RWA Panorama Analysis: Global Market Trends and Development Prospects for 2025

Introduction

With the rapid development of the digital economy, RWA transforms traditional assets into digital tokens, significantly enhancing asset liquidity, transparency, and accessibility. This innovation is regarded as a key driver of the digital transformation of financial markets. Particularly since 2025, with institutional funds accelerating their entry and the regulatory environment gradually clarifying, the RWA market has shown a rapid growth trend. This report aims to comprehensively analyze the development history, current status, and future potential of RWA.

1. Definition of RWA, Development History, and Technical Path

1.1 Definition of RWA

RWA refers to the process of utilizing blockchain technology to convert real-world assets (such as real estate, commodities, debt rights, intellectual property, etc.) into digital tokens. These tokens represent ownership or revenue rights of the assets and can be traded and managed on the blockchain. Its core objective is to address issues such as ownership confirmation difficulties, low circulation efficiency, and insufficient liquidity in traditional asset transactions through the immutability, traceability, and programmability of smart contracts on the blockchain.

From a technical implementation perspective, RWA tokenization includes three key stages:

• Off-chain rights confirmation: Completing asset ownership confirmation and value assessment through legal compliance procedures.
• Asset mapping on the chain: Mapping asset rights to the blockchain to generate corresponding tokens.
• On-chain governance: Achieving automated management of revenue distribution, staking settlement, and more through smart contracts.

Compared to traditional asset securitization (ABS), RWA has similarities in risk isolation and cash flow restructuring, but its technical dependence requires additional assessment of factors such as blockchain architecture, smart contract security, and cross-chain interoperability.

1.2 Development History of RWA

• Early Exploration (2017-2020): The concept of RWA began to emerge around 2017, with early projects primarily focusing on the tokenization of real estate and art.
• Institutional Entry (2021-2023): In 2021, some DeFi protocols began to incorporate RWA into their ecosystems, allowing users to borrow against real-world assets. By 2023, the RWA market size reached $5 billion, and traditional financial institutions launched tokenized products, marking RWA's entry into the mainstream.
• Explosive growth (2024-2025): Traditional financial institutions accelerate their布局 in RWA, driving rapid market growth. The RWA market size exceeds $23 billion, becoming one of the important directions for blockchain applications.

2. Market Size and Growth Trends

2.1 Global RWA Market Size

As of the end of May 2025, the total on-chain value of global RWA is approximately $23 billion. In March 2025, the TVL of RWA protocols first broke through the $10 billion mark, reaching about $10.4 billion on March 21. During the same period, the RWA sector experienced significant year-on-year growth, with a TVL growth rate of nearly 140% from the beginning of 2025 to now. These data indicate that the RWA market has shown explosive growth over the past two years.

The total value locked (TVL) of mainstream RWA protocols has significantly increased. For example:

• A trading platform (RWA Vaults) -- At the beginning of 2025, its RWA collateral vault TVL was approximately $1.3 billion.
• Ondo Finance -- TVL is approximately $1.283 billion.
• Centrifuge -- TVL is approximately $441 million.

In addition, an on-chain U.S. Treasury bond fund from a large asset management company has also risen to the top, with a TVL of about $1.4 billion, followed closely by approximately $1.3 billion. These figures reflect the dominant position of institutional-backed projects and quality protocols in the RWA space.

2.2 Growth Trends and Forecasts

Multiple research institutions have made predictions about the market size of RWA by 2030 and provided corresponding estimates of the compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Boston Consulting Group once estimated that by 2030, the global asset tokenization scale could reach approximately $16 trillion. McKinsey and others also projected around $2 trillion. A certain international bank expects the scale to be in the range of $4 to $5 trillion by 2030, while digital asset management institutions have given a wide range of $3.5 to $10 trillion. In the cryptocurrency industry, some analysts have pointed out that if a growth rate of about 121% is maintained over the next five years, the tokenization scale of RWA by 2030 would be approximately $1.3 trillion. The corresponding annual compound growth rates for the above predictions vary from several percentage points (around $1 trillion) to several hundred percentage points (above $10 trillion), reflecting both the potential and uncertainty of the RWA market.

Main growth trend:

1. Institutional participation accelerates: Traditional financial giants are entering the RWA track. For example, a large asset management company is launching a government bond fund based on Ethereum in 2024, with a scale exceeding $2.5 billion by 2025 (accounting for 41% of the global on-chain government bond tokenization market share). A well-known trading platform also submitted an RWA exchange framework proposal to regulators in 2025, expecting to reach $10 billion in TVL within three years. In addition, several large financial institutions have launched or plan to launch compliant RWA products, driving market demand.

2. Technological evolution drives efficiency improvement: The Ethereum ecosystem still holds a dominant position in tokenized infrastructure. As of May 2025, tokenized assets on Ethereum account for approximately 55% of the global total. At the same time, various high-performance links and scaling solutions are continuously emerging. For example, a trading platform plans to build an RWA platform using a hybrid chain architecture, capable of achieving sub-10 microsecond matching and 30,000 TPS throughput, significantly improving settlement efficiency and reducing costs. In addition, technologies such as Layer 2 networks and zero-knowledge proofs are being used to lower RWA transaction costs and enhance privacy.

3. Regulatory policies are tightening: Regulatory agencies in various countries are beginning to formulate rules related to RWA, providing institutional guarantees for market development. A certain trading platform has submitted a complete proposal to the regulatory agency for compliance requirements such as a tokenized asset federal license and on-chain audits, aiming to establish standards for token issuance and trading. Regulations such as the EU's Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) are also clarifying the classification and compliance standards for RWA tokens. At the same time, some regions have piloted allowing investors with certain thresholds to participate in RWA through compliant platforms, such as investing in government bonds and real estate via compliant stablecoins and security tokens. Overall, the maturity of policy regulation has enhanced institutional confidence, providing critical support for the rapid expansion of the RWA market.

3. RWA Technical Path and Core Standards

3.1 Technical Path

The technical implementation path of RWA usually includes the following key steps and modules:

1. Asset Tokenization Workflow

• Asset selection and confirmation of rights: Clarify the value, ownership boundaries, and transferability of off-chain assets.
• Legality audit and SPV establishment: Asset custody through custodians or the establishment of a special purpose vehicle (SPV)
• Token Minting: Generate corresponding tokens according to standards such as ERC-20, ERC-721, or ERC-3643.
• Off-chain data integration (Oracle/IOT): Real-time asset status updates through oracles, the Internet of Things, or third-party audits.
• Value guarantee mechanism: Maintaining the anchor relationship between tokens and real assets through custody, insurance, and over-collateralization.

2. RWA Supported Protocol Stack (RWA Protocol Stack)

Core Standards and Tools 3.2

• ERC-3643 (T-REX): One of the most mature RWA token standards, supporting identity whitelisting, regulatory control, and permission management.
• ERC-1400: A compliance framework for security tokens, supporting modular regulatory compliance design.
• Oracle: Provides trusted synchronization of off-chain data such as prices and asset status.
• Multi-signature/Custody Tools: Ensure Asset Security and Governance Compliance
• TEE (Trusted Execution Environment): Ensures that sensitive off-chain data can still operate securely and privately during on-chain interactions.

The vision of RWA is to bring hundreds of trillions of dollars of real-world assets into the on-chain financial system, unlocking their liquidity and composability, and building a new generation of more efficient, transparent, and inclusive financial infrastructure. Its technical path must address the dual challenges of "on-chain programmability" and "off-chain trusted connections," while also considering legal compliance, auditing mechanisms, system security, and market participation pathways.

4. Typical RWA Asset Classes and Practical Applications

4.1 Typical RWA Asset Types

The on-chain path for real-world assets is diversifying, with mainstream RWA projects focusing on the following types of assets, relying on the credit and yield structures of real assets to achieve tokenized mapping. These assets can generally be divided into the following four categories:

1. Debt-type assets (real-world securities)

This type of RWA project is usually linked to debt instruments in the real world (such as U.S. Treasury bonds, corporate bonds, accounts receivable, etc.), representing one of the most mature and mainstream tracks, with high transparency, strong compliance attributes, and predictable returns.

Typical projects:

• Ondo Finance: Issues tokens such as OUSG with U.S. Treasury bond ETFs as underlying assets.
• Maple Finance: Connecting real-world credit demand with DeFi liquidity providers through structured credit products.
• Centrifuge: Tokenizes receivables, invoices, and other assets on-chain and connects with the Tinlake protocol for lending.

2. Real estate assets (such as real estate)

By valuing real estate and rental income, real estate assets are divided into tradable tokens for DeFi staking or asset allocation, which ensures good asset security and cash flow foundation.

Typical projects:

• RealT: Offers tokenized ownership based on U.S. real estate, allowing token holders to receive rental income.
• Propy: Real estate transactions and property registration are on-chain, achieving transparency in the home buying process.
• Lofty: A real estate fractional investment platform that supports proportional dividends and asset management.

3. Commodity assets (gold, carbon credits, oil, etc.)

Issue tokens linked to their value supported by real goods or certificates, used for value storage, risk hedging, or trading circulation.

Typical Projects:

• PAXG: A gold-backed stablecoin issued by Paxos, where each token corresponds to a certain amount of physical gold.
• OpenCarbon: A carbon credit tokenization platform that puts carbon reduction certificates on the blockchain.
• Tangible: Tokenization of physical assets such as liquor and watches for trading and storage.

4. Other real asset classes (copyrights, insurance, invoices, intellectual property, etc.)

This is an innovative field in the early stage of RWA exploration, representing assets with relatively weak liquidity but strong innovation, suitable for incubation by specific vertical platforms.

Typical projects:

• Re: Insurance Risk Exposure Tokenization Platform, providing on-chain reinsurance for DeFi.
• IP3 / Story Protocol: Exploring solutions for putting the value of intellectual property on the blockchain.
• Goldfinch: A credit lending platform that supports microloans in developing markets.

4.2 Practical Application of RWA

(1) Investment-oriented RWA: Yield anchoring of virtual assets

The practice of investment-oriented RWAs can be traced back to the exploration of stability mechanisms in the DeFi ecosystem, where a typical model provides value support for virtual assets through the returns of real assets. This "asset backing" logic has already shown early signs in the practices of certain DeFi protocols, which built a decentralized value foundation for their stablecoins by accepting real assets (such as U.S. Treasury bonds) as collateral. With the entry of traditional financial institutions, this model has gradually evolved into more mature institutional-level solutions.

The core characteristics of such RWAs are reflected in three aspects:

First, the underlying assets are concentrated in highly liquid traditional financial instruments (government bonds, money market instruments, etc.);

Secondly, the initiating entities are mostly licensed financial institutions or compliant DeFi protocols.

Thirdly,