Ultiland: RWA New Unicorn Rewrites the Narrative of Art, IP, and On-Chain Assets

Author: ChandlerZ, Foresight News

Over the past two years, RWA (Real World Assets) has become the most stable growth theme in the crypto asset market. The on-chain scale of U.S. bonds, credit bonds, and short-term yield products continues to expand, and the capital flow structure between DeFi and traditional finance is becoming more predictable again.

According to the latest report from Standard Chartered Bank, as DeFi applications in payments and investments become increasingly popular, the market capitalization of non-stablecoin tokenized RWAs will surpass $2 trillion by the end of 2028, far exceeding the current $35 billion. Among them, tokenized money market funds and listed stocks may account for about $750 billion each, with the remaining parts consisting of funds, private equity, commodities, corporate debt, and real estate.

However, as the first phase of infrastructure gradually improves, the industry faces a common question: where does the further expansion space come from?

On-chain markets are essentially global liquidity pools, and cultural assets themselves have cross-regional dissemination capabilities. Under this logic, the on-chainization of cultural assets becomes possible. It does not rely on a single sovereign system nor is it limited by traditional art market information structures. Users are no longer just spectators or collectors; they also become participants in the value network. The boundary between culture and finance begins to blur.

The emergence of Web3 creative asset platform Ultiland is precisely based on this change. Ultiland is not a traditional art NFT platform but more like a “cultural asset tool.” It starts from cultural assets such as art, IP, and cultural creative content, establishing a set of on-chain issuance, rights confirmation, circulation, and financialization models, transforming them into asset units with sustainable trading structures.

New Narratives of RWA, On-Chain Culture and Creative Assets

The first phase of RWA mainly revolves around financial assets such as U.S. bonds, real estate, and credit bonds. These products have clear cash flows and mature valuation models, making them suitable for institutional funds and high-net-worth investors. However, their asset sources depend on offline financial institutions, and issuance is restricted by regulatory frameworks. The degree of product homogenization increases, and yields are greatly affected by macro interest rate cycles. For ordinary on-chain users, participation motivation is more about capturing interest rate spreads, which is somewhat disconnected from the native participation culture of crypto.

Meanwhile, globally, cultural, artistic, and IP assets have long been high in value but low in liquidity. The market size of cultural and artistic IP is approximately $6.2 trillion, but the circulation efficiency of this huge asset pool is very low, with assets concentrated among a few collectors, institutions, and platforms. Creators often find it difficult to share secondary market appreciation long-term, and ordinary users find it hard to participate in early value formation. This is a typical mismatch of value and participation: asset value is concentrated, while participation rights are scarce.

The expansion of attention economy and creator economy makes this mismatch more obvious. Increasingly, value does not come from stable cash flows but from community density, dissemination breadth, and cultural recognition. The commercial returns of content, IP, and art projects largely depend on whether users are willing to invest time and emotion. The difference between these assets and traditional RWAs is that the latter relies on yield curves, while the former depends on crowd structure and participation behavior. For a highly community-driven, globally mobile crypto market, cultural assets have a higher fit with on-chain mechanisms than some traditional financial assets.

Therefore, cultural-type RWAs are expected to become a new development logic: the underlying still comes from the real world, which can be art pieces, IP copyrights, offline performances, or other cultural content. But the way of value discovery no longer only looks at discounted cash flows; it further emphasizes narrative strength, user participation, and long-term cultural recognition.

The difficulty lies in pricing. Traditional art and IP markets rely on historical transaction records, authoritative institutions, and expert evaluations. This system is friendly to professional investors but highly opaque to ordinary participants. Cultural value itself is highly subjective and difficult to solve with a single valuation model. Ultiland’s approach is to partially delegate the valuation process to the market, allowing on-chain participation, trading depth, and holding structure to form part of the price discovery. Using ARToken and an innovative Meme-like RWA model, it creates an experimental space for tradable cultural assets. It introduces a more open participation layer, enabling cultural value to be re-evaluated on a larger sample.

Changes in participation thresholds are equally important. High-value art and IP have long been accessible only to a small group, with thresholds often reaching millions. After on-chain splitting, assets can be divided into smaller shares and offered to a larger user base, changing the capital structure rather than the art itself. For the existing market, this means that originally closed value units are now included in the global liquidity pool for the first time; for incremental markets, this structure offers participation methods closer to capital markets and aligns with the habits of crypto users for small, multiple, and dispersed allocations.

Under this logic, what Ultiland is doing is not just changing the sales method of art but trying to build a complete on-chain infrastructure for cultural assets. From rights confirmation, issuance, splitting, and trading, to a dual-token economic model that supports long-term value circulation. From the perspective of RWA evolution, this is a branch that follows the changes in the real economy structure. Traditional financial RWAs handle funds and interest rates, while cultural RWAs handle attention and recognition. They differ in asset attributes but can be integrated into the same market mechanism on-chain.

Ultiland’s Core Mechanism: On-Chain Issuance and Value Closed-Loop of Cultural Assets

The on-chainization of cultural assets requires a clear path. Ultiland’s attempt is to start from the commercial logic of art and IP, supporting the on-chain issuance and lifecycle management of a wide range of real-world assets, including artworks, collectibles, music, intellectual property, physical assets, and non-standard equity. Users can enjoy full-stack services: token minting, asset evaluation, decentralized auctions, and AI-assisted creation tools.

The value of these assets is composed of three dimensions: cultural value, financial value, and application value. It aims to establish a unified expression for these three on-chain and form a sustainable value cycle.

Ultiland’s foundational layer is ARToken. This is an on-chain unit representing cultural or artistic assets, serving as both ownership expression and market circulation form. ARToken supports on-chain issuance of artworks, antiques, design works, IP copyrights, and more, and completes rights confirmation, valuation, issuance, and trading through its RWA Launchpad.

The first market case for Ultiland is EMQL, an art RWA project corresponding to the “Doucai Chained Floral Double Ears Flat-Bot Bottle” from the Qianlong period. This imperial kiln masterpiece originally belonged to a niche collection system, believed to be a token of Emperor Qianlong’s affection for his favorite concubine, with a very high price, now stored offline in Hong Kong. Ultiland splits it into 1 million ARTokens at a price of 0.15 USDT each, making this previously closed-market asset accessible on-chain.

On December 3rd, Ultiland launched the second RWA ARToken HP59, a token created by Wu Songbo, a designer and digital media artist, based on the “Here and There - Spirit Series - No. 59” from the 2022 Winter Olympics. It symbolizes the fusion of nature and spirit, featuring a wild chicken soaring above Taihu rocks, surrounded by bamboo forests and distant pines. The token signifies harmony, vitality, and eternal tranquility. After opening, HP59 reached a peak of 7.78 times.

Another mechanism of Ultiland emphasizes market-driven value discovery. Based on its Meme-like RWA model, it applies the dissemination characteristics of memes to cultural RWAs, allowing the market to participate in value discussion in a more open way during early stages. Traditional art market valuation processes are usually dominated by experts and institutions, but the on-chain model transfers part of the valuation rights to the market, reflecting attention to cultural assets through participation, transaction density, and dissemination strength.

The value of cultural assets is often difficult to measure with a single indicator; market sentiment can provide genuine feedback from the demand side to some extent. Ultiland incorporates this feedback into the price discovery system, enabling cultural assets to gain a more proactive space for value expression globally.

One of the most noteworthy aspects of Ultiland’s structure is its 2 + 1 token system (including ARTX, miniARTX, and user-defined ARToken), and the introduction of the VMSAP dynamic capacity adjustment mechanism to achieve supply-demand-driven release pathways. Official information states that the maximum supply of ARTX is 280 million, with 107 million allocated for community incentives, ecosystem development, and global airdrops; 123 million will be generated through creative mining and staking participation. RTX is the platform’s sovereign asset used for value settlement and governance participation, while miniARTX is proof of user contribution.

miniARTX is the only release entry for ARTX; all new circulation must be completed through release and liquidity binding to form a closed supply system. Most platform revenue goes into the buyback pool to strengthen ARTX’s liquidity and scarcity. The output of miniARTX comes from user trading, creation, and promotion activities, making participation a source of value. For cultural assets, participation density itself is part of the value, and this model creates a linkage between the two.

• miniARTX exchanges for ARTX with a 30% ecological tax, of which 10% is burned directly, and 20% is injected into the ecological incentive pool;
• On-chain transfer of miniARTX follows a 10→7 net logic, with 1 burned and 2 injected into the ecological pool, to continuously replenish community incentives and liquidity;
• In some incentive scenarios, the 10% consumption from ARTX to miniARTX can be waived, and specific counterparty transactions may also reward an additional 20%.

The key here is the release cost. Users wishing to convert miniARTX into ARTX need to choose between linear release or accelerated release, with the latter requiring additional funds and triggering buybacks. The release behavior continuously increases ARTX’s buying power, stabilizing the token’s value center. The miniARTX testnet is about to go live, marking the next critical moment to validate Ultiland’s dual-token model.

Currently, Ultiland has built a five-module underlying framework around cultural assets. The RWA Launchpad is responsible for breaking down artworks, IP, and collectibles into tradable ARTokens, providing standard entry points for issuance. All ARTokens support staking/trading mining (as contribution indicators based on participation), rewarding community circulation and contribution. More innovative issuance models will be introduced in the future; the Art AI Agent connects generative content with on-chain price signals to provide continuous creative supply; the IProtocol handles registration, authorization, and cross-chain use of IP, solidifying copyright and licensing relationships on-chain; the DeArt ecosystem offers auction, rating, NFTization, and secondary trading environments for these assets, integrating creation and trading within the same market; SAE and RWA Oracle connect offline asset custody, valuation, and data synchronization, providing trustworthy on-chain mapping for real-world targets. These five modules together correspond to issuance, creation, rights confirmation, trading, and compliance, forming a relatively complete cultural RWA infrastructure rather than a single application.

Ultiland’s Unicorn Upgrade Path for RWA

From a timeline perspective, Ultiland’s implementation actions have already formed a relatively clear path. After EMQL’s issuance, its subscription speed was significantly faster than the team’s expectations, with the first round nearly sold out quickly, demonstrating clear user interest in cultural assets like ARToken. This result provides the most direct market feedback: real demand exists for cultural targets on-chain, and the splitting model can effectively expand participation, bringing previously niche collectibles into a new price discovery system. On November 26th, the Qianlong bottle asset was transferred, and after transfer completion, it will enter the secondary market.

The market response to EMQL laid a foundation for Ultiland’s subsequent expansion and allowed the team to allocate resources on a larger scale. Recently, Ultiland announced the launch of the Ultiland ART FUND, with a scale of 10,000,000 ARTX (about $50 million), aimed at promoting global traditional artists, creators, and cultural institutions to enter Web3, expanding the on-chain issuance and circulation of cultural assets. The fund will serve as Ultiland’s “Cultural IP Web3 Engine” and “Cultural RWA Growth Pool,” focusing on four main directions: incentivizing traditional artists to participate, supporting the issuance of art asset RWAs, promoting ecological cooperation, and rewarding creator growth.

Ultiland states that the ART FUND is expected to support over 100,000 artists, issue over 20,000 art assets, and push global cultural content toward more standardized Web3 transformation.

Once the underlying products are launched, case validations are achieved, and supply-side resources are in place, the ecosystem’s outer layer begins to unfold. Art is just the entry point. IP licensing, film and music content, performances and fan economy, and even the influence rights of creators can theoretically be split, mapped, and traded under a similar framework. Cultural production in reality is accelerating, with increasing numbers of creators, but the existing distribution structure remains concentrated in platforms and a few leading institutions. Most content is difficult to sediment into tradable assets. Standardized on-chain issuance tools, combined with clear rights design, have the potential to bring this long-sedimented value into a more transparent market environment.

The financialization of cultural assets has the potential to become the next cycle of RWA. The reason is not because the concept is new, but because of the differences in underlying driving forces. Financial RWAs are more constrained by interest rates, regulatory frameworks, and institutional balance sheet expansion, with marginal growth highly dependent on macro environment; cultural assets’ expansion depends more on content supply and user time, with growth logic closer to internet traffic markets. Once attention on-chain becomes measurable and distributable, it provides a foundation for transformation into assets. The crypto market itself is driven by high-frequency narratives and dense participation, and the fit between cultural targets and this feature is higher than traditional debt or real estate assets. This gives cultural RWAs the opportunity to form another growth curve on the same infrastructure.

In this track, Ultiland is discussed as a potential unicorn, mainly because the cultural RWA market currently lacks a practically operational product system. Most projects remain at the conceptual or single-function level, without forming a closed loop of “issuance—rights confirmation—trading—value return.” Ultiland has already formed an initial structure in mechanisms, asset issuance, user participation, and supply-side resources, and has obtained real market validation through EMQL. For a newly opened market, platforms capable of providing replicable models and empirical data naturally attract industry attention.

Summary

According to a joint report by Basel Art Fair and UBS, the global art market is expected to reach $75 billion by 2025. Innovations like NFT and RWA enable artists, collectors, and stakeholders to view art both as cultural products and financial instruments. Ultiland’s position in this path depends on whether it can continue to organize high-quality cultural asset supply, maintain a clear value recovery mechanism for creators and investors, and keep the token model stable through multiple market cycles. If asset issuance expands from single artworks to IP, entertainment, and creator economy, the platform will gradually evolve from a project to a foundational infrastructure provider at the asset layer. Conversely, if the asset side remains limited to a few targets or if token circulation overly depends on real income, the infrastructure narrative will weaken.

In the future, the on-chainization of cultural assets will not replace financial RWAs but is more likely to run in parallel, forming two different risk-return asset tracks. The former is more volatile but highly related to user participation; the latter offers stable returns but is more friendly to institutions. Ultiland is currently building a platform capable of large-scale experimentation on the cultural asset side. If in the next few years a relatively mature cultural RWA sector emerges, such projects today are likely to be regarded as early infrastructure prototypes.