Hotcoin Research | The New Blue Ocean of Digital Assets: Analysis and Outlook on the RWA Market in 2025

I. Introduction

The concept of Real World Assets (RWA) refers to the tokenization of real-world financial or physical assets through blockchain technology, enabling their circulation on-chain. RWA not only brings deep technological, financial, and application breakthroughs to the blockchain ecosystem, but it also holds the potential to become an important complement to traditional financial markets.

Currently, the total market value of RWA assets on-chain exceeds $14 billion, while the corresponding assets in traditional financial systems amount to trillions of dollars. This high growth potential with a low base makes RWA a “new blue ocean” in the digital asset space. Traditional financial giants like Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, and JPMorgan Chase have already started positioning themselves in this field. According to global consulting firm McKinsey, the RWA market is expected to reach a scale of around $4 trillion by 2030. Over the next few years, RWA will drive the digital asset market into a new phase of development by continuously absorbing traditional financial assets and funds.

This article aims to provide readers with a comprehensive analysis of RWA’s core logic, current market status, mainstream application scenarios, and future trends, offering an in-depth understanding of RWA’s unique value and immense potential.

II. Core Logic and Market Value of RWA

1. Core Logic of RWA

The core logic of RWA (Real World Assets) lies in mapping real-world financial or physical assets onto the blockchain, enabling on-chain trading and management through tokenization. Its value lies in transforming inefficient elements of the traditional financial system through blockchain technology, ultimately improving the transparency, liquidity, and security of assets.

The implementation of RWA involves the following key steps:

• Asset Evaluation and Certification: Assessing the value of real-world assets (e.g., government bonds, real estate) and ensuring their legitimacy and authenticity, typically carried out by professional agencies.
• Asset Digitization: Using blockchain technology to digitally represent ownership or income rights of the asset through tokens. Tokens can represent equity-type assets (e.g., stocks) or fixed-income assets (e.g., bonds).
• Smart Contract Design: Embedding asset usage rules, income distribution, and transfer methods into smart contracts to enable fully automated management and transparent transactions.
• On-chain Trading and Transfer: Tokenized assets are traded on the blockchain, enabling asset transfer and settlement between buyers and sellers without the need for intermediaries.
• Rights Realization: Token holders receive income distribution through smart contracts, such as bond interest or rental income.

2. Market Value of RWA

The market value of the RWA sector is reflected in the following areas:

• Enhancing Asset Liquidity: Many traditional assets (e.g., real estate, commodities) have high entry barriers and low liquidity. RWA improves liquidity by tokenizing assets, enabling more investors to participate. For example, a real estate property worth millions of dollars can be split into millions of tokens, allowing small and medium investors worldwide to buy and trade.
• Reducing Transaction Costs: In traditional financial systems, asset transactions often incur intermediary fees (e.g., banks, brokers) and involve complex cross-border procedures. RWA leverages blockchain’s decentralized nature to directly connect buyers and sellers through smart contracts, significantly reducing transaction costs.
• Breaking Geographic and Market Barriers: RWA leverages blockchain’s borderless nature to enable the global trading of traditional assets. For example, an investor in the U.S. can easily purchase real estate tokens located in Asia without the cumbersome cross-border procedures typical in traditional markets. This cross-border accessibility makes RWA highly attractive to international investors.
• Improving Transparency and Security: Blockchain’s transparency and immutability solve information asymmetry in traditional finance. All transaction records are publicly stored on the blockchain, and the authenticity, historical records, and transaction details of assets can be traced in real time, significantly reducing the risk of fraud and misconduct.
• Promoting Financial Innovation and Financial Inclusion: RWA not only provides institutional investors with efficient asset management tools but also creates more opportunities for individual investors by lowering entry barriers. Many assets originally reserved for high-net-worth clients (e.g., private credit, gold) are now accessible to ordinary investors through tokenization, democratizing financial markets.

III. Main Application Scenarios of the RWA Track

The diversified nature of RWAs makes them applicable in multiple scenarios. Below are several representative fields and their practical cases:

1. Stablecoins: The Benchmark for Digitalization of Fiat Currency

Stablecoins have become the most mature field in the RWA track. Stablecoins such as USDT and USDC, with their peg to fiat currencies, have become the most widely used digital assets in global trading.
The development of stablecoins will increasingly depend on improvements in transparency and regulation. For example, Circle has enhanced audit transparency through collaboration with Deloitte, which may drive broader institutional adoption in the future.

2. Private Credit: A New Fusion of On-Chain Financing and Traditional Credit

The total market value of the private credit track is approximately $5 billion, accounting for the main share of the RWA market. Maple Finance provides loans to businesses through tokenized credit agreements, attracting a large number of on-chain lenders. Centrifuge helps SMEs secure financing at lower costs through receivables and real estate collateral.

3. Government Bonds: Low-Risk High-Yield Investment Tools in DeFi

Government bond products offer secure, stable income options for investors by tokenizing them on-chain, significantly reducing transaction costs in traditional financial markets. Ondo Finance’s tokenized government bonds (such as OUSG) offer investors an annualized return of over 4.5%. The BUIDL fund, launched by BlackRock in collaboration with Securitize, has surpassed a market value of $500 million.

4. Commodities: Successful Practices Represented by Gold Tokenization

The global market value of gold has surpassed $13 trillion, and the potential for tokenization in this market is immense.

• PAX Gold (PAXG): Each token is backed by physical gold reserves, with its market value steadily increasing.
• Tether Gold (XAUT): Focused on the holding and trading of low-volatility assets, attracting risk-averse investors.

5. Real Estate: Achieving Digitization and Global Investment

RealT allows users to purchase tokenized real estate rights in the US, with rental income distributed on-chain. Through platforms like RealT, investors can partially own real estate interests and receive rental income. However, the complexity of real estate transactions and limited liquidity remain major obstacles.

IV. Current Development and Representative Projects in the RWA Track

1.Ecosystem Status and Market Potential

With the development of blockchain technology and the growing market demand, the RWA track has transitioned from concept validation to gradual implementation in recent years. As of December 20, 2024, the RWA market size has reached $13.9 billion, but compared to the global traditional asset size (over $300 trillion), this number is still in the early stages.

Source: https://app.rwa.xyz/

Among them, US government bonds are the most important asset type in the RWA track, accounting for 66.83% of the market share. Commodities are the second-largest category, with a market share of 22.53%.

Source: https://app.rwa.xyz/

Multiple authoritative organizations have made positive predictions for the growth of the RWA track in the next decade:

• Bitwise predicts that by 2025, the RWA market could reach $50 billion, with potential exponential growth.
• According to McKinsey, the global tokenized asset market could reach $4 trillion by 2030, with RWA expected to occupy a core share.
• The Global Financial Markets Association predicts that the market size could reach $16 trillion by 2030. This indicates that RWA is not only a current market hotspot but also an essential part of global financial innovation in the next decade.

2. Representative Projects in the RWA Track

(1) MakerDAO
As a veteran project in the DeFi field, MakerDAO has incorporated real-world assets like US government bonds into the collateral for DAI. By introducing RWAs, MakerDAO has diversified and stabilized its underlying assets. Currently, RWA assets contribute over 50% of the protocol’s revenue. It is worth noting that MakerDAO plans to gradually reduce the proportion of US government bonds according to its Endgame plan, aiming to reduce RWA assets to 15% by around 2025.

(2) Aave
Aave launched the RWA market in 2021, allowing users to use real-world assets as collateral for borrowing, and has incorporated RWAs into the collateral pool for its native stablecoin GHO. This strategy helps Aave achieve an organic integration of lending and stablecoin issuance, expanding its presence in the RWA field.

(3) Ondo Finance
Founded in 2021, Ondo initially focused on Liquidity-as-a-Service (LaaS) but pivoted to the RWA track in early 2023. Its products primarily focus on US government bonds and related short-term financial instruments (such as OUSG, USDY), and it collaborates with BlackRock’s BUIDL fund to enhance returns and compliance.

(4) USUAL
USUAL tokenizes US government bonds, allowing investors to trade US debt directly on decentralized markets and earn stable returns. Through USUAL, traditional intermediaries are not needed, and users can efficiently manage and trade government bond assets on DeFi platforms.

(5) Maple Finance
Founded in 2019, Maple originally focused on unsecured credit lending, providing financing to trading companies and market makers. However, after encountering setbacks due to partner defaults, it pivoted to RWA-collateralized lending and cash management pools. It now invests USDC in US government bonds and launched new products such as Maple Direct and Syrup.fi.

(6) Centrifuge
Built on the Substrate framework and part of the Polkadot ecosystem, Centrifuge focuses on tokenizing traditional assets like receivables and real estate collateral. Using NFT technology, it maps real-world assets as NFT collateral. It deeply integrates with mainstream DeFi projects like MakerDAO, providing support for asset liquidity and diversification.

V. Opportunities and Challenges in the RWA Sector

1. Opportunity Analysis

The RWA sector is currently in the early stages of rapid development, driven by the maturation of blockchain technology, changes in the traditional financial market’s demand, and the digital transformation of global capital markets. The sector faces the following significant opportunities:

(1) Acceleration of Global Capital Digitization Trends: The gradual digitization of traditional financial assets is an inevitable trend. Blockchain technology provides an efficient tool for asset tokenization, making RWA a key bridge for the digitalization of global capital markets. Through RWA, investors can more easily access asset classes that were previously difficult to engage with, such as cross-border real estate investments or private credit.

(2) Expansion of Diversified Asset Classes: From stablecoins to government bonds, the asset types within the RWA sector cover nearly all mainstream traditional financial assets. With technological advancements and increased market acceptance, more innovative asset categories such as art, intellectual property, and natural resources will become new growth drivers. In particular, in the fields of environmental protection and sustainable development, the demand for tokenizing assets like carbon credits is gradually increasing, opening up new growth areas for the RWA sector.

(3) Further Improvement of Financial Inclusion: RWA effectively addresses the high entry barriers in traditional financial systems. The realization of partial ownership allows ordinary investors to participate in asset classes like high-end real estate and government bonds. Financial inclusion will drive more users into the RWA market and promote the flow of funds globally.

(4) Deep Integration with DeFi: Decentralized finance (DeFi) provides new use cases for RWA, such as using tokenized assets for collateralized lending, liquidity mining, and more. The integration of DeFi with RWA not only enhances asset liquidity but also offers users more sources of returns, invigorating the crypto-financial ecosystem.

(5) Attention from High-Net-Worth Individuals and Institutional Investors: Traditional financial giants like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs have begun actively entering the RWA market, signaling that the sector is being recognized by mainstream institutions. The involvement of high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors will bring in more capital and help standardize market development.

2. Challenge Analysis

Although the RWA sector has broad prospects, its development faces multiple challenges that require collective efforts from industry and market participants to address.

(1) Technological Risks

• Smart Contract Vulnerabilities: The core logic of RWA relies on smart contracts, and any vulnerabilities in these contracts could lead to significant asset losses. For instance, multiple DeFi protocol attacks in 2023 have sounded alarms.
• Blockchain Network Stability: Congestion or instability in public blockchain networks could affect the transaction efficiency and security of RWA assets, particularly during periods of high transaction volume.

(2) Regulatory Uncertainty
RWA’s cross-border nature means it must navigate the legal and policy differences across multiple jurisdictions. For example, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC)’s stance on tokenized securities could directly affect the legality and operability of the RWA market.
The lack of a unified global regulatory framework may lead to market fragmentation and rising compliance costs, limiting the widespread adoption of RWA.

(3) Asset Valuation and On-chain/Off-chain Coordination Issues

• Valuation Complexity: The valuation of many real-world assets requires the involvement of specialized institutions, but on-chain transactions demand clear and transparent definitions of asset values, making coordination between the two challenging.
• Authenticity Verification: Ensuring that the on-chain assets correspond to real, traceable off-chain assets is a critical issue for the RWA sector. Fraudulent activities like double collateralization on multiple platforms could undermine market trust.

(4) Market Acceptance and User Education

• High Entry Barriers: While RWA reduces the entry barriers for traditional assets, its technical complexity and compliance requirements might deter ordinary investors.
• Insufficient User Education: Many potential users still have a basic understanding of blockchain and RWA, and their lack of comprehensive awareness could hinder further market penetration.

(5) Liquidity and Ecosystem Limitations
Although RWA enhances the liquidity of assets on-chain, the overall market size remains small, leading to insufficient liquidity for many assets.
The lack of a fully developed secondary market and supporting infrastructure means that liquidity remains a significant constraint in the RWA sector.

VI. Summary and Outlook for the RWA Sector

The RWA sector has progressed rapidly in just a few years, moving from proof of concept to early-stage implementation. It is gradually becoming a key bridge between blockchain technology and traditional finance. Its core logic revolves around “asset tokenization,” using blockchain technology to map real-world assets onto the chain, thereby enhancing their liquidity, transparency, and security.

Although the RWA sector is still in its early stages, the participants in its ecosystem, the scale of assets, and technological innovations show strong growth momentum, laying a solid foundation for future development. The main trends for RWA development in the coming years are:

(1) Exponential Market Growth: By 2030, the RWA market may surpass $40 trillion. Stablecoins will continue to dominate the market, while private credit and real estate are expected to become larger-scale incremental markets.

(2) DeFi Deep Integration: RWA assets will become more embedded within DeFi protocols, such as collateralized lending, liquidity mining, and more. By combining tokenized assets with decentralized finance, RWA can further unlock on-chain value while providing real asset backing to the DeFi ecosystem.

(3) Acceleration of Institutionalization and Compliance: The ongoing involvement of traditional financial institutions will further drive the compliance and institutionalization of RWA. The demonstration effect of institutions like BlackRock and Goldman Sachs will attract more financial giants to enter the market. As the EU’s MiCA regulation and the SEC’s policies become clearer, regulatory barriers in the RWA sector will gradually be overcome.

(4) Technological Innovation Driving Growth: The maturation of Layer 2 solutions and cross-chain technology will enhance the transaction efficiency and user experience of RWA assets. The application of technologies like zero-knowledge proofs will provide higher privacy protection for RWA asset transactions while maintaining transparency.

(5) Diversification of Asset Classes: In addition to existing assets like stablecoins, bonds, and real estate, the RWA sector may further expand into carbon credits, art, agricultural products, intellectual property, and other areas, bringing more innovative products to the market.

RWA is not just an extension of blockchain technology; it represents a profound transformation in the global financial system. It is changing the way assets are managed and traded, injecting new growth momentum into global capital markets. In the coming years, as technology matures, regulations are refined, and the market becomes more widespread, RWA will move from being a “new blue ocean for digital assets” to the “new normal of global finance.” For investors, technology developers, and policymakers, seizing this trend is both a challenge and an opportunity.

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