Ant Group Jovay: How Alipay's Parent Is Betting 1.4 Billion Users on Ethereum for Real-World Asset Tokenization
When the company behind the world's largest mobile payment network decides to build on Ethereum rather than a proprietary chain, the implications ripple far beyond one product launch. Ant Group — parent of Alipay, handler of over 1.4 billion users — went live with Jovay, a compliance-first Ethereum Layer 2 designed for institutional real-world asset (RWA) tokenization. With testnet throughput hitting 22,000 TPS and a roadmap targeting 100,000, Jovay represents the boldest bet yet that Ethereum's settlement layer can serve as the backbone for trillions of dollars in tokenized assets.
From AntChain to Ethereum: Why a Fintech Giant Chose an Open Network
Ant Group is no stranger to blockchain. Its proprietary AntChain platform has connected over 60 billion yuan (roughly $8.3 billion) worth of energy-related assets in China's renewable energy sector. But Jovay marks a strategic pivot: instead of walling off institutional asset flows on a permissioned chain, Ant Digital Technologies is routing them through Ethereum.
The reasoning is pragmatic. Ethereum hosts over $12 billion in tokenized treasuries, accounts, and funds as of early 2026 — up more than 300% since early 2024. Canton Network, another institutional-grade blockchain, already processes roughly $350 billion per day in U.S. Treasury activity through partners like DTCC and Broadridge. Building on Ethereum gives Jovay immediate composability with this existing liquidity and a credibility bridge to Western institutional capital.
Jovay launched without a native token — a deliberate signal that the project prioritizes institutional utility over retail speculation. In a market flooded with token-first chains chasing airdrops and governance theater, Ant Group's no-token approach underscores its target audience: banks, asset managers, and regulated financial institutions that need compliance guarantees, not speculative upside.
Under the Hood: Dual Provers, AI Verification, and 22,000 TPS
Jovay's technical architecture tackles the throughput problem that has limited Ethereum L2 adoption for high-frequency institutional workflows.
Dual-prover system. Jovay employs a hybrid approach combining zero-knowledge proofs and optimistic rollups. ZK proofs provide cryptographic certainty for high-value settlement finality. Optimistic proofs handle bulk throughput where speed matters more than immediate verification. This dual approach lets institutions choose the security-latency tradeoff that matches their specific asset class.
Testnet performance. During trials, Jovay achieved 15,700–22,000 transactions per second — roughly 240 times faster than Coinbase's Base at approximately 93 TPS. The target is 100,000 TPS via node clustering and horizontal scaling, a figure that would place Jovay in the same throughput tier as traditional payment networks.
AI-assisted verification. Where most L2s rely purely on cryptographic proofs, Jovay integrates AI models to cross-reference on-chain data with off-chain attestations in real time. This is critical for RWA tokenization, where the gap between what a token represents and what actually exists in the physical world has historically been the weakest link.
Chainlink integration. Chainlink serves as Jovay's canonical cross-chain infrastructure via CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol), enabling secure cross-chain messaging and value transfers. Chainlink Data Streams deliver sub-second market data for pricing tokenized assets — a requirement for institutional-grade RWA markets where stale pricing creates arbitrage risk.
The Five-Stage RWA Pipeline
Jovay's core proposition isn't just speed — it's a structured pipeline for bringing regulated assets on-chain. The five-stage process creates a compliance framework that institutional partners can map to existing regulatory requirements:
- Registration — Asset identification and legal entity verification
- Structuring — Financial structuring with compliance checks embedded at the protocol level
- Tokenization — Converting structured assets into on-chain representations with metadata-rich attestations
- Issuance — Distribution to qualified institutional buyers through Ethereum's existing DeFi infrastructure
- Trading — Secondary market activity with embedded compliance rules (transfer restrictions, KYC gates, jurisdictional limits)
Each stage embeds off-chain data attestations and verification checkpoints, creating an audit trail that regulators can inspect. This is fundamentally different from the "tokenize first, comply later" approach that plagued early RWA experiments and contributed to regulatory skepticism.
The Competitive Landscape: Four Institutional Approaches Diverge
Jovay enters a crowded field of institutional blockchain platforms, but each takes a meaningfully different approach:
Canton Network has processed over $6 trillion in real-world assets since launch, with JPMorgan's JPM Coin now native on the network and Broadridge handling $300–400 billion daily in U.S. Treasury repos. Canton's privacy-first architecture appeals to institutions that need transaction confidentiality — a feature Ethereum's transparent base layer doesn't natively provide.
Pharos Network, founded by former Ant Group executives Alex Zhang (ex-CEO of ZAN, ex-CTO of AntChain) and Wish Wu (ex-CSO of ZAN), chose a competing path: a standalone EVM-compatible Layer 1 with 30,000+ TPS and 1-second finality. Backed by $32.74 million from Hack VC and Lightspeed Faction, Pharos targets its mainnet launch in Q2 2026 with Circle's USDC and CCTP integration. The fact that two teams from the same parent company are building competing architectures — one as an Ethereum L2, the other as an independent L1 — highlights how unsettled the institutional blockchain design space remains.
Base (Coinbase) focuses on consumer DeFi and broader Ethereum ecosystem growth rather than institutional RWA workflows. While institutions use Base, its 93 TPS throughput and consumer-first design make it a poor fit for high-frequency institutional settlement.
Ethereum itself, through the broader L2 ecosystem, is becoming what Vitalik Buterin has called the "institutional settlement layer." Canton's architecture already enables DeFi protocols and L2 ecosystems — including Jovay — to tap into regulated flows with atomic composability.
China's Back-Channel Re-Engagement With Global Crypto
Perhaps the most significant implication of Jovay is what it signals about China's evolving relationship with blockchain infrastructure.
Mainland China maintains its ban on cryptocurrency trading, but Ant Group's blockchain strategy operates through Hong Kong-based Ant Digital Technologies. The company has filed trademarks in Hong Kong for virtual assets, stablecoins (including "ANTCOIN"), and blockchain services, and has confirmed plans to apply for a Hong Kong stablecoin license.
This represents a sophisticated regulatory arbitrage: building enterprise blockchain infrastructure that connects to global DeFi liquidity through Hong Kong's regulated framework, while the mainland trading ban remains intact. It's not so much a contradiction as a two-track strategy — restricting retail speculation domestically while encouraging institutional blockchain infrastructure internationally.
The approach mirrors broader Chinese tech strategy. Just as Chinese AI companies compete globally through international subsidiaries while operating under domestic regulations, Ant Group is positioning Jovay as a global institutional product that happens to be built by China's largest fintech company.
What Jovay Means for the RWA Market's Next Phase
The tokenized RWA market has grown from a niche experiment to a $12 billion on-chain sector, but it remains a fraction of the trillions in traditional assets it aims to represent. Jovay's entrance matters for three reasons:
Distribution advantage. Ant Group's existing relationships with financial institutions across Asia provide a go-to-market channel that no crypto-native project can match. Alipay processes transactions for over 80 million merchants. Even if a tiny fraction of that commercial activity migrates to tokenized settlement rails, the volume dwarfs current on-chain RWA activity.
Compliance credibility. The five-stage pipeline, no-token launch, and AI-assisted verification address the specific concerns that have kept large institutional allocators on the sidelines. When a company regulated by China's central bank builds compliance into the protocol layer, it sends a different signal than when a crypto startup promises "institutional-grade" infrastructure.
Ethereum validation. Every major institution that builds on Ethereum rather than a proprietary chain strengthens the network effect. Canton, Jovay, Base, and dozens of other institutional projects are collectively making the case that Ethereum is the default settlement layer for the tokenized economy — not because of any single project, but because of the composability and liquidity that only a shared network can provide.
The Road Ahead
Jovay's 100,000 TPS target, Hong Kong stablecoin ambitions, and Chainlink-powered cross-chain infrastructure suggest Ant Group is building for a multi-year institutional adoption curve rather than a quick market entry. The lack of a native token removes the speculative distortion that has plagued other institutional blockchain projects, forcing Jovay to succeed or fail based on actual institutional usage rather than token price appreciation.
The critical question isn't whether Jovay's technology works — the testnet numbers are impressive. It's whether the regulatory and commercial bridges between Chinese fintech infrastructure and global DeFi liquidity can carry the weight of trillions in tokenized assets. If they can, Jovay doesn't just add another L2 to Ethereum's growing roster. It potentially connects 1.4 billion users to the tokenized economy.
For developers building on Ethereum Layer 2 networks and exploring RWA tokenization infrastructure, BlockEden.xyz provides enterprise-grade RPC endpoints and API services across major chains — the foundational connectivity layer that institutional-scale blockchain applications require.