Kula has put $50 million of impact capital fully onchain with a governance-first approach that hands decision-making power to the communities closest to the assets. The decentralized investment firm is tokenizing governance — not just financial claims — for real-world assets (RWAs) across emerging markets, putting local stakeholders at the center of how projects are run and funded.
How it works
- Instead of issuing tokens that represent yield or debt, Kula issues governance tokens tied to specific projects.
- Projects include a limestone concession in Zambia, a hydropower initiative in Nepal, and electric mobility infrastructure across East Africa.
- Each project is governed through Kula’s Regional DAO Framework, which runs transparently onchain while aiming to remain compliant with local and international regulations.
Why it matters
“As RWA tokenisation continues to evolve, I think the most meaningful progress will come from expanding who gets to participate in decision-making, not just who gets access to financial exposure,” Kula CEO Paul Jackson told CoinDesk. By embedding voting rights into project tokens, Kula shifts influence away from distant institutions and toward the people living with and stewarding the underlying resources. Local stakeholders can vote on capital allocation, asset management and planning — effectively making governance part of the investment product itself.
Scale and context
Kula says it has raised $25 million from partners aligned with its governance-first mission. The move comes as impact investing assets surpass $1.6 trillion globally, yet more than 70% of that capital remains concentrated in high-income countries. Kula positions its model as a mechanism to redirect both capital and decision-making authority to fast-growing economies that are often excluded from global finance.
Market outlook
RWA tokenization is growing quickly: industry estimates project tokenized real-world assets could top $2 trillion by 2028. Kula’s experiment presents a vision of that future in which onchain assets carry embedded accountability — and the power to shape outcomes sits closer to the source. According to Jackson, that proximity could be the defining difference in making tokenized RWAs genuinely equitable and impactful.
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