INTERVIEW: What Interoperability Gaps are Still Blocking Global Adoption of Tokenized Sovereign Assets?

The conversation with Wook Lee, CEO of EDENA Capital Partners, comes at a moment when tokenization has shifted from financial experimentation to contested infrastructure design. While U.S. policy debates focus on how to regulate tokenized instruments within existing financial architecture, several emerging markets are already experimenting with how to use tokenization as the architecture itself, particularly for sovereign instruments, diaspora investment channels, and cross-border capital mobilization. In that sense, the “interoperability test” articulated in Washington may prove less about technical compatibility and more about institutional authority: who defines settlement finality, who validates disclosure, and which legal systems ultimately underwrite digital claims on real-world assets.

The debate around tokenization has now moved decisively beyond experimentation into questions of institutional design, regulatory authority, and cross-border capital formation. In Washington, the House Financial Services Committee has placed tokenization at the center of its next legislative phase following stablecoins and market structure reform, with Chairman French Hill emphasizing interoperability and compliance as the defining constraints for the next wave of financial infrastructure. 

That framing reflects a broader policy recognition that digital asset markets are no longer peripheral innovations but potential extensions of core monetary and securities systems, particularly as attention turns toward tokenized bank deposits and regulated settlement instruments.

At the same time, market data indicates that tokenization has already reached a scale that makes regulatory lag increasingly consequential. Research from CoinGecko’s 2026 real-world asset (RWA) report estimates that tokenized RWAs reached approximately $19.3 billion in value by Q1 2026, with tokenized U.S. Treasuries continuing to dominate issuance and liquidity profiles across major platforms. 

Broader industry estimates place the total tokenized asset universe higher, often between the high tens of billions depending on classification methodology, underscoring a persistent definitional fragmentation in how on-chain assets are measured and categorized across institutional and retail markets.

That fragmentation matters because it reflects a deeper structural ambiguity: tokenization today is not a single architecture but a layered system combining blockchain-based transfer mechanisms with off-chain legal enforcement, custodial frameworks, and regulatory wrappers. Academic analyses of tokenized financial systems published in 2026 describe this as a “hybrid enforcement model,” where programmability governs movement and settlement logic, while enforceability still depends on traditional legal jurisdictions and contractual recognition frameworks. This duality has become one of the central tensions in institutional adoption, particularly for sovereign and quasi-sovereign instruments.

Meanwhile, global forecasts suggest that the long-term trajectory of tokenized assets could be substantially larger. Estimates from major market research institutions project the tokenization of real-world assets could expand into the trillions of dollars by 2030, with some scenarios placing the upper bound as high as $20 trillion or more depending on the pace of institutional onboarding, regulatory harmonization, and infrastructure standardization. The largest expected drivers are sovereign debt instruments, private credit markets, and real estate exposures, all of which are structurally suited to fractionalization and programmable settlement.

What is increasingly clear across both policy and market data is that the competitive frontier is shifting away from whether assets can be tokenized toward how credibility is constructed within tokenized systems. The key differentiator is no longer technical issuance capability but whether digital instruments can reliably embed enforceable rights, auditable disclosure standards, and liquid secondary markets that function across jurisdictions without friction or legal ambiguity.

In this environment, the concept of “interoperability” extends beyond messaging standards or blockchain connectivity. It is increasingly being interpreted as institutional interoperability: the ability of tokenized assets to move between regulatory regimes while preserving legal validity, investor protections, and settlement finality. Similarly, “compliance” is evolving from a post-issuance requirement into a design constraint embedded at the protocol and issuance level.

This shift has sharpened a more fundamental question for global capital markets: whether tokenization will converge toward a small number of standardized, regulation-heavy rails anchored in major financial centers, or whether it will evolve into a multi-jurisdictional system where emerging markets play an increasingly active role in defining issuance standards for sovereign-linked and cross-border capital instruments. In either scenario, the outcome will determine not only the structure of digital asset markets, but also the distribution of financial infrastructure power in the next phase of global capital formation.

Editor Faustine Ngila spoke with Wook Lee, CEO of EDENA Capital Partners, which is attempting to move beyond the “wrapper phase” of tokenization, where assets are digitally represented but functionally unchanged, toward infrastructure that embeds enforceable rights, regulatory oversight, and secondary liquidity mechanisms directly into issuance design. 

Here is the full interview:

1. Washington is emphasizing interoperability and compliance. What specific interoperability problems are preventing tokenized sovereign assets from reaching global institutional investors today?

Three gaps matter most. Identity and compliance checks do not travel between systems, so an investor cleared on one platform must be re-verified on the next. Assets issued on one network often cannot settle against cash or collateral on another. Legal and disclosure standards differ by country, leaving institutions unsure their rights hold across borders. For sovereign assets the cost is higher, because the buyer base is global by nature. We treat interoperability as a compliance question first, building identity, transfer rules and disclosure into the rail itself, using Canton, Chainlink and ZKsync, so the same enforceable standards apply wherever the asset moves.

2. Many tokenization projects promise greater access to capital, but liquidity remains thin. What evidence do you have that tokenized sovereign securities attract investors who would not otherwise buy those assets?

I would separate proven mechanisms from mature liquidity, because the second is still building across the whole sector. The mechanisms are real: fractional access from low minimums, around-the-clock settlement, and direct reach to diaspora and regional investors who rarely access sovereign issues through traditional channels. What widens the buyer base is removing the operational and minimum-size barriers that keep most retail and smaller institutional capital out. The honest position is that liquidity follows credibility, so our focus stays on enforceable rights and disclosure that make these instruments genuinely investable.

3. Emerging-market governments often face concerns about legal enforcement and political risk. How does tokenization improve investor protections if the underlying sovereign risk remains unchanged?

You are right that tokenization does not change a country’s underlying credit or political risk, and we do not claim it does. What it changes is the quality of the investor’s position around that risk: clearer title, real-time disclosure, and transfer rules that are enforced automatically. It also improves transparency. Ownership, payment flows and corporate actions are recorded and auditable, which narrows the information gaps that usually penalise emerging-market issuers. Investors still price sovereign risk, but they price it with better data and stronger procedural protection.

4. You argue that enforceable rights and auditable disclosure should be built into the rail itself. Can you explain what legal rights an investor gains through your platform that they would not have through a conventional bond or securities market?

On a regulated security token exchange the investor holds a security with the same legal standing as its conventional form, issued under the relevant regulator, in our case markets such as Indonesia under the OJK framework. The rights in law are the same. What our platform changes is execution. Ownership records, transfer restrictions and disclosure obligations are encoded and enforced at the platform level, and a digital transfer agent maintains the register. That gives investors faster settlement, continuous visibility of holdings, and automated compliance instead of reliance on layers of intermediaries.

5. Several governments are exploring tokenized debt and digital securities. Which countries do you believe are currently leading in implementation, and what are they doing differently from the United States and Europe?

In developed markets, the United States is advancing through institutional infrastructure, with bodies such as the DTCC bringing custodied securities onto public chains, while Europe has progressed regulated digital bond issuance. Both build on deep existing markets. The sharper shift is in emerging markets, where governments can adopt compliant digital rails without unwinding legacy systems first. Indonesia, through its regulatory sandbox, and several states across MENA and Africa are using government-anchored frameworks to bring sovereign and real-world assets onchain. Their advantage shows in regulatory design, with the build-out of volume still ahead.

6. Tokenized real-world assets have grown rapidly, but most value remains concentrated in U.S. Treasury products. What will it take for emerging-market sovereign assets to achieve comparable investor trust and scale?

Three things. First, regulatory clarity, so issuance sits inside a recognised legal framework. Second, institutional-grade integrity on the rail: enforceable rights, auditable disclosure and credible custody. Third, secondary liquidity, which depends on the first two being in place. US Treasury products lead because they pair the world’s deepest market with that institutional plumbing. Emerging-market sovereigns can close the trust gap by adopting the same standards from the start, which is precisely what government-anchored frameworks make possible. Scale follows trust.

7. Diaspora investors are often cited as a major opportunity. How significant could diaspora capital become for sovereign financing, and what regulatory barriers still stand in the way?

Diaspora capital is one of the largest underused pools in sovereign financing. Remittance flows to developing economies run into the hundreds of billions each year, yet very little is channelled into sovereign instruments because access is slow, costly and heavily intermediated. Tokenization can open a direct, compliant route for diaspora investors to hold sovereign securities from abroad. The barriers are mainly regulatory: cross-border investor onboarding, identity and anti-money-laundering checks, and recognition of digital securities across jurisdictions. Solving those is much of what our infrastructure is built to do.

8. Five years from now, what does success look like? Are we heading toward a globally interoperable network for sovereign digital securities, or a fragmented landscape of national tokenization systems that do not easily connect with one another?

Both futures are possible, and the next few years decide which one we get. The risk is a patchwork of national systems that each work well at home but cannot settle or share compliance across borders, which would trap sovereign assets in local pools. Success looks like interoperable rails where identity, disclosure and enforceable rights are recognised across jurisdictions, so a sovereign asset issued in one market can reach institutional and diaspora investors anywhere. That is the network we are building toward, and shared standards are how the industry avoids fragmentation.

Stay ahead of the stories shaping our world. Subscribe to Impact Newswire for timely, curated insights on global tech, business, and innovation all in one place.

Dive deeper into the future with the Cause Effect 4.0 Podcast, where we explore the ideas, trends, and technologies driving the global AI conversation.

Got a story to share? Pitch it to us at info@impactnews-wire.com and reach the right audience worldwide