Liquidity Mining and Investor Behaviour: Driving Market Participation in Real-World Asset Tokens
摘要
Blockchain technology is not only a concept, but also a practical tool that is ushering in a new era in asset management and allowing tangible assets like real estate and commodities to be seamlessly represented as digital tokens on the blockchain. This has real implications in terms of unlocking new ownership, investment, and liquidity opportunities. However, despite its theoretical appeal, the market liquidity of real-world asset (RWA) tokens remains a challenge. This study explores the behavioural, structural, and technological factors influencing investor participation and market liquidity in tokenized RWA markets. A qualitative methodology involved elicitation through semi-structured interviews with domain experts, investigating the limitations of liquidity mining, the role of investor psychology, and the importance of incentives and token structure in shaping engagement within decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems. Thematic analysis revealed eight core themes: platform trust, structural RWA illiquidity, the limits of incentive-based liquidity mining, user interface nudging, investor segmentation, SPV legal wrapping, gamification, and investor education gaps. Our findings confirm that investor behaviour in DeFi aligns with established behavioural finance theories such as Prospect Theory and Nudge Theory, while also extending them into the context of tokenized markets. Hence, we provide novel qualitative insights by establishing that legal clarity, behavioural design, and investor profiling are more critical than yield incentives alone. These findings have implications for protocol designers, regulators, and DeFi platforms aiming to enhance secondary market liquidity and sustainable investor engagement in RWA token ecosystems.