Original | Odaily Planet Daily (@OdailyChina)
Author | Fu He How (@vincent 31515173)
As 2025 approaches, many institutions have made predictions about the future of the crypto market. Among them, the real world asset (RWA) sector has become a hot topic. Bitwise pointed out in its top ten predictions for the crypto market in 2025 that the tokenized RWA market size is expected to reach US$50 billion. This optimistic prediction makes the market full of expectations for the prospects of RWA.
Recently, the star projects in the RWA sector have performed particularly well, adding fuel to the heat. The RWA projects that have issued tokens have ushered in a new round of growth: the price of ONDO tokens has exceeded 2.1 USDT, setting a new record high; most RWA projects that have issued tokens, such as Maple and Swarm, have increased by more than 200%.
Although the market has high hopes for the RWA sector, the actual participation is in stark contrast to the discussion heat. Due to high barriers and complex compliance requirements, most investors' understanding of RWA remains at the conceptual stage. This situation has also led to a mixed market, with many projects under the banner of RWA emerging, trying to take advantage of the popularity but lacking real underlying support. This has caused confusion for ordinary investors, making it difficult to distinguish which are real RWA projects and which are just conceptual hype disguised as "blockchain + real assets".
According to the author's understanding, the RWA sector covers a wide range and can be roughly divided into US Treasury bonds, private credit, commodities, stocks, stablecoins, global bonds, and institutional funds. However, most projects do not issue platform coins themselves, but tokenize their products. Due to regulatory and compliance factors, most of these products require KYC and other certifications, which are not suitable for the majority of small and medium-sized investors.
To this end, Odaily Planet Daily has taken stock of the projects that have issued platform coins from the many categories mentioned above and analyzed the fundamentals of these projects, which does not constitute investment advice.
US Treasury Bonds: Ondo Finance
Ondo Finance was founded in 2021 and initially focused on the LaaS (Liquidity as a Service) track. However, as the encryption market entered a bear market, project development encountered bottlenecks. In the face of changes in the market environment, Ondo Finance strategically transitioned to the RWA (Real World Assets) sector in January 2023. This move caught up with the start of the RWA track craze, significantly increased Ondo Finance’s market attention, and grew into one of the representative projects of on-chain U.S. Treasury Bond RWA in just two years.
Ondo Finance's RWA products are mainly designed around mainstream financial assets in the United States, with compliance and security being one of its core considerations. To ensure the compliance of its products, Ondo Finance has established a local company in the United States and established a special purpose vehicle (SPV) to provide legal protection and operational support for its RWA products. For details, please refer to (Detailed Explanation of Ondo Finance: Successful Transformation, TVL Jumped to the Top Three in the RWA Track).
In terms of income, Ondo Finance reached a cooperation with BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL in April 2023, replacing the underlying assets of its products with the assets of the BUIDL fund. This cooperation not only provides a strong endorsement for Ondo Finance's products, but also significantly improves the real-time and convenience of earnings, creating a more efficient earnings experience for investors.
Currently, Ondo Finance’s RWA products have a total market value of $623 million, and its core products include two tokenized assets:
OUSG (U.S. Treasury Bonds): The underlying assets come from BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL, which provides an annualized yield of 4.44% and supports Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana networks.
USDY (US Dollar Interest Rate): Secured by short-term U.S. Treasuries and bank deposits, it provides over-collateralization and daily transparency reports, with an annualized yield of 4.65%. The investment threshold is as low as US$500 and supports Ethereum, Mantle, Solana, Sui, Aptos, Noble, and Arbitrum networks.
In addition, Ondo Finance launched the Flux Finance lending platform to provide investors with redemption liquidity for RWA products, further optimizing capital utilization.
Ondo Finance’s native token ONDO was publicly raised through CoinList and will be unlocked for circulation in early 2024. According to CoinGecko data, ONDO’s current circulating market capitalization is approximately $2.8 billion. Since the circulation of tokens is still small, accounting for only 15% of the total token volume, there is some room for price growth in the short term. However, most tokens are concentrated in the hands of project parties and early investors, and there is a risk of selling. According to the token unlocking plan, 1.94 billion tokens will be unlocked on every January 18 for the next four years, or create significant selling pressure on the market.
Recently, Ondo Finance has been receiving good news. Grayscale has listed ONDO as a crypto asset that may be added in the future, and Pantera Capital has also disclosed that it holds ONDO tokens. Swiss wealth management company 21 Shares has also added ONDO to its European products and increased ETP. The Trump family project has also recently purchased ONDO tokens.
Subjective judgment: Among the U.S. Treasury RWA projects, Ondo Finance is one of the few projects with a platform currency. Its product market value ranks first, and it has a certain leading effect. At the same time, ONDO's governance function threshold is relatively high, requiring at least 100 million ONDO tokens to be held. The recent market performance needs to pay attention to the selling pressure risk that may be brought about by the unlocking cycle.
Private lending: Maple Finance
Maple Finance is a comprehensive lending platform founded in 2019 and officially launched in 2021. Initially, Maple focused on providing unsecured credit lending services to market makers and trading companies. However, due to the financial fraud of its partner Orthogonal Trading, a large amount of funds could not be repaid, causing Maple to fall into trouble from being a leading project in the field of unsecured lending, and even rumors of insolvency.
In order to reduce risks, Maple Finance has gradually turned to a mortgage lending model based on real-world assets (RWA). The platform launched a new cash management pool that allows non-US qualified investors and entities to invest in US Treasuries through USDC. In addition, Maple Finance has launched Maple Direct, which provides over-collateralized loan services for BTC and ETH funds. This year, the platform launched a new product Syrup.fi focusing on DeFi lending. As of now, Maple Finance has cumulatively issued approximately US$2.46 billion in loans, with an annualized rate of return (APY) of 9.69%.
The total issuance of Maple Finance's native token MPL is 10 million, which is mainly used to distribute protocol revenue and equity rewards. However, in August of this year, the Maple community passed a proposal (MIP-010) to convert MPL into SYRUP tokens to expand community participation and enhance governance flexibility. According to the proposal, 1 MPL can be exchanged for 100 SYRUP, and the deadline for token exchange is May 2025. At the same time, the SYRUP token introduced a staking mechanism, and the staking token stSYRUP was proposed as the only governance token of Maple Finance. The voting time is December 25, and it is likely to be passed unanimously.
The total issuance of SYRUP is about 1.15 billion, inheriting the value capture capabilities of MPL, including protocol income and staking reward functions. This strategy is similar to MakerDAO's token swap plan, which aims to solve the problem of too low total MPL tokens and limited community governance participation. As of now, Coingecko data shows that the price of MPL is about 19.8 USDT, with a circulating market value of about 90 million US dollars, while the price of SYRUP is 0.19 USDT, with a circulating market value of about 106 million US dollars.
Subjective judgment: According to RWA.xyz data, Maple Finance ranks second in the RWA private credit sector. The private credit sector accounts for more than 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 with the ability to capture token value, and has great potential for subsequent development.
Private credit: Centrifuge
Centrifuge is a blockchain focused on tokenizing real-world assets. Its goal is to tokenize traditional assets (such as accounts receivable, real estate, or loans) through blockchain technology, thereby improving the transparency and liquidity of assets. Centrifuge is built on the Substrate framework and as part of the Polkadot ecosystem, it interacts with other chains through parachains while enjoying the security and cross-chain capabilities of Polkadot.
The core product functions of the Centrifuge protocol include three important modules: Centrifuge chain, Centrifuge pool, and NFT as asset collateral.
The Centrifuge chain is the infrastructure of the protocol. It is built on the Substrate framework and runs as an independent blockchain. It is also one of the parallel chains in the Polkadot ecosystem. This design ensures the independence of the Centrifuge chain and has compatibility with other Polkadot chains, enabling efficient cross-chain operations. The Centrifuge chain has many advantages, including the asset on-chain function, which converts real assets into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to achieve on-chain management of assets. In addition, the Centrifuge chain can significantly reduce transaction costs through its independent operation.
The Centrifuge pool is the core platform for interaction between asset issuers and investors, helping real assets achieve liquidity on the chain and supporting investment and redemption.
The pool structure includes:
Senior Tranche: Provides stable returns, has high priority, and is protected by secondary tokens.
Junior Tranche: Bears the risk of default and obtains higher returns, but with greater risks.
Features of the pool include:
Rolling Pools: Investors can lock or redeem their investments at any time, and the decentralized solver mechanism ensures the liquidity and risk balance of the fund pool.
Dynamic Net Value Management: Each pool adjusts investment and redemption prices based on the net value (NAV) of the assets, ensuring transparent calculation of value.
NFT as collateral for assets is 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 asset, such as contracts, credit ratings, etc., and are used as collateral in the pool to obtain financing. Assets can be financed up to 100% of their net asset value (NAV), and these amounts are dynamically adjusted based on factors such as the repayment status of the asset, default risk, etc. Through the collaborative work of off-chain and on-chain, the net asset value can be updated in real time.
In addition, Centrifuge is deeply integrated with mainstream DeFi protocols such as MakerDAO, allowing asset pools to directly mint DAI and provide investors with diversified liquidity solutions.
To date, Maple Finance has issued approximately US$560 million in loans with an annualized yield (APY) of 8.74%.
The total issuance of Centrifuge's native token CFG is 425 million. According to Coingecko data, the current price of CFG is 0.38 USDT, and the circulating market value is about 196 million US dollars. In addition to governance functions, CFG tokens can also be used to pay transaction fees and network staking.
Subjective judgment: Compared with Maple, Centrifuge's model is more attractive. Although both belong to the field of private lending, Centrifuge's asset collateral is richer and more transparent. By using NFT as a means of proving the collateral of real assets, Centrifuge is more intuitive and operational.
Commodity stocks: Swarm
Swarm Markets issues on-chain tokenized products of stocks and bonds through its subsidiary SwarmX. SwarmX converts publicly traded equity securities into tokenized assets, with the underlying assets held by institutional custodians. The platform aims to provide RWAs with a regulatory-compliant liquidity solution that meets the compliance requirements of traditional financial markets while providing a decentralized trading experience.
Swarm Markets has launched assets including:
Stock tokens: TSLA (Tesla), AAPL (Apple), COIN (Coinbase), CPNG (Coupang), INTC (Intel), MSFT (Microsoft), MSTR (MicroStrategy), NVDA (Nvidia);
Bond ETFs: TBONDS 01 (U.S. Treasury 0-1 year), TBONDS 13 (U.S. Treasury 1-3 year);
Product: xGOLD
Swarm Markets earns protocol revenue through pool exchange fees, which are 25% of the exchange amount or 0.1% of the exchanged assets, whichever is greater. This revenue mechanism ensures the sustainability of the protocol while providing a stable source of income for participants.
The native token of Swarm Markets is SMT, with a total of 250 million SMT. According to Coingecko data, the price of SMT is 0.31 USDT, and the circulating market value is 26 million US dollars. In addition to the governance function of SMT, Swarm Markets has established three types of SMT rewards:
Liquidity Provider Rewards: Users who participate in providing liquidity within the Open dOTC protocol will be rewarded based on their contribution to the market. Starting December 2, 2024, rewards will only be issued for bids on dOTC v2.
RWA holder rewards: Users holding RWA assets can receive corresponding rewards. The reward amount is calculated based on the market value of the RWA assets they hold, with a 4-fold increase.
RWA Staking Rewards: Users who stake RWA assets will receive rewards based on the ratio of their staked amount to the platform TVL.
In addition to the above rewards, Swarm Markets will also distribute SMT tokens based on the overall development of the platform and user engagement to encourage behaviors and activities that are beneficial to the platform.
As of now, the total market value of Swarm Markets’ products is approximately US$765,000, ranking among the top 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 value of the SMT token is relatively low. However, compared with previous private lending and U.S. Treasury bonds, commodity and stock RWAs have a lower market share and are less popular than the previous two sectors, but the subsequent development of the RWA sector may focus on the stock and commodity sectors in the blue ocean market.
