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Interview with Renaiss CEO Winchman: Starting with Pokémon Cards to Build a Collectibles RWA Liquidity Infrastructure

2026-01-08 10:02

Read this article in 23 Minutes

This is not a story about a card drawing platform, but a questioning of the on-chain logic of real-world assets.

Author: Leafcat

As blockchain and NFTs continue to permeate real-world assets, collectibles have become a field that seems to have been repeatedly discussed but has never truly addressed its core issues.

In most people's intuition, the value transfer of collectibles seems to have long been "solved" by the market: auction houses, dealers, secure vaults, and appraisal institutions each have their roles, and transactions have been ongoing. However, if we extend the timeline, we will find that over the past few centuries, the circulation form of collectibles has hardly changed fundamentally. Shipping, custody, appraisal, and trust still constitute physical limitations that value transfer cannot bypass. Even after the digital platforms have matured, once real-world assets enter a collectible state, it is still difficult to achieve high-frequency transfer without physically moving the item, let alone unlock its liquidity and financial potential.

It is for this reason that when blockchain and NFTs entered the collectibles field, a misplaced prosperity quickly emerged in the market: taking TCG cards as an example, on-chain card draws, card transactions, and market activity continuously refresh data. But beneath these lively appearances, a more fundamental question has never been squarely answered:

How can the real-world existence, custodial responsibility, and value transfer of physical collectibles be proven on-chain?

In most existing applications, the answer still remains in a gray area.

It is in this frequently overlooked structural contradiction that Renaiss, the first platform on the BNB Chain with TCG RWA at its core entry point, begins to enter the market's vision. Starting from card draws and trading markets of Pokémon cards, this project has demonstrated strong market participation and liquidity performance in a short period, making it easy to be simplistically understood by outsiders as "another on-chain card draw platform."

Renaiss Founder and CEO Winchman Li stated, "Card drawing is just the starting point of asset distribution, not the driving force behind our project." He stated plainly, "What Renaiss truly aims to do is to establish a liquidity infrastructure for physical collectibles."

In his narrative, what truly needs to be reconstructed is not the card-drawing experience itself but how physical collectibles are authenticated, custodied, verified, and how transactions and settlements are completed without moving the physical items.

This also raises a more fundamental question: as tangible assets move to the blockchain, is the real hurdle the NFT technology itself, or can third-party appraisal, custody, and responsibility be incorporated into a system that is verifiable and deliverable? When on-chain card draws and transactions move fast enough, what the market truly needs is more distribution methods or a foundational structure that can validate fairness, custody, and liquidity?

Below is Winchman's breakdown of the issue - the disconnection in onboarding real-world assets, why trading cards became the first validated starting point, and how Renaiss, through actual market behavior, is driving a broader real-world collectible liquidity infrastructure beyond just cards.

When NFT Is Just Mapping, Who Is Responsible for the Physical

In most "real-world asset onboarding" narratives, the NFT itself is often seen as the solution: as long as an ERC-721 is minted for the physical item, completing a 1:1 mapping, the asset seems to have been successfully onboarded. However, in Winchman's view, this understanding overlooks the most critical issue.

What truly hinders the onboarding of real-world assets is not the NFT technology itself, but how responsibility is acknowledged, validated, and incorporated into the on-chain process. In most "physical NFT" scenarios, the NFT mostly only carries an image, a serial number, or an authentication code, but cannot answer a key question: Has this physical asset truly been received and held in custody by a third party? In case of disputes, how is liability confirmed on-chain? When authentication, custody, and minting are all unilaterally conducted by the platform, the so-called "1:1 correspondence" is more like a claim than a verifiable fact.

In his presentation, Winchman boldly stated that this kind of approach is not logically sound. "It's not valid for an NFT to only serve as a mapping of a number; you cannot prove on-chain if this card has indeed been held in custody." In his opinion, for a physical asset to become a true on-chain asset, the key is not in the issuance form but in whether a third party has been substantially involved in the on-chain process.

Based on this judgment, Renaiss did not adopt the common "physical NFT" approach from the outset but chose to create a specialized smart contract standard for physical collectibles. In this structure, NFT minting is not a unilateral act of the platform but must involve an accredited third-party custodian or insurance repository in the scanning, authentication, and signing of the minting process; authentication results, custodian entity, asset status, physical location, etc., are written into the on-chain contract as part of the contract layer, forming a strong link between on-chain status and off-chain entity.

"The key is the third party: who authenticates, who custodies, where the asset is, all of these must become verifiable and traceable on-chain states, rather than internal platform data." Winchman sees this as the threshold for onboarding physical assets onto the blockchain. Only when custodial behavior in the physical world can be transformed into verifiable on-chain states does the NFT cease to be merely a mapping and instead become an asset expression that carries responsibility and delivery capability.

In this sense, Renaiss is not trying to answer the question of "how to turn physical assets into NFTs," but rather how to truly put physical assets on-chain. Only when third-party authentication and custody are institutionally integrated into the minting process, do on-chain assets first possess a real-world foundation that can be externally verified, and can provide the basis for subsequent transactions, liquidity, and settlement.

Why Choose Trading Cards as the First Use Case

Trading cards became Renaiss's first use case for several key reasons, including its highly standardized asset format, a mature and widely accepted authentication system, and a market-proven liquidity base. Among various collectibles, trading cards, especially TCGs represented by flagship IPs like Pokémon, are one of the few asset types that can align the complete chain of "ownership- custody-transaction-withdrawal."

Winchman points out: "In fact, the trading card market is already quite mature, what is lacking is not demand but an infrastructure that can meet these demands." Whether in Western markets or the crypto community, trading card assets have relatively higher acceptance, and on-chain card pack opening and trading have already reached a considerable scale. However, the industry mostly remains at the vertical application layer of "pack opening," lacking infrastructure that can prove custody and authenticity.

From a market structure perspective, this choice has a real-world foundation. The global collectibles market is approximately $300 billion in size, with the trading card segment itself forming a highly active sub-market with an annual transaction volume of around $8 billion; even at the on-chain level, the tokenized Pokémon card market is about $150 million in size, demonstrating an existing demand for on-chain physical cards that has long lacked widely adoptable supporting structures.

Therefore, Pokémon cards have become a representative starting point. Its long-standing IP value, global consensus, and stable transaction demand make it an ideal scenario to validate the feasibility of Renaiss's infrastructure; and the upcoming 30th anniversary of Pokémon in 2026 is also seen as a significant consensus node.

After validating the Pokémon card scene, the Renaiss team has announced that in 2026, based on the same underlying logic, they will gradually extend to other mature IP card markets such as sports cards and One Piece.

For Renaiss, trading cards are not a limit but a use case. Card pack opening itself is only an early entry point used to complete asset distribution and user acquisition. What is truly being tested is whether this infrastructure of "physical assets + third-party custody + on-chain settlement" is replicable and scalable.

Using Market-Validated Infrastructure: Application First, Building a Trusted Custody Network

In Renaiss' design, the application layer must come first, not to create a better card drawing or trading product, but because in a highly decentralized, localized card market, infrastructure cannot rely on concepts to be adopted, but must instead be validated through actual usage.

"If the market is not functioning, you don't know if this structure can run." According to Winchman, the biggest problem with only focusing on infrastructure is not technical but rather the lack of real-world stress testing—without assets coming in, without transactions happening, it is impossible to confirm if third-party custody can truly handle settlement responsibilities.

Therefore, card drawing, trading, and subsequent gradually opened staking and other interactive functions in Renaiss are positioned as the application layer for validating infrastructure. They fulfill several practical functions: completing asset distribution, allowing authenticated and custodied physical cards to enter the on-chain liquidity system; validating PMF, observing if there is a stable, sustainable transaction demand; and generating real secondary market data, so that liquidity and pricing are no longer stuck at the hypothetical level.

"Settlement and custody only have validated meaning when transactions actually occur." It is for this reason that Renaiss must first get supply, users, data, and revenue running before it can attract third-party authentication institutions, insurance vaults, card shops, partners, and others to join, thereby accumulating real-world experience necessary for offline custody and delivery, laying the foundation for scalable operation.

Multiple rounds of card pack sellouts during Renaiss' closed beta, ongoing secondary market transactions, breaking millions of dollars in transaction volume, and significant liquidity have transformed custody, minting, and settlement from mere design concepts into repeatedly invoked actual processes.

This logic has also directly shaped Renaiss' expansion approach. The platform did not seek to cover all regions at once but instead began by establishing a distributed "custody and settlement network" spanning multiple countries in Asia. Without changing the existing custody logic, it incorporated physical collectibles into the on-chain settlement system to reduce cross-border friction and support interregional flow.

Building on this foundation, Renaiss is gradually expanding to the Middle East, Europe, and the United States, establishing interconnected physical custody nodes. On the custody side, the platform adopts a layered design: high-value cards enter an institutional-grade insurance vault system, while mid- to low-value cards are custodied by pre-screened local card shops, balancing security endorsement with liquidity efficiency. Through the operating system, scanning, authentication, signing, and on-chain integration are consolidated into a continuous process, embedding offline custody behavior into on-chain ownership and settlement mechanisms.

More importantly, Renaiss does not limit itself to being just a card drawing platform but is progressively opening up its asset pool and API, allowing third-party applications, wallets, and social products to build frontend scenarios based on the same ownership and custody standards. The platform itself plays the role of infrastructure provider, offering unified standards, custody, and market depth, gradually forming an ecosystem position akin to a "base layer liquidity provider."

Through application-layer reverse drive adoption, the previously localized, fragmented physical collectibles market is being connected into a cross-regional operable network.

More Than Just Cards: The Liquidity Infrastructure of Physical Collectibles

Winchman suggests that from a longer-term perspective, Renaiss is pursuing not a collectibles platform focused on the expansion of a single category, but a long-term, scalable liquidity infrastructure for physical collectibles. Cards are just the first validated use case, not the ultimate boundary.

As more and more physical collectibles are held in custody across regions in vaults and compliant card shops, on-chain transfers will no longer be just "ownership mappings" but will involve real asset units with a physical location, custody endorsements, and liability relationships. Once this structure is established, cards will naturally recede to a use case, and the infrastructure itself will be scalable.

On this foundation, Renaiss will gradually layer on more financialized capabilities. For example, by building a more comprehensive, verifiable transaction and custody data-based price oracle to provide a fair basis for subsequent lending, clearing, and liquidity engines; further introducing closed-loop liquidity and revenue distribution mechanisms to make collateralization, securitized reclaim, and transactional products sustainable business modules. On the other hand, the team is also exploring cross-regional asset swaps of similar assets without physical movement and barter scenarios, breaking down low-frequency transactions caused by physical limitations into processes optimized by on-chain systems.

"What we aim to build is not a specific frontend product but a reusable collectible liquidity infrastructure." According to Winchman, ideally, the frontend form can evolve continuously, with application and issuing parties innovating independently. However, consistent standards for ownership, custody, and liquidity are necessary to enable physical collectibles to possess long-term asset attributes that are verifiable, tradable, financializable, and interoperable across regions.

Under this path, what the cards have accomplished is just the first-round validation of the real world. Looking ahead to 2026, Renaiss is no longer focused solely on the performance of a single category or application form but on whether this infrastructure can be continuously invoked and unleash the liquidity potential of physical collectibles on a larger scale.

This is also reflected in the team's upcoming practical advancement pace. Entering Q1 2026, Renaiss will focus on three directions simultaneously: on one hand, accelerating product delivery and completing key capability modules — from more sustainable card pack mechanisms, SuperLiquid liquidity enhancement activities, bulk purchases and card exchanges at the application layer to fundamental improvements in data, randomness, and settlement layers, including on-chain data visualization, optimized VRF mechanisms, fiat currency payments, and user self-custody of cards on-chain, gradually advancing from "usable" to "scalably usable"; meanwhile, through solutions like the White Label Gacha SDK, paving the way for third-party access and infrastructure reuse, ensuring that this system serves not just a single frontend.

On the other hand, the team will continue to advance high-standard ecosystem collaboration to establish a clearer market positioning and credibility. At the same time, they will increase their offline and physical presence in the Asia-Pacific and Middle East regions, promote Vault and institutional partnerships in multiple key markets, allowing physical assets to enter the on-chain liquidity system more conveniently.

Winchman remains confident in this. As custody and settlement networks gradually improve and more physical assets are included under the same set of verifiable standards, the combination of collectibles and blockchain will no longer be limited to innovative forms but will begin to show substantive differentiation results. “There is still a lot of imagination in the combination of collectibles and blockchain. When the infrastructure is gradually improved, the entire track will start to undergo a qualitative evolution.”

In his view, this “qualitative evolution” does not come from a single product update but from the structural difference brought about by long-term infrastructure accumulation. While other platforms are still competing around a single gameplay or front-end experience, Renaiss hopes to present a longer-term and more scalable physical collectible liquidity foundation.

In this sense, what Renaiss is pointing to is not the next round of gacha or application form updates but a longer-term, infrastructure-centric evolution path for physical collectible liquidity.