Anthropic, Web 3 projects have achieved fairer investment opportunities through on-chain issuance.

As global discussions around RWA, AI, and DeFi continue to heat up, the RWAiFi Summit 2025 has become an important platform for driving AI innovation. This event once again highlights GAIB's commitment to combining cutting-edge technology with unlocking the future of decentralized finance.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates from the GAIB and AiFi ecosystems!

Organizer:

GAIB is the first economic layer of AI computing power, transforming GPU assets into a new type of income-generating asset. GAIB has launched the AI synthetic asset AID, enabling investors to seamlessly participate in the AI economy while obtaining real returns from AI computing power yields. Investors can stake AID (sAID), gaining rewards while maintaining liquidity, further engaging in the AI-driven financial market. GAIB also provides capital solutions for cloud service providers and data centers, optimizing their computing power resources and fostering the development of AI infrastructure. With extensive DeFi protocol integration, including lending, derivatives, and structured products, GAIB builds a bridge between AI and blockchain finance, unlocking new opportunities for technology and investment.

Plume is the first complete RWA chain and ecosystem designed specifically for RWAfi, accelerating the on-chain integration of real-world assets. The Plume network has over 200 projects that have settled in, providing a composable environment compatible with EVM, supporting the management and introduction of diverse assets. Plume's end-to-end tokenization engine and financial partner network simplify the asset onboarding process, promoting the deep integration of RWA and DeFi, allowing assets to be tokenized and achieve global distribution.

StakeStone is a decentralized, full-chain liquidity infrastructure protocol that revolutionizes the way liquidity is distributed on blockchain networks. Based on the full-chain architecture, StakeStone supports efficient yield generation, liquidity supply, and flexible asset management, providing sustainable liquidity solutions for the on-chain ecosystem.