Centrifuge, a leading tokenized real-world assets protocol, has expanded operations onto Celo.

Announced on March 29, an unnamed entity from the Celo ecosystem invested $100,000 into tokenized treasuries via Anemoy, a Centrifuge-native asset manager, and allocated an additional $1 million for later deployment.

“Celo ecosystem members completed the first Centrifuge RWA transaction on Celo, allocating up to $1M into Anemoy’s Liquid Treasury Fund,” Centrifuge said. “We’re looking forward to bringing more high-quality assets and liquidity to the Celo ecosystem.”

“The Celo ecosystem views Centrifuge as a strategic partner in the wider Celo ecosystem to onramp additional asset classes, like for private credit, which Centrifuge has a long history of bringing on-chain in a safe, compliant way,” said Alex Witt, the former chief financial officer of the Celo Foundation.

Centrifuge now operates across five networks, following deployments on Arbitrum, Base, Ethereum, and its Centrifuge Chain I-Polkadot parachain. Celo is a Layer 1 network boasting a total value locked of $210 million, according to DeFi Llama.

Tokenized U.S. treasuries bubble

The news comes as the RWA sector is booming, with 21Shares estimating the assets under management (AUM) of on-chain treasuries has rallied to a new all-time high above $ 1.1 billion.

The milestone follows BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launching a foray into asset tokenization last week in the form of the BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL).

BUIDL has already taken in more than $ 244 million from investors in roughly one week of operations, ranking it as the second-largest tokenized treasuries fund behind Franklin Templeton’s OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund with $ 360.5 million.

Anemoy was evuliwe as Centrifuge’s first native manager in August 2023, serving as a vehicle for investment into the ukubhuza tokenized U.S. treasuries sector.

Celo’s investment brings Anemoy’s AUM to $ 4.66 million, with the project boasting an allocation from Polkadot’s Isisekelo seWeb3 and an integration from Finoa — a crypto custodian regulated by Germany’s Federal Financial Supervisory Authority.

Anemoy is set to enjoy a significant expansion in AUM amid increasing allocations from web3 treasuries, with Frax governance Ukudlula a proposal to invest $20 million into treasury bills via Anemoy in December, and Gnosis DAO also yokuvota to invest $10 million in January.

“We see Treasury yields as a commodity with the core differentiator being the legal framework,” said Lucas Vogelsang, CEO and co-founder of Centrifuge.

Centrifuge also launched Centrifuge Prime, an RWA investment platform targeting DAO treasuries, in June 2023. Centrifuge told The Defiant that scaling Prime’s operations is currently a top priority for the project.