Physical Assets Tokenization for Blockchain Market

Abstract

Asset tokenization is a technique widely adopted in blockchain-based platforms that enables vendors to sell their assets in competitive markets characterized by direct participation and accessibility. Digital assets are natively based on information as, for instance, licenses, tickets, certificates or financial products. As a consequence, in order to perform asset tokenization, all the information must be previously stored, such that each single asset can be correctly identified. Tokens of digital assets are indeed defined as digital objects in which the relevant information are stored to guarantee a single, unique matching between asset and token. The benefit of this approach is represented by the public matching verification. In case of physical assets related to physical goods, the store and verification of all the relevant information to bind each asset to a specific token is a complex process. Moreover, unlike digital assets which only operate on digital domain, physical assets are subject to the regulation of the country where they are located and this asymmetry limits its use. Starting from this scenario, this work presents an architecture to support physical assets tokenization for digital markets. This is achieved through the definition of a process architecture with a specific trade-off between off-chain and on-chain tokenization.