RWA: The Next Explosion Point of Ethereum After DeFi

Legislative Catalysts and Market Attention

The recent passage of the "GENIUS Act" has rekindled 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 noteworthy breakthroughs. For example, a trading platform has launched tokenized stocks and ETFs, another platform has proposed to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to grant token assets the same status as traditional assets, and a project has issued a decentralized fund on a public chain with a scale of $400 million.

In light of the unprecedented market attention and the imminent widespread adoption of traditional finance, it is crucial to closely examine the current RWA landscape. RWA based on Ethereum has shown impressive 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, 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 Overview

The data clearly indicates: the RWA value of Ethereum has entered a defined growth cycle. Looking at the overall value trend of Ethereum's non-stablecoin RWA, its long-term trajectory is remarkable—maintaining a range of 1-2 billion USD for many years, until entering a rapid growth phase in April 2024. This growth momentum continues to accelerate in 2025. The core driver comes from a certain fund, which currently has a size of 2.7 billion USD. As shown by the orange trend line, this fund has been experiencing parabolic growth itself since March 2025, strongly driving 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 composition of RWA market value across the entire crypto market, private credit has the highest proportion (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. A year ago, it can be seen from the comparison that at that time, the scale of the fund was comparable to other products, but now it has significantly surpassed them. Although the composition of the top ten projects remains fundamentally stable, the growth rate of government bond products significantly outpaces that of gold-related products, and market share continues to expand.

From the perspective of the protocol, the current leaders are mainly stablecoin issuers - the top four protocols are a certain stablecoin issuer, a certain stablecoin issuer, a certain stablecoin system, and a certain project. It is worth noting that the total value of a certain securitization protocol has significantly surpassed certain stablecoin projects, rising to the forefront. Other securities-type protocols that have made it to the top ten include a certain project and a certain project.

Focusing on the monthly data from early 2024 to now, the growth wave began in April 2024, achieving an astonishing increase of 26.6% that month—contributing a quarter of the total increment of Ethereum RWA for the month. This momentum continued for the following three months, although it slightly slowed down from August to December 2024, the network still maintained an increment of about 200 million USD per month (month-on-month growth rate of about 5%, annualized over 60%).

In January 2025, the growth rate surged again, soaring by 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 increase in both April and May exceeding 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 surge in March 2025. However, the latest data from May shows that the ultra-fast growth 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 escalate explosively.

The explosive growth of a certain fund is attributed to multiple factors. The growth mainly comes from institutional demand, and the competitiveness of the product is a key driving force for success: including 24/7 operation, faster settlement speeds compared to traditional finance, and high yields within a compliant framework. It is worth noting that DeFi integration is achieving synergies and unlocking more utilities, such as a certain product of a certain project – 90% of its reserves are supported by a certain fund. Meanwhile, the recognition of a certain fund as high-quality collateral continues to rise, and a certain product launched by a certain project further unlocks the DeFi integration scenario.

The asset distribution of a certain fund is highly concentrated: approximately 93% is concentrated in the Ethereum mainnet, while the scale of other ecological chains is difficult to reach. At the same time, with the continuous expansion of asset management scale, this fund has consistently set new highs in monthly dividends, reaching 4.17 million USD in March 2025, and soaring to 7.9 million USD by May.

stablecoin

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

In small projects (less than $500 million), most projects experienced a continuous contraction at the beginning of 2024. However, approaching the end of 2024, the market capitalization of most projects continued to rise, with certain projects experiencing sustained growth in market cap. Meanwhile, a number of new stablecoin projects have emerged with market caps exceeding $50 million, and the Ethereum stablecoin ecosystem has become more diverse, with small-cap projects continuing to thrive since 2025.

Medium-sized projects (500 million to 5 billion USD) will only have certain projects in 2024; a certain project was terminated, causing a sharp drop from 1 billion USD in January 2024 to less than 500 million USD in March. However, in 2025, certain projects will both break through the 500 million USD threshold, and medium-sized stablecoins will become more diversified.

Leading stablecoins (over $5 billion) continue to be dominated by certain projects: one project remained stable at a market value of $40 billion for most of 2024, surged to $70 billion in early December, and then gradually stabilized until a recent decline in market value; another project steadily grew from $22 billion in January 2024 to $38 billion in May 2025. At the beginning of 2025, some projects broke through the $5 billion mark, but some projects still lead significantly in market share.

Certain projects dominate absolutely and directly influence the entire stablecoin ecosystem.

The growth in November 2024 is particularly noteworthy: a certain project saw a month-on-month surge of 30.16%, while another project achieved a growth of 16.31%. Following this spike, there has been sustained growth for several months, with one project showing more robust growth in the subsequent months, consistently above 5% per month. According to the issuer, one project attributes this to "the influx of collateral assets from exchanges and institutional trading desks in response to the anticipated surge in trading volume"; another project emphasizes that "the circulation of the project increased by 78% year-on-year... besides user demand, it also stems from the market confidence rebuilding and standard system improvement prompted by the emerging stablecoin regulatory rules."

However, market momentum has clearly shifted recently - a certain project on the Ethereum chain has been stuck in stagnation for the past four months, and in May 2025, this project experienced a decline for the first time after months of growth. This phenomenon may indicate that the market is turning towards a new cycle phase.

L2 ecosystem

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

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

As demonstrated by certain L2 ecosystems, most L2 networks currently face the challenge of insufficient ecological diversity—its RWA market value is highly dependent on 1-2 core projects. For example, in a certain L2: out of a total market value 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%), together monopolizing over 80% of the market value; another L2 also shows a similar distribution pattern, with core market value sources concentrated in certain projects.

Expanding the vision to the entire L2 ecosystem, the RWA values and market shares of each network show significant differentiation. Aside from a certain L2, only some L2s have formed substantial scale effects, while the others are still in the early stages of development. The success of certain L2s heavily relies on a single driving force - a project that contributes about one-third of the total RWA value across two networks.

Looking at the overall market value evolution of Layer-2 networks in RWA, its growth cycle does not completely synchronize with Layer-1: the growth did not start synchronously in mid-2024. A certain L2 connected to a certain project brought about a $2 billion level market value increase. However, even after excluding this impact, the growth trend of L2 is still established—since September 2024, L2 networks have continuously maintained a double-digit month-on-month growth. In contrast, the previous stage showed sporadic and weak characteristics of RWA expansion. In summary, the end of 2024 marks the development of RWA in the L2 ecosystem.