Liquidity Classes: Why Segmentation by Design
A core design principle of Multipli is acknowledging a simple but often overlooked reality: not all real-world assets behave the same under redemption pressure.
Tokenization makes assets easier to represent and transfer, but it does not change their underlying liquidity characteristics. Some assets can be converted to cash almost immediately under stress. Others cannot, regardless of how they are wrapped or tokenized. Designing a single collateral system that treats all RWAs as if they share the same liquidity profile would be incorrect and, under adverse conditions, dangerous.
Liquidity Is a Property of the Asset, Not the Token
On-chain, many RWAs may look similar: fungible tokens, standard interfaces, visible balances. Off-chain, they behave very differently.
Effectively near-cash assets include:
Short-duration Treasury instruments
Highly liquid public-market securities
Assets with deep, continuous secondary markets
These assets typically exhibit:
Tight bid–ask spreads
Predictable pricing
Rapid settlement under normal and stressed conditions
Structurally illiquid assets include:
Private equity and private credit
Market-neutral or structured strategies
Funds with weekly or monthly redemption windows
Real estate and similar vehicles
These assets often involve:
Gated or scheduled redemptions
Discrete pricing events rather than continuous markets
Operational and legal constraints on transfer and liquidation
Tokenization does not eliminate these differences. It simply makes them visible on-chain which allows it be used as collateral.
Why Liquidity Segmentation Matters in DeFi
DeFi liquidation engines are built on a set of implicit assumptions:
Collateral can be sold quickly when thresholds are breached
Pricing is continuous and observable
Redemptions do not take days or weeks to complete
These assumptions hold for crypto-native assets and some highly liquid RWAs. They do not hold for a large portion of tokenized real-world assets. If assets with slow or uncertain liquidity are treated as if they were near-cash, stress propagates through the entire system. Liquidity mismatches become solvency risks, and isolated problems can contaminate otherwise healthy collateral pools.
The correct design is not to pretend all RWAs are liquid. The correct design is to separate assets into liquidity classes that reflect reality, while preserving a simple and predictable user experience.
The Practical Outcome: Segmented Liquidity Classes
Multipli implements liquidity segmentation as a first-class design feature.
rwaUSD (Primary Liquidity Class)
The rwaUSD class is designed to be backed only by highly liquid, institutional-grade tokenized RWAs. These assets are selected and risk-managed to align with DeFi liquidation mechanics.
This class is optimized for:
Strong composability across DeFi protocols
Compatibility with automated liquidation systems
Broad integrations across money markets, vaults, and strategies
Conservative risk parameters and solvency buffers
rwaUSD is intended to behave like a DeFi-native collateral asset, despite being backed by real-world instruments.
Segmented / Isolated RWA Variants - rwaUSDi
Assets with delayed redemption, structural illiquidity, or complex settlement behavior are supported through separate, isolated liquidity classes (rwaUSDi)
These variants are designed so that:
Risk is ring-fenced at the class level
Redemption timelines are explicitly respected
Illiquidity in one asset class does not weaken the entire system
DeFi protocols can opt into exposure that matches their risk tolerance
This allows Multipli to support a wide range of tokenized assets such as private credit, structured funds, or real estate, without forcing them into a framework that assumes instant liquidity.
Liquidity Should Be Segmented, Not Averaged
Averaging liquidity across heterogeneous assets creates hidden fragility. Segmentation makes risk explicit and manageable. The exact naming, parameters, and availability of liquidity classes may evolve over time, but the principle remains constant: liquidity should be segmented, not averaged. By aligning on-chain behavior with real-world liquidity constraints, Multipli enables tokenized assets to participate in DeFi safely, without compromising composability, solvency, or user trust. This approach allows tokenization to scale from representation to reliable financial infrastructure, where capital can move, be borrowed against, and be deployed with confidence.
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