Building the Trust Infrastructure for DeFi & Tokenized Finance

Executive Summary

The future of finance is tokenized. Analysts estimate that by 2033, over $18 trillion in assets will be tokenized: from real estate and securities to commodities, currencies, and even data flows. Every transaction — whether between humans, institutions, or machines — will eventually take place on-chain.

But this vision comes with challenges:

• Compliance must shift from after-the-fact audits to systematic, real-time, on-chain enforcement.
  
• Auditability must be native, ensuring transparency without sacrificing decentralization.
  
• Security must anticipate the post-quantum era, where today’s cryptography may be obsolete.

Without this trust infrastructure, tokenization risks amplifying systemic risks instead of solving them.

1. The Tokenization Imperative

Tokenization unlocks liquidity, fractional ownership, programmability, and interoperability across markets.

• Financial assets → equities, bonds, derivatives.
  
• Real assets → real estate, commodities, carbon credits.
  
• Intangibles → IP rights, royalties, personal data.
  
• Machine economy → IoT payments, autonomous supply chains.
  

➡️ The impact: every payment, loan, dividend, or transfer becomes programmable, automated, and executed on-chain.

2. The Compliance Challenge

Traditional compliance is reactive and fragmented:

• Banks run periodic AML checks.
  
• Regulators audit after suspicious transactions.
  
• Cross-border flows suffer from duplicated KYC/AML.

In a world of instant, global, on-chain transactions, this approach is unsustainable.

➡️ What’s needed: compliance-by-design, embedded directly in smart contracts and token standards.

• KYC, KYB, UBO checks performed once and reusable everywhere via digital identity.
  
• On-chain compliance rules executed automatically, in real time, at transaction level.
  
• Full audit trails accessible to regulators without manual reconciliation.

3. Systematic, On-Chain Compliance: Beyond Finance

This approach extends far beyond banking:

• Human-to-human → international remittances with automatic AML & tax checks.
  
• Business-to-business → supply chain finance with embedded UBO transparency.
  
• Machine-to-machine → IoT devices settling payments autonomously (e.g. EV charging, smart logistics) with KYO enforced at protocol level.

On-chain compliance becomes a universal layer of trust, enabling scale without compromising regulation.

4. Reimagining Taxation: Real-Time VAT at Source

One radical possibility: systematic, real-time tax collection on-chain.

• Every transaction (B2B, B2C, P2P) could automatically include VAT or relevant tax, routed directly to state treasuries.
  
• Fraud and evasion drastically reduced, since collection happens at the source.
  
• Administrative burden on companies drops sharply — no more complex declarations or reconciliations.
  
• Governments secure a predictable, automated cash flow to fund public services.
  

➡️ This model transforms taxation from a lagging, error-prone process into an invisible, embedded function of the financial system.

5. The Road Ahead: Universal On-Chain Economy

The trajectory is clear:

• All assets will be tokenized.
  
• All payments will be on-chain.
  
• All transactions will be transparent, auditable, and compliant in real time.
  

In that future, three elements are non-negotiable:

1. Digital identity (individuals, businesses, devices).
   
2. On-chain compliance (systematic, programmable, universal).
   
3. Post-quantum security (resilience against next-gen threats).

6. Building the Trust Infrastructure: Wecan Group, Proximus & Sealsq

This future cannot be left to chance. It requires public-private collaboration and infrastructure-grade technology.

• Wecan Group brings expertise in on-chain compliance and digital identity frameworks.
  
• Proximus provides secure and scalable infrastructure for real-time financial networks.
  
• Sealsq pioneers post-quantum cryptography, ensuring long-term security resilience.

Together, we are building the trust infrastructure for the finance of tomorrow:

• Enabling seamless onboarding.
  
• Embedding compliance at protocol level.
  
• Future-proofing the financial system with post-quantum security.

Conclusion

The question is not if all finance will move on-chain — but when.

Those who anticipate and build the trust layer today will define the future of global finance, taxation, and digital economies.

Wecan Group, in partnership with Proximus and Sealsq, is shaping that future now.