Squid: The Institutional-Grade Standard for RWA Cross-Chain Infrastructure
1. Redefining Cross-Chain Infrastructure for the Multichain RWA Era
1.1 The Explosive Growth of the RWA Market
Tokenized Real World Assets ("RWAs") have established themselves as one of the fastest growing categories in digital asset markets. Global RWA TVL expanded roughly 3.7x, from approximately $8 billion in May 2024 to $30 billion in May 2026, while the tokenized U.S. Treasury market alone grew 10x over the same period, from $1.4 billion to $14 billion. The composition of issuers has shifted decisively, moving from crypto-native protocols toward established traditional asset managers, including BlackRock, Apollo Global Management, Franklin Templeton, Hamilton Lane, and WisdomTree.
The institutional rationale for entering the RWA market is clear. Native blockchain primitives, including 24/7 settlement, fractional ownership, global accessibility, and programmable asset management, directly address operational inefficiencies that traditional finance has long failed to resolve. RWAs have established themselves as a use case that combines the technical strengths of blockchain with the credibility and legal certainty of traditional financial assets.
1.2 New Execution Conditions Created by Multichain RWA Expansion
The market's rapid growth is establishing a new market condition: tokenized assets no longer remain confined to a single chain but are expanding rapidly across multichain environments.
This shift is already evident in flagship RWA deployments. BlackRock's BUIDL, Ondo Finance's USDY, and Franklin Templeton's BENJI are each issued across multiple chains, evolving from single-chain products into assets increasingly premised on multichain distribution. Taken together with SG-FORGE's EURCV deployed on the XRP Ledger, multichain RWA issuance has moved beyond an exception and is becoming the fundamental premise of the market.
The core problem is that as assets distribute across more chains, the chain of issuance and the chain of utility increasingly diverge. Users and institutions demand the ability to use an asset on whichever chain they need at the point of use, regardless of where it was originally issued. The RWA market therefore requires not just multichain issuance, but execution infrastructure capable of reliably connecting cross-chain asset utility.
Yet cross-chain movement of RWAs imposes execution conditions that differ fundamentally from conventional cross-chain swaps. RWAs are on-chain representations of off-chain real-world assets, and both issuance and operation are conducted primarily by institutional actors such as asset managers, securities firms, and custodians. As a result, accounting, audit, regulatory, and internal control standards apply at every stage of asset movement. Institutional-grade requirements (asset integrity, policy enforcement consistency, operational resilience, and issuance-redemption control) are thus introduced as core execution conditions, demanding that cross-chain RWA movement function as institutional settlement infrastructure rather than a simple asset-exchange mechanism.
This research addresses three questions. First, it defines the structural causes of RWA fragmentation and the four institutional-grade requirements that infrastructure must address. Second, it benchmarks the leading cross-chain infrastructure categories currently in the market against these four requirements. Third, it analyzes how Squid satisfies these requirements at the infrastructure level and functions as the unification layer for RWA fragmentation.
2. Structural Causes of RWA Fragmentation and Infrastructure Requirements
2.1 Structural Causes: Economic and Technical Drivers
To understand the case for RWA cross-chain infrastructure, it is necessary first to examine why fragmentation arises, and why it is unlikely to resolve organically over time. If RWA fragmentation were merely a transient market inefficiency, short-term bridge or routing solutions would suffice. But if fragmentation is a structural trend rooted in economic incentives and technical requirements, multichain operation becomes a persistent operating condition rather than an exception. Two forces are at work.
On the economic side, major chain ecosystems are actively competing to attract RWA issuers. Chain foundations, capitalized through VC investment and public/ecosystem funding, deploy liquidity programs, grants, and ecosystem partnerships to incentivize issuers to launch on their respective chains. This dynamic distributes the same RWA across multiple chains and simultaneously fragments per-chain liquidity and user bases.
Beyond external chains, leading issuers are increasingly expanding toward proprietary chains or dedicated execution environments. In the stablecoin space, Circle's Arc and Tether-affiliated Plasma exemplify the pattern; within RWAs, Ondo has announced its own Ondo Chain, signaling the acceleration of issuer-led infrastructure build-out. This trend is steadily increasing the number of issuance chains.
Technical requirements compound the fragmentation dynamic. Each chain optimizes along a different axis: privacy, compliance, liquidity, ecosystem operation, or execution speed. Some chains excel at regulatory readiness; others lead in liquidity access or low-latency execution. No single chain accommodates the full range of RWA use cases. From the issuer's perspective, asset characteristics, target investor base, regulatory requirements, and intended use create structural pressure for issuers to support multiple chains.
The net result is that RWA fragmentation is the product of three reinforcing dynamics: chain-level competition for issuers, issuer-led infrastructure internalization, and chain-specific technical optimization. As the RWA market grows, these forces compound, and multichain operation becomes not the exception but the ongoing operating condition. Critically, this condition applies not to commoditized on-chain tokens but to real-world-asset-backed products issued and managed by institutions. Because RWAs are composite instruments linking underlying assets, issuers, investor eligibility, redemption proceduress, and regulatory jurisdictions, accounting, audit, regulatory, and internal control standards must be preserved through every cross-chain movement. Accordingly, RWA cross-chain infrastructure must be designed as an execution and settlement layer that reflects institutional operating standards.
2.2 Four Institutional-Grade Requirements for RWA Cross-Chain Movement
If the prior section established why RWA cross-chain infrastructure must reflect institutional operating standards, the next step is to translate those standards into concrete infrastructure requirements. In a multichain environment, RWA movement is the problem of preserving the rights, cash flows, and regulatory conditions tied to the underlying asset consistently across chains. Accordingly, RWA cross-chain infrastructure must satisfy four institutional-grade requirements: asset integrity, policy enforcement consistency, operational resilience, and issuance-redemption control.
2.2.1 Asset Integrity
The greatest risk of multichain expansion, from an institutional perspective, is the fragmentation of token state across chains, which renders aggregate supply verification difficult. When the supply-decreasing event on the source chain and the supply-increasing event on the destination chain become temporally or structurally disjoint, proving consistency among total issuance, per-chain circulation, and burned supply becomes impractical. This functions as a primary risk factor from accounting, financial reporting, and audit perspectives. For high-credibility instruments such as tokenized U.S. Treasuries, any double-issuance or omission can escalate immediately into a regulatory and audit issue.
To mitigate this, asset movement must be defined and processed as supply rebalancing. First, the supply-decreasing event on the source chain (Burn or equivalent) and the supply-increasing event on the destination chain (Mint or equivalent) must execute atomically. Second, total issuance and per-chain circulation must be tracked separately, enabling network-level supply verification. Third, every supply-modification event must be recorded in audit-grade logs that remain reproducible during external audits.
Asset integrity can therefore be evaluated across three criteria: whether settlement is atomic by design, whether supply changes are fully traceable, and whether cross-chain movement paths are standardized.
2.2.2 Policy Enforcement Consistency
In multichain environments, policy enforcement asymmetry operates as a primary operational risk. Representative cases include a wallet frozen on one chain that remains freely transferable on another, regulatory action reflected on only a subset of chains, or securities regulations applicable in the issuance jurisdiction failing to carry over after cross-chain movement. An RWA issued under U.S. securities regulation such as SEC Reg D or Reg S (e.g., BlackRock BUIDL) that is exposed to enforcement asymmetry across chains could face critical gaps in sanctions response, illicit-fund containment, and law-enforcement request handling.
Policy enforcement must therefore remain continuous across the entire path of asset movement. First, policy directives such as freezes, blacklists, redemption restrictions, and chain-level pauses must propagate consistently across all relevant chains. Second, KYC and AML compliance must be integrated throughout the cross-chain process so that enforcement remains uninterrupted at any stage. Third, policy-change records must be maintained on a verifiable basis, enabling demonstration of remediation scope and accountability during regulatory inquiries and post-event audits.
Policy enforcement consistency is assessed through the existence of a cross-chain policy-propagation mechanism, the presence of structural vulnerabilities to policy enforcement asymmetry, the auditability of policy-change records, and alignment with the regulatory guidelines of each jurisdiction.
2.2.3 Operational Resilience
In institutional operations, an incident on a single chain (whether downtime, security breach, or regulatory action) must not cascade into full service interruption. A full-system halt would compromise the Business Continuity Plan ("BCP") for institutional RWA operation, directly violating the internal control frameworks of asset managers, securities firms, and custodians. Settlement times measured in tens of minutes to hours, or any meaningful rollback risk, would fall short of the T+0 and T+1 settlement standards applied to institutional asset transactions. The institutional standard response is not full shutdown but partial isolation, and infrastructure must support this capability natively.
To meet this requirement, cross-chain infrastructure must be architected to contain incidents at the chain level rather than allow network-wide propagation. First, the infrastructure must support partial control such that an incident on one chain can be contained to that chain while others continue normal operations. Second, sub-second or second-level finality must be paired with near-zero rollback risk. Third, incident-response mechanisms must be predefined to minimize response latency and contain potential losses.
Resilience is validated through the feasibility of chain-level partial isolation, alignment of average settlement time with T+0/T+1 standards, convergence of rollback risk toward zero, and the prior definition of incident-response mechanisms.
2.2.4 Issuance and Redemption Process Control
RWA issuance and redemption are not concluded by on-chain events alone. They are composite processes incorporating off-chain settlement, account verification, KYC and custody checks, and dispute resolution. Without segmentation of the application, review, approval, burn, and settlement sequence, internal controls and regulatory response become untenable; in the event of a redemption dispute, accountability and fund-flow traceability become impossible to demonstrate. From the institutional asset-management perspective, issuance and redemption represent both the highest-frequency operational event and the most sensitive control domain.
Issuance and redemption must therefore be managed as processes with clearly delineated accountability and state transitions. First, issuance (KYC, custody verification, mint) and redemption (request, review, approval, burn, off-chain settlement) must be separated into discrete stages with clearly defined ownership. Second, on-chain events and off-chain settlements must be traceable in a 1:1 mapped form, enabling accountability through audit trail during dispute scenarios. Third, chain-specific redemption policies must be selectively applicable, allowing partial or staged responses to regulatory shifts or incidents.
Evaluation centers on whether the process is segmented into discrete stages, whether per-stage accountability is clearly defined, whether on-chain events and off-chain settlements are traceable in mapped form, and whether partial isolation and staged response are operable.
Taken together, these four requirements constitute the integrated control framework for institutional-grade RWA operation in a multichain environment. When the protocol layer fails to satisfy these requirements collectively, institutions must compensate at the dApp layer or through external operational tooling, structurally increasing operational complexity and internal control burden. The question is how existing cross-chain infrastructure measures against the four requirements. The following section evaluates the leading infrastructure categories against this framework.
3. Limitations of Existing Cross-Chain Infrastructure
Cross-chain infrastructure currently in the market falls into four structural categories. Each was designed for a distinct purpose and consequently satisfies the four requirements and aligns with the RWA environment in different ways.
Liquidity-Pool-Based Infrastructure moves assets by connecting source-chain and destination-chain liquidity pools. Stargate, which combines the OFT (Omnichain Fungible Token) standard with asset pools atop LayerZero V2, is the leading example. It delivers fast swaps across 50+ chains, but slippage tied to pool depth and dependency on pool liquidity present fundamental limitations for large-scale RWA movement. Asset integrity is partially addressed through the OFT standard, while policy enforcement consistency and issuance-redemption control remain dependent on the dApp layer.
Optimistic Intent-Based Infrastructure has relayers execute user trade intents immediately, with settlement subsequently confirmed via post-hoc verification. Across is the leading example. It delivers fast finality to end users, but dispute risk persists during the optimistic challenge window, and settlement guarantees rely on time-delayed verification. Operational resilience shows some strengths, but issuance-redemption control and policy enforcement consistency are difficult to satisfy at the infrastructure level.
Aggregators are not settlement layers themselves but routing layers that connect multiple bridges and DEXs to identify optimal paths. Li.Fi, which integrates 30+ bridges and DEXs, exemplifies this category. However, asset integrity, policy enforcement consistency, and issuance-redemption control are all delegated to the underlying bridge or DEX selected by the routing logic; the aggregator itself does not operate as a settlement layer. Coverage of the four requirements at the infrastructure level remains structurally limited.
Settlement Layer Infrastructure processes trade intents via RFQ and settles within hardware-verified environments such as a Trusted Execution Environment ("TEE"). Squid's flagship product, Squid Intents, is the leading example in this category. Asset integrity is addressed within the settlement architecture itself, with sub-second finality and price certainty. The architecture's most significant differentiation is that it does not require contract deployment on every chain.
Synthesizing across the four categories, the Settlement Layer category is the structure that most clearly aligns with the four institutional-grade requirements at the execution and settlement layer. The following section examines how its leading example, Squid, satisfies the four requirements in concrete terms.
4. Squid's Execution and Settlement Infrastructure
4.1 Squid's Architecture for Institutional-Grade RWA Operation
Squid is designed to move beyond cross-chain swap functionality and serve as an infrastructure layer that connects execution and settlement for RWAs distributed across multiple chains. Its architecture addresses the four institutional-grade requirements as follows.
For asset integrity, Squid's core product, Squid Intents, operates a TEE-based settlement layer within its own infrastructure stack. The TEE provides hardware-level execution integrity and enables the source-side supply decrease and destination-side supply increase to be processed atomically. Every supply-modification event is recorded in audit-grade logs, enabling separate tracking of total issuance and per-chain circulation, and supporting reproducibility during external audits.
Policy enforcement consistency is handled through Squid's cross-chain synchronization mechanism. Policy actions such as freezes, blacklists, and redemption restrictions propagate consistently across all supported chains, and policy-change records are maintained on a verifiable basis. This provides RWA issuers with the institutional foundation to preserve issuance-jurisdiction regulations (e.g., SEC Reg D) even after cross-chain movement.
Operational resilience centers on chain-level isolation. Because Squid supports 100+ chains without requiring contracts to be deployed on every supported chain, an incident on any specific chain can be contained, halting operations on that chain while preserving normal operations elsewhere through partial control. The sub-second finality delivered through the RFQ-based solver network architecture aligns with T+0 and T+1 settlement standards and reduces rollback risk toward zero.
Issuance and redemption control are satisfied by a settlement layer that supports stage separation at the infrastructure level. State transitions across each stage are traceable: issuance (KYC, custody verification, mint) and redemption (request, review, approval, burn, off-chain settlement). On-chain events can be mapped 1:1 to off-chain settlements, forming an audit trail.
On this architecture, Squid has processed over $6 billion in cumulative volume, supports 100+ chains, serves over 2 million users, and has executed over 4 million transactions, maintaining a track record of zero security incidents since its 2022 mainnet launch.
4.2 A Unified Infrastructure Stack That Does Not Require Rebuilding per Chain
If the four institutional-grade requirements define settlement reliability for cross-chain RWA movement, the unified infrastructure stack addresses the operational complexity that emerges during multichain expansion. As RWA issuers scale across additional chains, what they require is not settlement functionality alone. They must repeatedly construct the entire execution environment: per-chain routing, liquidity access, wallet integration, account abstraction, gas handling, transaction debugging, data indexing, and developer tooling.
This repeated build-out cost functions as the hidden bottleneck of multichain RWA operation. If every new chain requires reconstructing bridge integrations, DEX connections, wallet support, token data management, and transaction tracking, then chain expansion directly translates into mounting operational risk and engineering cost. For institutions in particular, divergent implementations across chains progressively erode the consistency of internal controls, incident response, and audit response.
Squid addresses this problem by unifying not only the settlement layer but the entire execution and synchronization stack. Squid Intents handles cross-chain settlement execution; Squid Aggregator optimizes routing across diverse chains and liquidity sources; Squid Accounts provides account abstraction and wallet infrastructure; and Squid SDK delivers the developer tooling needed for integrating cross-chain functionality into proprietary services.
The core value of this unified stack is that RWA issuers do not need to rebuild the execution environment per chain. Rather than designing a new infrastructure composition for each chain addition, issuers leverage a common execution layer for routing, settlement, accounts, and developer tooling in a consistent manner. This lowers the cost of multichain expansion and prevents disproportionate operational complexity as the number of supported chains grows.
Squid's unified infrastructure stack thus functions as the operational scalability foundation that complements the four institutional-grade requirements. As RWA fragmentation deepens, what matters for issuers is not simply supporting multiple chains but operating multiple chains as a single execution environment. Squid reduces the repeated build-out cost of multichain RWA operation and enables issuers to manage the execution infrastructure for asset expansion in a more consistent manner.
5. Implications for the Korean Market
Squid's unified infrastructure stack carries meaningful implications for Korean financial institutions seeking to bring global RWAs into the domestic market. To connect RWAs distributed across multiple chains to Korean investors and service environments, settlement, routing, wallet, and developer tooling must be provided not as fragmented components but within a single unified execution environment. Korea is developing the early conditions for precisely this infrastructure demand. Tokenized securities regulation, deposit and custody infrastructure build-out, and retail demand for tokenized U.S. Treasuries and money-market funds are emerging in parallel. The Financial Services Commission ("FSC") is refining its Security Token Offering ("STO") guidelines, while the Korea Securities Depository ("KSD") is constructing the underlying tokenized securities infrastructure. Major Korean securities firms such as KB Securities, NH Investment & Securities, Mirae Asset Securities, and Korea Investment & Securities are each forming and operating their own tokenized securities consortia. In step with this domestic build-out, demand for cross-chain infrastructure capable of bringing global RWAs into the Korean market is taking shape. At this juncture, the degree to which a cross-chain settlement layer satisfies the four requirements becomes a critical evaluation criterion for Korean institutions adopting, operating, and settling global RWAs.
Asset integrity ties directly to 1:1 mapping with KSD audit trails. Policy enforcement consistency is directly linked to maintaining cross-chain consistency with Korea's Capital Markets Act. Operational resilience requires partial-isolation operation aligned with BCP standards calibrated to Korean capital market operating hours. Issuance and redemption process control must conform with the staged accountability and audit-trail standards governing Korean tokenized securities. Squid's capacity to support these requirements at the execution and settlement layer positions it as a cross-chain settlement infrastructure that Korean asset managers and securities firms may consider when bringing global RWAs into the domestic market.
For Korean retail users, the cross-chain RWA experience is poised to become a natural extension of existing financial workflows. When purchasing tokenized U.S. Treasuries through a familiar interface such as Toss Securities or KB Securities, the end user need not be aware of whether the underlying asset was issued on the XRP Ledger or Ethereum. The settlement layer abstracts the cross-chain UX. By providing this abstraction, Squid has the potential to operate as the infrastructure that enables Korean retail access to global RWAs.
6. Conclusion
This research examined how multichain expansion of RWAs is transitioning into an operational challenge: preserving asset integrity, policy enforcement, settlement stability, and redemption procedures across multiple chains. RWA cross-chain infrastructure must accordingly evolve into an execution and settlement layer that reflects institutional operating standards.
Existing cross-chain infrastructure has approached the problem from different angles: liquidity bridging, post-hoc verification, and route optimization. In the RWA context, however, what matters is a structure that handles asset integrity, policy enforcement, operational resilience, and issuance-redemption control as a single coherent flow. Squid, with its TEE-based settlement, RFQ-based solver network architecture, support for 100+ chains without requiring contracts to be deployed on every supported chain, and direct integration with non-EVM ecosystems, is positioned as the execution and settlement infrastructure built for this requirement.
As the RWA market expands further into multichain structures, the decisive capability will be twofold: operating distributed RWA activity through a unified execution environment, and embedding institutional control standards directly into the settlement layer. On this measure, Squid is positioned as a strong candidate shaping the future direction of cross-chain RWA infrastructure.
Key Source
Squid - Official Site
Squid - Documentation
Squid - Squid Intents
Securitize - BlackRock Launches BUIDL on Ethereum
PRNewswire - BUIDL Launches on BNB Chain
Wormhole - BlackRock BUIDL Multichain Expansion
Markets Media - BlackRock Extends Tokenized Fund Across Multiple Blockchains
Ondo Finance - USDY Documentation
Franklin Templeton - BENJI Tokenized Money Market Fund
SG-FORGE - EURCV on XRP Ledger Announcement
SG-FORGE - CoinVertible Product Page
Circle Blog - Introducing Arc: An L1 Blockchain for Stablecoin Finance
Circle Press - Arc Public Testnet Launch
Ondo Finance - Ondo Chain Product Page
SEC - Regulation S Overview
LayerZero Docs - OFT Standard
Stargate Finance - Official Site
Across Protocol - Documentation
Financial Services Commission - Tokenized Securities (STO) Issuance and Distribution Regulatory Framework
Financial Services Commission - Capital Markets Act Amendment Passed by National Assembly
Korea Securities Depository (KSD) - Official Site
Disclaimer
The contents of this report are for informational purposes only and do not constitute a recommendation or basis for legal, business, investment, or tax advice under any circumstances. References to specific assets or securities are for informational purposes only and do not represent an offer, solicitation, or recommendation to invest. The final responsibility for any investment decisions lies solely with the investor, and this report should not be used as a guideline for accounting or legal judgment.
As a matter of principle, the author does not trade related assets using material non-public information obtained during the research or drafting process. The author and Catalyze may have financial interests in the assets or tokens discussed herein and may serve as a strategic partner to certain networks.
The opinions and analyses expressed in this report reflect the author's personal views and do not necessarily represent the official position of Catalyze or its affiliates. All information is current as of the date of publication and is subject to change without prior notice.