Data source: http://RWA.xyz
The true scale of total assets in the RWA track
The trillion-dollar scale RWA track in institutional research reports does not include stablecoin projects, meaning it only encompasses private credit, US Treasury bonds, commodities, institutional alternative funds, non-US bonds, corporate bonds, and stocks, totaling $13.55B as of December 1.
In contrast, the total asset size of stablecoin projects is $192.78B.
Of course, RWA enthusiasts can argue that about 90% of the underlying assets of USDT/USDC stablecoins are short-term US Treasury bonds, and a large portion of the underlying assets of the decentralized stablecoin USDS (formerly DAI) is also short-term US Treasury bonds. Their mechanisms are similar to those of ONDO's USDY and Elixir's deUSD, except that the issuers of USDT/USDC, Tether and Circle, do not distribute the underlying asset returns from US Treasury bonds to users.
Personally, I believe the logic of this statement is sound. Therefore, in a broad sense, the true scale of total assets in the RWA track should be $206.33B, achieving 20% of the trillion-dollar scale target.
The asset size distribution of the RWA track
At the beginning of 2023, Teacher Meng Yan @myanTokenGeek initiated a major discussion on RWA in China. At that time, in a low-interest environment on-chain (the stablecoin interest on AAVE had been below 2% for a long time), the tokenization of US Treasury bonds was the hottest topic in the RWA track, occupying an absolute share of the RWA market.
However, in less than two years, the market landscape of the RWA track has undergone significant changes.
With Figure Markets joining the private credit segment, having raised $60 million in Series A funding led by Jump Crypto, Pantera Capital, and Lightspeed Faction, its rapidly expanding business this year has not only offset the decline in the business of peers such as Maple, Centrifuge, Goldfinch, Curve, TrueFi, but has also pulled the scale of private credit to $9.40B, far exceeding the $2.60B total scale of tokenized US Treasury bonds.
The issuance status of RWA assets in 2024
From the attached chart, it can be seen that in 2024, the top three monthly RWA asset issuance scales are stablecoins, tokenized US Treasury bonds, and private credit.
In other words, if you want to find the most growth-oriented investment targets in the RWA track, you should look for them in these three sub-sectors.
The chain distribution of RWA assets
Unsurprisingly, Ethereum wins decisively with a market share of 76.51%.
Stellar, with the help of WisdomTree, ranks second with 9 RWA products totaling $245.58M.
Polygon ranks third due to the native stablecoin assets accumulated in the previous cycle and the tokenized US Treasury bond assets issued by BlackRock and Franklin Templeton.
Solana ranks fourth, with the RWA category primarily consisting of USDC and USDT, and additionally, Ondo's USDY with a scale of $107.57M. This cycle, Solana has achieved great success at the To C level but needs to work harder at the To B level.
Avalanche is very active in RWA and has initiated and organized the RWA Alliance. Therefore, its RWA categories and issuing entities on-chain are very diverse, but due to the recent developmental setbacks of the Avalanche chain, the overall scale is only $97.87M.
Investment targets in the RWA track
--Beta targets: Leading sub-track players, such as SKY (formerly MakerDAO) in the tokenized US Treasury bond space, Ondo Finance, Figure Markets in private credit, Spiko for non-US bond tokenization, and Securitize for institutional funds, etc.
--Alpha targets: Elixir, which cooperates with BlackRock to issue the decentralized stablecoin deUSD based on tokenized US Treasury bonds; the pricing market for RWA stablecoins Curve; and the recovering private credit scale in Goldfish, etc.
Of course, the Alpha targets are not limited to the above few; the search principle still has to involve 'disruptive innovation' or 'exponential growth'.
