Alipay’s Ant Group Launches Ethereum L2 for 1.4B Users
Ant Group, the fintech giant behind China’s Alipay, has launched Jovay, a new Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) blockchain designed to bring real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain at an institutional scale. Described as a “compliance-first, AI-assisted scaling network,” Jovay aims to integrate real-world data and value flows into decentralized finance (DeFi). It utilizes a hybrid dual-prover system (zero-knowledge and optimistic) for both scalability and verifiability, and notably, launches without a native token, signaling a strategic focus on enterprise adoption over retail speculation.
Jovay’s potential impact is immense, given Alipay’s 1.4 billion users. Testnet trials showed impressive transaction speeds of 15,700-22,000 TPS, with a target of 100,000 TPS, significantly surpassing existing L2s like Coinbase-backed Base. The platform addresses the growing RWA segment, which has seen tokenized assets on Ethereum exceed $12 billion. Jovay’s five-stage pipeline—asset registration, structuring, tokenization, issuance, and trading—embeds verification and off-chain data attestations, providing regulators with transparency akin to traditional finance. This enables secure bilateral settlements, for example, a bank issuing a digital bond settling instantly with a DeFi counterparty without exposing internal data.
Ant Group’s move signifies a major shift in how global fintechs perceive blockchain risk, validating public infrastructure like Ethereum for institutional finance instead of proprietary networks. This strategy offers interoperability with Ethereum’s $100-billion DeFi ecosystem and considerable cost efficiencies for settlements. Jovay’s debut underscores Ethereum’s growing institutional trust, positioning it as a neutral settlement layer. If successful, it could expand Ethereum’s tokenized finance beyond current RWA niches, onboarding billions of users by quietly migrating their assets, savings, and credit instruments onto compliant, Ethereum-powered rails.
