On-chain RWA volume surpasses $25 billion, nearly quadrupling in the past year

Deep Tide TechFlow News, March 8th, reports that, according to RWA.xyz data, the on-chain RWA (Real-World Asset) market excluding stablecoins has surpassed $25 billion, nearly quadrupling from about $6.4 billion a year ago. Six major asset categories—U.S. Treasuries, commodities, private credit, institutional alternative funds, corporate bonds, and non-U.S. government bonds—have all exceeded the $1 billion threshold. Asset management firms like BlackRock, Fidelity, and WisdomTree have launched tokenized fund products over the past year, with the number of U.S. Treasury tokenization products increasing from 35 to over 50.

However, current growth mainly occurs at the asset issuance level rather than active trading. On-chain transfer data shows that many RWA transactions are concentrated around $10 million per transaction, consistent with institutional bulk allocation patterns. A survey by tokenization platform Brickken indicates that 53.8% of RWA issuers prioritize financing efficiency as their primary motivation, with only 15.4% considering liquidity as a core factor.

Regarding DeFi integration, according to Nexus Data Labs, approximately $8.49 billion of RWA-backed stablecoins are supported, but only about 11.8% (around $1 billion) are deployed within DeFi protocols. The remaining 88% are outside on-chain lending and trading systems due to compliance requirements, including KYC reviews, transfer restrictions, and whitelist mechanisms. Some institutions predict that the RWA market could exceed $400 billion by the end of the year, but whether RWA can overcome compliance barriers and truly integrate into DeFi’s composable ecosystem will determine its ultimate development path.