RWA: The Next Breakthrough Point for Ethereum After Decentralized Finance

Bill Catalysts and Market Attention

Against the backdrop of the rapid evolution of traditional finance and regulatory environments, the recent passage of the "GENIUS Act" has reignited market interest in RWA. In addition to stablecoins and significant legislative progress, the RWA sector has quietly achieved several important milestones: a sustained strong growth trend and a series of remarkable breakthroughs. Some trading platforms have launched tokenized stocks and ETFs, with one platform proposing to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to grant tokenized assets equal status to traditional assets, and there are projects issuing decentralized funds worth hundreds of millions of dollars on certain public chains.

At a time when market attention is unprecedentedly high and the wider adoption of traditional finance is just around the corner, it is crucial to take a deep look at the current RWA landscape------especially the position of leading platforms like Ethereum. RWA based on Ethereum has shown astonishing month-on-month growth, often maintaining a high double-digit rate; 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, along with the Ethereum Foundation prioritizing RWA as a strategic focus. At this critical juncture, this article will delve into the development dynamics of RWA on Ethereum and its Layer-2 networks.

Data Analysis: Ethereum RWA Growth Panorama

Data clearly indicates: the RWA value of Ethereum has entered a distinct growth cycle. Looking at the overall trend of non-stablecoin RWA total value of Ethereum, its long-term trajectory is remarkable------maintaining consistently in the range of 1-2 billion USD for years, until it enters 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 itself has exhibited parabolic growth since March 2025, strongly propelling the overall expansion of the Ethereum RWA ecosystem.

By asset class (excluding stablecoins), the market value of real-world assets (RWA) on Ethereum is highly concentrated in two main categories: government bond projects (75.9%) and commodities (primarily gold, 20.3%), with other categories making up a small portion. In contrast, in the overall composition of RWA market value in the crypto market, private credit has the highest share (57.4%), followed by government bond projects (30.9%).

Further focusing on the leading assets of Ethereum RWA, the pie chart clearly reveals the dominant position of a certain fund. Looking back a year, it can be seen that at that time the scale of the fund was comparable to other gold products, but it has now significantly surpassed them. Although the composition of the top ten projects remains relatively stable, the growth rate of government bond products significantly outpaces that of gold products, and their market share continues to expand.

From the perspective of protocols, the current leaders are mainly stablecoin issuers— the top four protocols are several major stablecoin issuance platforms. It is worth noting that the total value of a certain securitization protocol has significantly surpassed some stablecoin projects, jumping to the forefront. Other securities protocols that have made it to the top ten also include several emerging projects.

Focusing on the monthly data from the beginning of 2024 to now, the growth wave started in April 2024, achieving an astonishing increase of 26.6% that month, contributing a quarter of the total incremental amount of Ethereum RWA for that single month. This momentum continued for the following three months, although there was a slight slowdown from August to December 2024, the network still maintained an incremental amount of about 200 million USD/month (month-on-month growth rate of about 5%, annualized over 60%).

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

Some Fund

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

The explosive growth of the fund stems from multiple factors. The growth is primarily 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. Notably, the integration of DeFi is achieving synergies and unlocking more utilities, such as a stablecoin product launched by a certain lab, which is backed by 90% reserves from the fund. Meanwhile, the recognition of the fund as high-quality collateral continues to rise, and derivatives launched by a certain platform further unlock the DeFi integration scenarios.

The asset distribution of the fund is highly concentrated: about 93% is concentrated on the Ethereum mainnet, while the scale of other ecological chains is difficult to match. At the same time, as the asset management scale continues to expand, the fund's monthly dividends have consistently set new highs, reaching 4.17 million USD in March 2025, and soaring to 7.9 million USD by May.

stablecoin

In light of the structural impact that the "GENIUS Act" will have on the regulatory framework for stablecoins, systematically reviewing the development trajectory of the Ethereum stablecoin market is of significant forward-looking importance. Since 2024, the total market value of this sector has continued to show a robust upward trend. Although the growth rate appears slightly moderate compared to other RWA sub-sectors, it still maintains a resilient monthly growth rhythm.

In small projects (less than $500 million), most projects experienced continued contraction in early 2024. However, approaching the end of 2024, the market capitalization of most projects continued to rise, and some small stablecoins saw continued growth in their market capitalization. At the same time, a number of new stablecoin projects emerged with a market capitalization exceeding $50 million, and the Ethereum stablecoin ecosystem became more diverse, with small-cap projects thriving continuously from 2025.

Mid-sized projects (500 million to 5 billion USD) will have only a few projects in 2024; a certain stablecoin will see a sharp 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, multiple emerging stablecoins will break through the 500 million USD threshold, making mid-sized stablecoins more diverse.

The top stablecoins (over $5 billion) continue to be dominated by two major stablecoins: one of which stabilized at $40 billion market cap for most of 2024, jumped to $70 billion in early December, and then gradually stabilized until a recent decline in market cap; the other steadily grew from $22 billion in January 2024 to $38 billion in May 2025. At the beginning of 2025, two emerging stablecoins both surpassed $5 billion, but the two major stablecoins still lead significantly in market share.

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

The growth in November 2024 is particularly noteworthy: one mainstream stablecoin surged by 30.16% month-on-month, while another achieved a growth of 16.31%. Following this spike, there was sustained growth for several months, with the latter showing more robust increases in subsequent months, all with monthly growth above 5%. According to disclosures from the issuers: one party attributed this to "a wave of collateral assets flooding in from exchanges and institutional trading desks in response to anticipated surges in trading volume"; the other emphasized that "the circulation increased by 78% year-on-year... Besides user demand, it also stems from the market confidence restoration and the improvement of standard systems driven by emerging stablecoin regulatory rules."

However, market momentum has clearly shifted recently------a mainstream stablecoin on the Ethereum chain has been stagnating in growth for the past four months, and in May 2025, another one saw a decline for the first time after months of growth. This phenomenon may indicate that the market is transitioning to a new cycle phase.

L2 ecosystem

In the broader RWA ecological landscape, Ethereum maintains an absolute dominant position with a market share of 59.23% (excluding stablecoins), but it still faces key challenges.

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

As demonstrated by the ecological characteristics of the two public chains mentioned above, most L2 networks are currently facing the challenge of insufficient ecological diversity------their RWA market value is highly dependent on 1-2 core projects for support. For example, in a certain L2 public chain: out of a total market value of 256 million USD, a certain fund contributes 111.9 million USD (accounting for 43.7%), while another project accounts for 93.5 million USD (accounting for 36.5%), with the two together monopolizing over 80% of the market value; other L2 public chains also show a similar distribution pattern, with core market value sources concentrated in two major projects.

Expanding the vision to the entire L2 ecosystem, the RWA value and market share of each network show significant differentiation. Except for a certain L2 public chain, only two L2s have formed substantial scale effects, while the remaining L2s are still in the early stages of development. The success of these two L2s heavily relies on a single driving force— a certain project contributes about one-third of the total RWA value across both networks.

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