RWA: After DeFi, the next explosion point of Ethereum

Regulatory progress catalyzes market attention

Recently, the passage of the "GENIUS Act" has once again sparked significant attention in the market for RWA. In addition to stablecoins and legislative progress, several important milestones have been achieved in the RWA field: a continued strong growth trend and a series of breakthroughs—including a trading platform launching tokenized stocks and ETFs, a trading platform proposing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to grant token assets equal status with traditional assets, and a project issuing a decentralized fund with a scale of $400 million on a certain public chain.

As market attention reaches an unprecedented high and the broader adoption of traditional finance is imminent, it is crucial to closely examine the current RWA landscape—especially the position of leading platforms like Ethereum. RWAs based on Ethereum have shown astonishing month-on-month growth, often maintaining double-digit highs; the growth rate in 2025 is expected to accelerate compared to the single-digit months of 2024. Another key factor driving this momentum is "Etherealize" ( as a catalyst for regulatory development, alongside the Ethereum Foundation's prioritization of RWA as a strategic focus. At this critical juncture, this article will delve into the development dynamics of RWAs on Ethereum and its Layer-2 networks.

Data Analysis: Ethereum RWA Growth Overview

The data clearly indicates: the RWA value of Ethereum has entered a distinct growth cycle. Looking at the total value trend of Ethereum's non-stablecoin RWAs, its long-term trajectory is remarkable — it has consistently remained in the range of 1 to 2 billion USD for many years, until entering a rapid growth phase in April 2024. This growth momentum continues to accelerate in 2025. The core driving force comes from a certain fund, which currently has a scale of 2.7 billion USD. As shown by the orange trend line, this fund has been exhibiting parabolic growth since March 2025, strongly driving the overall expansion of the Ethereum RWA ecosystem.

![RWA: The Next Explosion Point of Ethereum After DeFi])/images/2778a8e37611a3c1eb0a5cc2c785c9d5.png(

By asset class, excluding stablecoins ), real-world assets on Ethereum ( RWA ) are highly concentrated in two main categories: government bond projects ( 75.9% ) and commodities ( primarily gold, 20.3% ), with other categories being small. In contrast, in the composition of RWA market capitalization across the entire crypto market, private credit has the highest proportion ( 57.4% ), followed by government bond projects ( 30.9% ).

Further focus on the leading assets of Ethereum RWA, the pie chart clearly reveals the dominant position of a certain fund. A comparison with a year ago shows that at that time the scale of the fund was comparable to some gold-related products, but now it has significantly surpassed them. Although the composition of the top ten projects remains basically stable, the growth rate of government bond products significantly outpaces that of gold-related products, and the market share continues to expand.

From the perspective of protocols, the current leaders are mainly stablecoin issuers - the top four protocols are well-known stablecoin protocols. It is noteworthy that the total value of a certain securitization protocol has significantly surpassed some stablecoin projects, rising to the forefront. Other securitized protocols that made it into the top ten include two other projects.

Focusing on the monthly data from early 2024 to the present, the growth wave began in April 2024, achieving an astonishing increase of 26.6% that month—accounting for a quarter of the total incremental growth of Ethereum RWA in a single month. This momentum continued for the next three months, although there was a slight slowdown during the period from August to December 2024, the network still maintained an incremental growth of about $200 million per month with a month-on-month growth rate of approximately 5%, annualized exceeding 60%.

In January 2025, the growth rate exploded again, soaring 33.2% month-on-month. After a brief pullback in February, Ethereum maintained double-digit growth for four consecutive months, with the month-on-month growth rates in April and May both exceeding 20%.

( Some fund

As a certain fund rapidly rises to become the largest project by market capitalization in the Ethereum RWA ecosystem, a detailed analysis of its growth path is crucial. The month-on-month growth rate chart reveals that as of March 2025, this metric remains relatively stable, followed by an explosive leap in March 2025. However, the latest data from May shows that the ultra-high-speed growth trend has slightly slowed down, but there is still an increase of 210 million dollars, with a month-on-month growth rate of 8.38%. The development in the coming months is a key observation window – it is necessary to track whether its growth rate continues to slow down or continues to experience explosive growth.

![RWA: The Next Breakout Point for Ethereum After DeFi])/images/5fef387bb601e69b5affa28174070d9d.png(

The explosive growth of the fund stems from multiple factors. The growth is mainly driven by institutional demand, and the competitiveness of the product is the key driving force for success: including 24/7 operation, faster settlement speeds compared to traditional finance, and high returns within a compliant framework. It is worth noting that DeFi integration is achieving synergies and unlocking more utilities, such as a certain stablecoin product—90% of its reserves are supported by the fund. At the same time, the recognition of the fund as high-quality collateral continues to rise, and the derivatives launched by a certain project further unlock DeFi integration scenarios.

The asset distribution of the fund is highly concentrated: about 93% is concentrated in the Ethereum mainnet, while the scales of other ecological chains are hard to reach. Meanwhile, with the continuous expansion of asset management scale, the fund's monthly dividends have continuously set new highs, reaching 4.17 million USD in March 2025 and soaring to 7.9 million USD by May.

![RWA: After DeFi, the next breakout point for Ethereum])/images/fc1cb9735978389f92c1b6e237090e4f.png###

( stablecoin

Given that the GENIUS Act will have a structural impact on the regulatory framework for stablecoins, a systematic review of the development trajectory of the Ethereum stablecoin market has important forward-looking significance. Since 2024, the total market value of this sector has shown a steady upward trend, and although the growth rate is slightly slower compared to other RWA sub-sectors, it still maintains a resilient monthly growth pace.

![RWA: The Next Explosion Point on Ethereum After DeFi])/images/bccb308a637dd6cb1aee66a96b9cc44f.png(

In small projects ), with a market cap of less than 500 million dollars ###, most projects experienced continuous contraction at the beginning of 2024. However, approaching the end of 2024, the market capitalization of most projects continues to rise, with some projects showing sustained growth in market capitalization. At the same time, a number of new stablecoin projects have emerged, surpassing a market cap of 50 million, and the Ethereum stablecoin ecosystem projects are becoming more diverse, while small-cap projects continue to thrive from 2025 onward.

Medium-sized projects ( with a market value of 5-500 million USD are few in 2024; a certain stablecoin has seen a drastic decline from 1 billion USD in January 2024 to less than 500 million USD by March due to the termination of its issuance. However, in 2025, some projects will break through the 500 million USD threshold, and medium-sized stablecoins will become more diverse.

The leading stablecoins ) > 5 billion dollars ( continue to be dominated by two well-known stablecoins: one stablecoin remained stable at a market value of 40 billion dollars for most of 2024, surged to 70 billion dollars in early December, and then gradually stabilized until its market value declined recently; the other stablecoin steadily grew from 22 billion dollars in January 2024 to 38 billion dollars in May 2025. At the beginning of 2025, some projects broke through 5 billion dollars, but the two leading stablecoins still far outpace in market share.

The two major stablecoins dominate absolutely, directly affecting the entire stablecoin ecosystem.

![RWA: After DeFi, the next breakout point for Ethereum])/images/55d756f5268980e6ab6c9751e5bb2242.png(

The growth in November 2024 is particularly noteworthy: one leading stablecoin surged by 30.16% month-on-month, while another leading stablecoin achieved a growth of 16.31%. Following this spike, there will be several months of continued growth, with one stablecoin showing more robust growth in subsequent months, with monthly increases all above 5%. According to disclosures from issuers: one issuer attributes this to "the influx of collateral assets from exchanges and institutional trading desks in response to anticipated surges in trading volume"; another issuer emphasizes that "its stablecoin circulation increased by 78% year-on-year... Apart from user demand, it also stems from the rebuilding of market confidence and improvement of standard systems due to emerging stablecoin regulatory rules."

However, market momentum has clearly shifted recently - over the past four months, a leading stablecoin on the Ethereum blockchain has stagnated in growth, and in May 2025, another leading stablecoin experienced a decline for the first time after several months of growth. This phenomenon may indicate that the market is transitioning to a new cycle stage.

![RWA: The Next Explosion Point of Ethereum After DeFi])/images/938e1df556285c692e609be96f693fe8.png(

) L2 ecosystem

In the broader RWA ecosystem, Ethereum maintains an absolute dominant position with a market share of 59.23% without stablecoins (, but it still faces key challenges.

It is worth noting that a certain L2 has jumped to the second position driven by a single project, while a certain public chain completely relies on a certain fund ) with a scale of 455.9 million USD ( to occupy third place. Although the RWA on both public chains has impressive data, their structural flaws cannot be ignored: a lack of asset diversity and dependence on a single project.

![RWA: After DeFi, the next breakout point for Ethereum])/images/9d27ba570201dd0f1cf5fe1f3c055126.png###

As exhibited by the characteristics of the two ecosystems mentioned above, most L2 networks currently face the challenge of insufficient ecological diversity—their RWA market capitalization heavily relies on 1-2 core projects for support. For example, in a certain L2, with a total market capitalization of $256 million, a certain fund contributes $111.9 million(, accounting for 43.7%), and a certain project occupies $93.5 million(, accounting for 36.5%), with the two combined monopolizing over 80% of the market capitalization; another L2 also exhibits a similar distribution pattern, with core market capitalization sources concentrated in two major projects.

Expanding the vision to the entire L2 ecosystem, the RWA values and market shares of various networks show significant differentiation. Aside from a certain L2, only a few L2s have achieved substantial scale effects, while the rest are still in the early stages of development. The success of some L2s is heavily reliant on a single driving force, which is a certain project—this project contributes about one-third of the total RWA value across these networks.

Looking at the overall market value evolution of RWA in Layer-2 networks, its growth cycle does not completely synchronize with Layer-1: the growth did not start synchronously in mid-2024. The access of a certain L2 to a certain project brought about a market value increase of around 2 billion dollars. However, even excluding this impact, the growth trend of L2 has still been established—since September 2024, L2 networks have consistently maintained a double-digit month-on-month increase. In contrast, the previous stage of RWA expansion has always shown sporadic and weak characteristics. In summary, the end of 2024 marks a turning point for the development of RWA in the L2 ecosystem: entering a strong growth cycle.

![RWA: The Next Explosion Point After DeFi on Ethereum](