Shinhan Bets on Won-Denominated Fund on Solana
South Korea's largest independent asset manager, Shinhan Asset Management, has partnered with the Solana Foundation, tokenization platform Etherfuse, and onchain liquidity provider Orca to pilot a Korean won-denominated tokenized fund. This innovative product targets the $36 billion real-world asset tokenization market, which is predominantly dollar-dominated.
The fund, managed by Shinhan Asset Management, will hold ultra-short-term Korean won instruments under South Korean law and is designed for overseas institutional investors. The parties involved are careful to note that this project is not about testing the feasibility of a regulated fund on blockchain but rather whether the architecture works with non-US dollar-denominated assets.
The Solana Foundation supplies the public ledger, while Etherfuse handles tokenization issuance using its StableBonds platform. Orca designs the onchain liquidity architecture, which is crucial for attracting institutional capital. However, the project faces a significant challenge: Solana's entire DeFi ecosystem is built around the US dollar.
The pilot aims to demonstrate issuance and distribution structures for won-denominated digital products with the best partners in the world, as stated by Shinhan CEO Lee Seok-won. The project's success will depend on Orca's ability to design a liquidity bootstrapping strategy for a market that has never existed.