TL;DR:
- Tezos incorporates Metals.io, a Trilitech platform that enables investment in tokenized metals such as gold, uranium and rare earths.
- The app uses smart-rollup technology with latency below 50ms, guaranteeing near-instant transaction confirmations for traders.
- The launch follows the uranium.io model, winner of the Best New Product award at the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards 2024.
The Tezos ecosystem added a new real-world asset (RWA) platform: Metals.io, a web application developed by Trilitech, the London-based research and development hub, that enables investing and trading tokenized commodities. The platform offers access to precious metals, base metals and rare earths in high demand across sectors such as technology manufacturing and artificial intelligence.
Metals.io operates on Tezos’ smart-rollup technology, which guarantees latency below 50 milliseconds and near-instant transaction confirmations. Users can access three tokenized assets: xU3O8, the uranium token already known within the ecosystem; VNX Gold (VNXAU), representing ownership of physical gold held in high-security vaults in Liechtenstein; and the RARE token by Noemon Tech, which offers exposure to a basket of five strategic metals —hafnium, rhenium, indium, neodymium oxide and praseodymium oxide— selected for their industrial and technological value.
Tezos Targets Critical Metals in the AI Era
The launch responds to strong demand for this type of asset. The creation of a strategic reserve of critical minerals by the United States government has placed materials essential for modern technology manufacturing in the spotlight for investors, present in devices as varied as smartphones, wind turbines and military aircraft. The rapid expansion of the artificial intelligence sector is also placing significant pressure on the supply chain for these materials.
Dimitrios Kavvathas, founder of Noemon Tech Ltd., noted that “the Trilitech team developed an incredible access pathway for these assets, and Metals.io is a great example of how the future of RWA investment is being built on Tezos.”
Metals.io replicates the uranium.io model, launched in December 2024 on Etherlink, Tezos’ EVM interface, and recognized with the Best New Product award in the Innovation in Crypto & Web3 category at the Benzinga Global Fintech Awards. Arthur Breitman, co-founder of Tezos, argues that commodity tokenization is a way to “streamline the ownership and transfer of these assets at a global scale,” in markets that have historically remained fragmented and filled with intermediaries.
