Original text | Odaily Planet Daily
Author | Fu Ruo
As we approach 2025, many institutions have begun forecasting the future trends of the cryptocurrency market. Among them, the real-world asset (RWA) sector has become a highly watched topic. Bitwise noted in its top 10 predictions for the 2025 cryptocurrency market that the market size of tokenized RWA is expected to reach 50 billion USD. This optimistic forecast has filled the market with expectations for the prospects of RWA.
Recently, star projects in the RWA sector have performed particularly well, adding fuel to this heat. The RWA projects that have issued tokens have welcomed a new wave of increases: the ONDO token price has surpassed 2.1 USDT, setting a historical high; most of the issued RWA projects like Maple and Swarm have seen increases exceeding 200%.
Although the market has high hopes for the RWA sector, actual participation contrasts sharply with the heat of discussion. Due to high thresholds and complex compliance requirements, most investors remain at the conceptual stage regarding RWA. This situation has led to a mixed market, with many projects claiming to be RWA emerging, attempting to ride the wave without genuine underlying support. This creates confusion for ordinary investors, making it difficult to distinguish which are true RWA projects and which are merely disguised as "blockchain + real assets" concept hype.
Moreover, as the author understands, the RWA sector covers a wide range, roughly divided into U.S. Treasury bonds, private credit, commodities, stocks, stablecoins, global bonds, institutional funds, etc. However, most projects themselves do not issue platform tokens and are focused on tokenizing their products, which, due to regulatory and compliance factors, often require KYC and other proofs, making them unsuitable for many small and medium-sized investors.
To this end, Odaily Planet Daily has conducted an inventory of projects that have issued platform tokens from various categories above, analyzing the fundamentals of these projects, which does not constitute investment advice.
U.S. Treasury type: Ondo Finance
Ondo Finance was established in 2021, initially focusing on the LaaS (Liquidity as a Service) track. However, as the crypto market entered a bear market, the project faced developmental bottlenecks. In response to the changing market environment, Ondo Finance strategically transitioned to the RWA (Real World Assets) sector in January 2023. This initiative coincided with the beginning of the RWA sector's popularity surge, significantly increasing Ondo Finance's market attention, and in just two years, it has grown to become one of the representative projects of on-chain U.S. Treasury bond RWA.
Ondo Finance's RWA products are primarily designed around mainstream financial assets in the U.S., with compliance and security being one of its core considerations. To ensure the compliant operation of its products, Ondo Finance has established a local company in the U.S. and created a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to provide legal protection and operational support for its RWA products.
In terms of revenue, Ondo Finance partnered with BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL in April 2023, replacing the underlying assets of its products with assets from the BUIDL fund. This collaboration not only provided strong backing for Ondo Finance's products but also significantly enhanced the timeliness and convenience of returns, creating a more efficient return experience for investors.
Currently, the total market value of Ondo Finance's RWA products has reached 623 million USD, with its core products including two types of tokenized assets:
OUSG (U.S. Treasury Bonds): The underlying assets come from BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL, providing an annualized yield of 4.44%, supporting Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana networks.
USDY (U.S. Dollar Rate): Guaranteed by short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and bank deposits, providing over-collateralization and daily transparency reports, with an annualized yield of 4.65%, and an investment threshold as low as 500 USD, supporting Ethereum, Mantle, Solana, Sui, Aptos, Noble, and Arbitrum networks.
In addition, Ondo Finance has launched the Flux Finance lending platform, providing redemption liquidity for RWA products to further optimize capital utilization.
Ondo Finance's native token ONDO was publicly offered through CoinList and will unlock circulation in early 2024. According to CoinGecko data, the current circulating market cap of ONDO is approximately 2.8 billion USD. Due to the relatively low circulation of the token, accounting for only 15% of the total token supply, there is some room for price increases in the short term. However, most tokens are concentrated in the hands of the project party and early investors, posing a risk of sell-off. According to the token unlock plan, 1.94 billion tokens will be unlocked every January 18 for the next four years, potentially creating significant sell pressure in the market.
Recently, Ondo Finance has been receiving positive news continuously, with Grayscale listing ONDO as a potential future addition to its crypto assets, and Pantera Capital also disclosing its holdings of ONDO tokens. A Swiss wealth management company, 21Shares, has also added ONDO to its European products to increase ETPs, and the Trump family project has recently purchased ONDO tokens.
Subjective judgment: Among U.S. Treasury RWA projects, Ondo Finance is one of the few that have a platform token, with its product market cap ranking first, exhibiting certain leading effects. At the same time, the governance function of ONDO has a high threshold, requiring at least 100 million ONDO tokens to participate, and recent market performance needs to focus on the sell pressure risk that the unlock period may bring.
Private credit type: Maple Finance
Maple Finance is a comprehensive lending platform established in 2019 and officially launched in 2021. Initially, Maple focused on providing unsecured credit lending services for market makers and trading companies. However, due to the financial fraud incident involving its collaborator Orthogonal Trading, a large amount of funds could not be repaid, leading Maple, a leading project in the unsecured lending sector, into difficulties, even rumors of insolvency.
To reduce risks, Maple Finance is gradually shifting towards a mortgage lending model based on real-world assets (RWA). The platform has launched a new cash management pool that allows non-U.S. qualified investors and entities to invest in U.S. Treasury bonds through USDC. Additionally, Maple Finance has introduced Maple Direct, providing over-collateralized loan services for BTC and ETH funds. This year, the platform launched a new product focused on DeFi lending, Syrup.fi. As of now, Maple Finance has issued approximately $2.46 billion in loans, with an annualized yield (APY) of 9.69%.
Maple Finance's native token MPL has a total issuance of 10 million tokens, primarily used for distributing protocol revenue and equity rewards. However, in August this year, the Maple community decided through a proposal (MIP-010) to convert MPL to SYRUP tokens to expand community participation and enhance governance flexibility. According to the proposal, 1 MPL can be exchanged for 100 SYRUP, with the token swap deadline set for May 2025. At the same time, the SYRUP token introduced a staking mechanism, with the staked token stSYRUP proposed as the only governance token for Maple Finance, with the voting date set for December 25, likely to pass unanimously.
The total issuance of SYRUP is approximately 1.15 billion tokens, inheriting the value capture capability of MPL, including protocol revenue and staking rewards. This strategy is similar to MakerDAO's token swap project, aimed at addressing the issue of the overly low total supply of MPL tokens, which limits community governance participation. As of now, CoinGecko data shows that the price of MPL is approximately 19.8 USDT, with a circulating market cap of about 90 million USD, while the price of SYRUP is 0.19 USDT, with a circulating market cap of about 106 million USD.
Subjective judgment: According to data from RWA.xyz, Maple Finance ranks second in the RWA private credit sector. The private credit sector accounts for over 50% of the total market value of RWA. Since the top-ranked Figure project is unlikely to issue tokens, Maple Finance has become one of the few projects capable of capturing token value, with significant potential for future development.
Private credit type: Centrifuge
Centrifuge is a blockchain focused on tokenizing real-world assets, aiming to enhance the transparency and liquidity of traditional assets (such as receivables, real estate, or loans) through blockchain technology. Centrifuge is built on the Substrate framework and is part of the Polkadot ecosystem, interacting with other chains through parachains while enjoying Polkadot's security and cross-chain capabilities.
The core product functions of the Centrifuge protocol include three important modules: the Centrifuge chain, Centrifuge pools, and NFTs as collateral.
The Centrifuge chain is the infrastructure of the protocol, built on the Substrate framework, operating as an independent blockchain while also being one of the parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem. This design ensures the independence of the Centrifuge chain and is compatible with other chains in Polkadot, enabling efficient cross-chain operations. The Centrifuge chain has multiple advantages, including the ability to bring assets on-chain, converting real-world assets into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for on-chain asset management. Moreover, the independent operation of the Centrifuge chain can significantly reduce transaction costs.
Centrifuge pools are the core platform for interaction between asset issuers and investors, helping real-world assets achieve liquidity on-chain, and supporting investment and redemption.
The structure of the pool includes:
Senior Tranche: Provides stable returns, with high priority, protected by junior tranches.
Junior Tranche: Bears default risk, earns higher returns, but with greater risk.
The characteristics of the pool include:
Rolling Pools: Investors can lock or redeem investments at any time, with a decentralized settlement mechanism ensuring the liquidity and risk balance of the fund pool.
Dynamic net asset value management: Each pool adjusts investment and redemption prices based on the net asset value (NAV) of the assets to ensure transparent value calculation.
NFTs as collateral are one of the innovative features of the Centrifuge protocol. Through the NFT module of the Centrifuge chain, real-world assets can be tokenized. These NFTs contain detailed information about the assets, such as contracts, credit ratings, etc., and serve as collateral in the pool to obtain financing. The financing amount for the assets can reach up to 100% of their net asset value (NAV), and these amounts will be dynamically adjusted based on factors such as asset repayment conditions and default risks. Through the collaboration of off-chain and on-chain operations, the asset net value can be updated in real-time.
Moreover, Centrifuge has deep integrations with mainstream DeFi protocols like MakerDAO, allowing asset pools to mint DAI directly, providing investors with diversified liquidity solutions.
As of now, Maple Finance has issued approximately $560 million in loans, with an annualized yield (APY) of 8.74%.
Centrifuge's native token CFG has a total issuance of 425 million tokens. CoinGecko data shows that the current price of CFG is 0.38 USDT, with a circulating market cap of approximately 196 million USD. In addition to governance functions, CFG tokens can also be used to pay transaction fees and network staking.
Subjective judgment: Compared to Maple, Centrifuge's model is more attractive. Although both belong to the private lending sector, Centrifuge's asset collateral types are richer and more transparent. Through NFTs as proof of collateral for real-world assets, Centrifuge is more intuitive and operationally feasible.
Commodities & stocks type: Swarm
Swarm Markets issues on-chain tokenized products for stocks and bonds through its subsidiary SwarmX. SwarmX transforms publicly traded stock securities into tokenized assets, with the underlying assets held by institutional custodians. The platform's goal is to provide liquidity solutions for RWA that comply with regulatory requirements, ensuring compliance with traditional financial market regulations while offering a decentralized trading experience.
Assets launched by Swarm Markets include:
Stock tokens: TSLA (Tesla), AAPL (Apple), COIN (Coinbase), CPNG (Coupang), INTC (Intel), MSFT (Microsoft), MSTR (MicroStrategy), NVDA (NVIDIA);
Bond ETFs: TBONDS01 (U.S. Treasury Bonds 0-1 Year), TBONDS13 (U.S. Treasury Bonds 1-3 Years);
Commodities: xGOLD (Gold)
Swarm Markets generates protocol revenue by exchanging fees through mining pools, charging a fee of 25% of the exchanged amount or 0.1% of the exchanged assets, whichever is greater. This revenue mechanism ensures the sustainability of the protocol while providing participants with a stable source of income.
The native token of Swarm Markets is SMT, with a total supply of 250 million SMT. CoinGecko data shows that the price of SMT is 0.31 USDT, with a circulating market cap of 26 million USD. Besides governance functions, Swarm Markets has established three types of SMT rewards:
Liquidity provider rewards: Users participating in providing liquidity within the Open dOTC protocol will receive rewards based on their contributions to the market. Starting from December 2, 2024, rewards will only be distributed for bids on dOTC v2.
RWA holder rewards: Users holding RWA assets can receive corresponding rewards, calculated based on the market value of their held RWA assets, with a 4-fold increase applied.
RWA staking rewards: Users staking RWA assets will receive rewards based on the ratio of their staking amount to the platform's TVL.
In addition to the above rewards, Swarm Markets will also distribute SMT tokens based on the overall development of the platform and user participation, encouraging behaviors and activities that benefit the platform.
As of now, the total market cap of Swarm Markets' products is approximately 765,000 USD, ranking prominently in the stock RWA sector.
Subjective judgment: Swarm Markets is one of the few stock RWA projects in the crypto space. In August this year, Swarm Markets also launched the xGOLD gold RWA product, and the market cap of the SMT token is relatively low. However, compared to previous private lending and U.S. Treasury bonds, the market share of commodities and stocks-type RWA is relatively small, and the heat is lower than the previous two sectors. However, the subsequent development of the RWA sector may focus on the blue ocean market of stocks and commodities.
(The above content is extracted and reproduced with the authorization of the partner PANews, original link | Source: Odaily Planet Daily)
Disclaimer: The article only represents the author's personal views and opinions, does not reflect the views and positions of Blockcast. All content and opinions are for reference only and do not constitute investment advice. Investors should make their own decisions and trades, and the author and Blockcast will not bear any responsibility for any direct or indirect losses incurred from investor transactions.
"Institutions predict that RWA will continue to explode in 2025, and 'these 4 projects' are worth paying special attention to." This article was first published on (Blockcast).
