Opinion by: Joaquin Mendes, chief operating officer of Taiko
For centuries value passed directly between parties: grain for gold, land for livestock. No third party assigned worth or decided who could trade. Two sides agreed, and the exchange completed. Over time financial infrastructure—banks, brokers, custodians—removed that direct relationship, setting prices, controlling access and constraining agency.
Institutional interest in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) is growing, but method matters. Many large players lean on permissioned blockchains, centralized layer 2s and private networks. Those choices reintroduce gatekeepers onchain: permissioned chains restrict who can participate and what terms apply, centralized rollups create single points of control, and private chains hand operators the power to limit interoperability and censor activity.
Imagine a $10 million property tokenized into 10,000 shares. On a permissioned or centralized platform, trading those shares still requires approval. Value and access become subject to platform rules rather than direct negotiation between buyer and seller. The middleman hasn’t been removed—only moved onto a blockchain.
Why does the industry favor control? Chiefly regulatory concern. Authorities demand identity checks, monitoring and enforcement capabilities. The conventional response is to centralize, thinking a single operator can freeze assets or reverse transactions when required. Legal liability and fear of regulatory consequences push firms to reproduce familiar centralized infrastructure onchain.
But centralization increases regulatory risk: a centralized blockchain operator may itself become a regulated intermediary, with new custody and licensing obligations. Recreating these structures defeats blockchain’s promise and creates unintended dependencies and single points of failure.
The better path is to meet regulatory objectives without reinstating gatekeepers. KYC, transaction monitoring and enforcement can be implemented at the application layer while using public, permissionless settlement. Public rollups that inherit Ethereum’s security combine compliance capability with decentralization: sequencing and settlement are handled by decentralized validators, reducing single points of control while preserving transparency and provable finality.
Base-layer security and public settlement let applications enforce identity and compliance rules without relying on a privileged operator. Well-designed rollups deliver fast, low-cost transactions and institutional-grade settlement while keeping the ledger trustless—integrity ensured by cryptographic and economic consensus rather than human intermediaries. This both reduces operational risk and aligns more naturally with regulatory goals of auditability and transparency.
The stakes are high. The RWA market could reach trillions. Today’s infrastructure choices will determine whether tokenized assets enable broader participation and open markets or simply recreate incumbent gatekeeping on a new ledger. Persisting with permissioned or centralized approaches risks cementing old barriers into next-generation systems, concentrating access and wealth and undermining blockchain’s transformative potential.
Ethereum and its rollup model already offer a practical answer: permissionless settlement, inherited security, and an environment where compliance can be implemented at the app level. Embracing rollup infrastructure enables true decentralization while meeting regulatory and institutional needs. Rejecting legacy workarounds and avoiding the creation of new gatekeepers will help shape a fairer, more open financial system.
Opinion by: Joaquin Mendes, chief operating officer of Taiko.
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