The next hundredfold opportunity? In-depth analysis of the compliance public chain Rayls: the "holy grail" of the RWA track that raised $38 million.

Under the grand narrative of large-scale on-chain integration of real-world assets (RWA) and TradFi, a core compliance bottleneck has always loomed ahead. The emergence of Rayls Protocol is precisely aimed at solving this problem. As an innovative Layer 1 public chain with built-in KYC/AML mechanisms at the protocol layer, Rayls aims to build a compliant bridge connecting traditional banking systems and Decentralized Finance (DeFi).

The project has secured approximately $38 million in funding from top institutions such as ParaFi Capital, Tether, and Framework Ventures, with a total supply of its native token RLS being 10 billion. This article will delve into how Rayls attempts to become the underlying infrastructure for the trillion-dollar RWA market through technological integration and institutional design.

Breaking the Biggest Bottleneck of RWA: Why Did Rayls Choose an “Compliance-First” Alternative Path?

Currently, bringing real-world assets such as stocks, bonds, and real estate onto the blockchain has become one of the most promising growth narratives in the cryptocurrency field. However, its development has always faced a fundamental contradiction: the anonymity and permissionless characteristics of blockchain directly conflict with the strict identity verification (KYC) and anti-money laundering (AML) regulatory requirements of the traditional financial world. Most public chains choose the path of “building first, compliance later,” which makes institutional funds hesitant and RWA products often remain in experimental or small-scale pilot phases.

Rayls Protocol has chosen a distinctly different and more challenging “compliance-first” path since its inception. Its core vision is not to become the fastest or most decentralized public chain, but to become the most trusted blockchain infrastructure by regulatory agencies. Its target users are not ordinary crypto-native retail investors, but rather traditional financial institutions such as banks, asset management companies, and brokerage firms that are subject to strict regulations. Rayls attempts to answer a crucial question: What should blockchain technology look like if it is to be used by the global mainstream financial system?

To this end, Rayls has proposed a bold architectural vision: to directly “burn” compliance requirements into the blockchain protocol layer. This means that creating a wallet and executing a transaction on the Rayls network involves a compliance verification process that is inherently part of the protocol, just like paying gas fees on Ethereum. This deep integration aims to fundamentally eliminate the largest legal and operational risks for financial institutions adopting blockchain, clearing obstacles for the large-scale and programmable circulation of RWA. This is a future-oriented infrastructure mindset, where the value lies not in short-term speculation, but in whether it can become the “compliance settlement layer” for future finance.

Rayls Protocol Core Data and Financing Overview

Project Positioning: Compliance-first Layer 1 blockchain, connecting TradFi and Decentralized Finance.

Total Financing Amount: Approximately 38 million USD

Core Investors: ParaFi Capital (lead investor in Series A), Tether (strategic investment), Framework Ventures, Valor Capital Group, etc.

Token Name: RLS

Total Supply: 10 billion

Core Technology: EVM compatible, built-in protocol layer KYC/AML, integrated zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs)

Key Partners: Digital asset custody and management platform Parfin (jointly promoting projects such as the Brazilian digital real)

Technical Deep Dive: How Built-in KYC and Zero-Knowledge Proofs Achieve “Verifiable Privacy”?

The technical architecture of Rayls is the engineering realization of its compliance vision, with its core innovation lying in the clever balance of two seemingly contradictory goals: strong identity verification and transaction privacy protection. This is achieved through the combination of two key technologies: built-in KYC/AML in the protocol layer and zero-knowledge proofs (zk-SNARKs).

First, Rayls requires all network participants (wallet addresses) to complete identity verification before interacting on the chain. This is not reviewed by a centralized institution afterwards, but is a protocol-level rule for network access. This ensures that the entire participant base of the network is screened, significantly reducing the risk of illegal fund flows and providing the most basic compliance confidence for financial institutions to enter. You can think of it as a financial highway with “certified access” where only verified vehicles can be on the road.

However, requiring KYC does not mean that all transaction details must be transparent to regulators or the public, as this would expose business secrets and personal privacy. To address this, Rayls has introduced zero-knowledge proof technology. This technology allows users to prove to verifiers (such as regulatory nodes) that a transaction complies with certain rules (for example, the sender has completed KYC, and the transaction does not involve sanctioned addresses) without disclosing the original information (such as transaction amount or specific identity of the counterparty). This “verifiable privacy” model is crucial—it meets regulatory demands for monitoring criminal activities while protecting the privacy rights of legitimate business activities and individuals.

In addition, Rayls maintains compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This means that smart contracts written by developers for the Ethereum ecosystem can be relatively easily migrated to the Rayls network and immediately benefit from its built-in compliance framework. This reduces the learning costs and migration barriers for developers, making it a key step in attracting ecosystem development.

Analysis of the RLS Token Economic Model: The Value Triangle of Governance, Gas, and Staking

The prosperity of any public chain ecosystem is inseparable from a sound economic model of its native token. RLS, as the “blood” of the Rayls network, is endowed with three core functions: network usage rights, security assurance rights, and governance decision rights, forming a solid triangle that supports its value.

Network Usage Rights (Gas Fees): This is the most fundamental function of RLS. Executing transactions, deploying smart contracts, and even performing compliance verification operations on the Rayls network all require payment in Gas fees priced in RLS. As network adoption increases, especially if there are a large number of RWA-related transactions (such as bond settlements and stock token transfers), the consumptive demand for RLS will form a solid foundation for its value.

Security Assurance Rights (Staking): Rayls adopts a Proof of Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Validators need to stake RLS to operate nodes, produce blocks, and maintain network security. In return, they will receive RLS as block rewards and a share of transaction fees. This pricing mechanism encourages long-term holding and staking, reduces the supply of tokens in circulation, and provides economic assurance for the security of the network.

Governance Decision Rights: RLS holders have the right to vote on protocol upgrades, key parameter adjustments (such as Gas fee model, Compliance rule updates), etc. In a public chain centered on serving financial institutions, governance rights are particularly important, as they determine whether the future development direction of the network can continuously meet complex and dynamically changing regulatory requirements.

In terms of token allocation, the team, investors, and initial developers account for a total of 50%. This portion of tokens usually has lock-up periods and linear release clauses, which helps to reduce early circulation and avoid a massive market impact due to concentrated selling. Meanwhile, 35% of the foundation treasury and community share will be used for long-term ecological incentives, developer funding, and community building, providing fuel for the network's cold start and sustained growth.

Track Review: What Opportunities and Challenges Does Rayls Face on the Eve of the RWA Explosion?

Rayls is standing at a historic turning point in its field. Traditional asset management giants like BlackRock and Fidelity are entering the market through Bitcoin ETFs, central banks around the world are actively exploring CBDCs, and banks like JPMorgan are continuously experimenting with blockchain settlement. All of this indicates that the integration of TradFi and blockchain is irreversible. As the next trillion-dollar market, RWA urgently needs compliant infrastructures like Rayls as “connectors.” Its collaboration with the Brazilian digital asset management platform Parfin, along with its practices in the local regulatory sandbox, is a key step in realizing its vision.

However, the challenges faced by Rayls are equally severe. First is market acceptance: although its compliance design is aimed at institutions, convincing conservative financial institutions to migrate their core businesses to a completely new blockchain will require time and the accumulation of numerous successful cases. Secondly, there is the “compliance paradox”: overly strict identity access mechanisms may suppress the enthusiasm of ordinary developers and users to participate, leading to insufficient ecological activity and creating an awkward situation of “having compliance, but no ecology”. Balancing the compliance needs of institutions with the innovative vitality of the developer community will be a long-term issue.

Finally, there is intense competition: Rayls is not the only project seeing this opportunity. Other public chains (such as Ethereum through Layer 2 and specific compliance schemes), consortium chains (like Corda, Hyperledger), and emerging compliant centralized institutions (such as Prometheum) are all vying for the same piece of the pie. Rayls' advantage lies in its “native compliance” purity and compatibility with EVM, but whether it can translate this into actual ecological barriers and market share will depend on its subsequent partner expansion and the speed of technological implementation.