Original author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Original editor: Nianqing, ChainCatcher
The key driving force behind this bull market that started in 2024 is the traditional financial asset management giants led by BlackRock.
Recently launched the counterfeit season, the first to rise is the RWA, payment and other tracks that traditional financial giants are focusing on. Among them, tokens such as Ondo, CRV, and ENA that are closely related to traditional asset management giants like BlackRock have seen impressive gains. During the significant market decline on the 10th and 11th, these tokens also showed relatively good resistance to downturns or rebounded quickly.
Empowering traditional finance, especially the tracks and projects supported by traditional financial giants, may be one of the most certain directions of this bull market. ChainCatcher has conducted a brief overview of related projects. (Not including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana, XRP crypto ETF content)
BlackRock
This year in March, BlackRock launched the tokenized fund BUIDL through the compliant tokenization platform Securitize, which currently has a scale exceeding $550 million.
Currently, most of BUIDL is still deployed on Ethereum. Last month, BlackRock announced the launch of the BUIDL fund on Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, OP, and Polygon. Recently, partners or associates around BUIDL have performed relatively well.
1, Ondo Finance (Ondo)
Last week, Ondo surged 40% to break $1.93, setting a new historical high, currently retracing to around $1.86. It has increased over 100% in the past month and over 880% in the past year; the market cap is nearly $2.6 billion, and FDV is over $18 billion.
As the leading project in the RWA sector, Ondo Finance's close collaboration with BlackRock has driven its multiple surges.
Ondo Finance's two core products include the tokenized U.S. Treasury product OUSG. Previously, the vast majority of OUSG's portfolio consisted of BlackRock's iShares short-term Treasury ETF (NASDAQ: SHV). In March this year, after BlackRock announced the launch of the tokenized fund BUIDL, Ondo also redistributed most of OUSG's assets to BUIDL. OUSG currently has a TVL exceeding $180 million and has provided clients with over $25 million in returns since its launch.
Besides its close ties with BlackRock, Ondo Finance has recently added partners such as Morgan Stanley, Ankura Trust, Clear Street, and NAV Consulting to its ecosystem directory announced on X.
The core team of Ondo Finance mainly comes from traditional well-known asset management companies. Its co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman was previously responsible for the global digital asset market at Goldman Sachs. Other core members of Ondo Finance primarily come from top asset management firms like Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Bridgewater.
In addition to U.S. Treasury bonds, Ondo Finance will also launch Ondo Global Markets on February 6, 2025, to tokenize stocks and bonds on-chain.
2, Curve (CRV)
As a veteran DeFi leader, CRV's recent rise is also related to its collaboration with BlackRock. Curve is an important partner for BlackRock's entry into DeFi.
On November 30, Curve announced that it has partnered with the blockchain network Elixir to expand access to BlackRock's tokenized money market fund BUIDL for DeFi. Users will soon be able to use BlackRock BUIDL to mint Elixir's yield stablecoin deUSD. CRV then surged from $0.5 by 60% to $0.8, approaching $1.3 on December 7.
As of the time of writing, it is quoted at $1.16, with CRV having increased nearly 300% recently; its market cap exceeds $1.4 billion, and FDV exceeds $2.5 billion. CRV's historical highest price was $60.5, set in August 2020, while its historical lowest price was $0.18, set in August this year.
Besides the collaboration with BlackRock, the market demand for Curve has surged after a bullish trend. Curve also reported that within two weeks of Trump's presidency, its revenue had doubled from an average of $268,000 to $581,000.
Recently, CurveDAO also launched the interest-bearing stablecoin Savings crvUSD (scrvUSD) to expand new use cases.
3, Ethena (ENA)
On November 29, stablecoin issuer Ethena and tokenization platform Securitize announced a forthcoming collaboration to launch the stablecoin USDtb to participate in Sky (formerly MakerDAO) lending platform's $1 billion tokenization competition.
The reserves of the USDtb stablecoin will be invested in BlackRock's USD institutional digital liquidity fund (BUIDL), and USDtb will become the only stablecoin supported by BUIDL.
As a result of this news, ENA has continued to rise from around $0.7. Last week it peaked over $1.14, currently retracing to $1.1, with an increase of nearly 80% in the past month, and a market cap exceeding $3.2 billion, with FDV exceeding $16.5 billion.
Ethena is also a project in which Franklin Templeton participated in the investment.
4, Velo (VELO)
Velo is a blockchain-based global settlement network that provides fast, secure, and low-cost cross-border payments for individuals and businesses. DWF Labs made a strategic investment of $10 million in it last year.
In September this year, Velo announced that it had integrated BlackRock's tokenized BUIDL fund into its USDV stablecoin, providing seamless trading and yield opportunities for over 1 million users in Southeast Asia.
VELO surged by 50% last week, breaking $0.03, currently retracing to about $0.026, with an increase of over 84% recently, and a market cap of nearly $200 million, with FDV close to $800 million.
Fidelity
5, Chainlink (LINK)
Oracle networks are also indispensable for financial institutions to tokenize assets, and Chainlink can help institutions link on-chain and off-chain data, unlocking some DeFi use cases.
Chainlink has collaborated this year with multiple traditional asset management firms, leading crypto companies, Web2 giants, and Trump’s crypto project.
Chainlink collaborated with Fidelity International and Sygnum to chain the net asset value (NAV) data of Fidelity's $6.9 billion institutional liquidity fund in real-time. Chainlink also completed a pilot project in collaboration with Swiss asset management giant UBS and SWIFT, providing settlement for the subscription and redemption operations of tokenized funds through the SWIFT network.
21 Shares integrated Chainlink's proof-of-reserve system to provide transparency for its Ethereum ETF; Sony's L2 network Soneium also chose Chainlink as a partner.
It is worth mentioning that the Trump family crypto project World Liberty recently announced that it will adopt Chainlink's on-chain data and cross-chain connection standards. In the past 9 hours, World Liberty also purchased over 40,000 LINK.
Last week, LINK's price broke $20 and peaked at over $27, briefly retracing before rising again to over $29 today, with a nearly 30% surge in 24 hours, and a nearly 100% increase over the past month. The last time LINK was above $20 was in January 2020. LINK's historical highest price was $52.88, set in May 2021.
As of the time of writing, LINK's market cap exceeds $18 billion, and FDV exceeds $28.9 billion.
Morgan
6, Avalanche (Avax)
The Avalanche token Avax is also one of the tokens that performed well in the recently launched counterfeit season. Avax peaked over $55 last week, currently retracing to around $50, with an increase of over 37% in the past month. Currently, Avax's market cap exceeds $20.5 billion, and FDV is nearly $36 billion.
In terms of news, Avax's recent rise is not only due to the 'hype' from Ava Labs' founder hinting at ongoing discussions with the new U.S. government for collaboration but also possibly related to Avalanche's layout and growth in RWA.
Avalanche has a significant advantage in developing RWA as it allows developers or enterprises to create their independent subnets.
Some RWA projects can therefore create dedicated subnets according to the legal requirements of different countries or regions, flexibly meeting collaboration requirements.
JPMorgan collaborates closely with Avalanche, and its digital asset platform Onyx uses Avalanche to create tokenized funds.
In addition, other asset management giants, banks, payment giants, government agencies, and stablecoin giants have adopted Avalanche.
In November, BlackRock announced its expansion to multiple public chains, with Avalanche being one of them. Tether's announced asset tokenization platform Hadron also includes Avalanche among the first hosted public chains.
In October, the Latin American bank Littio abandoned Ethereum in favor of using Avalanche.
In August, Franklin Templeton expanded its tokenized money market fund (FOBXX) to the Avalanche network. The fund had previously traded on Stellar, Polygon, and Arbitrum.
Earlier this year, Citibank collaborated with WisdomTree and Wellington Management, also conducting a tokenization proof-of-concept trial for private equity funds on the Avalanche subnet Spruce. The California Department of Motor Vehicles also digitized ownership certificates for 42 million vehicles in the state on Avalanche.
Franklin Templeton
Franklin Templeton's tokenized fund FOBXX currently has a scale exceeding $440 million, initially issued on the Stellar blockchain, and later expanded to Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, Aptos, Ethereum, and Base.
Franklin Templeton has invested in about 30 crypto projects, including Aptos (APT),
Ethena (ENA), Sui (SUI), Puffer Finance (PUFFER), SHRAPNEL (SHRAP), LayerZero (ZRO), Spectral (SPEC), Arcade (ARC) have 8 issued tokens.
Puffer Finance, Ethena, and SHRAPNEL are projects invested in the past year. PUFFER and ENA are the two projects that have seen the most impressive token growth this year. Ethena has already been mentioned as having collaborated with BlackRock's tokenized fund on stablecoin matters, so no further elaboration is needed.
7, Stellar (XLM)
Stellar is another payment network founded by Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb. Over half of the TVL of Franklin Templeton's tokenized fund FOBXX is on Stellar.
Stellar and WisdomTree also have collaborations, with WisdomTree's short-term government bond digital funds also issued on Stellar. WisdomTree launched the WisdomTree Prime application and also utilized the Stellar network to launch in 41 states.
XLM has risen multiple times over the past month, peaking above $0.6, currently retracing to around $0.44, with an increase of over 260% in the past month. The market cap exceeds $13.3 billion, and FDV exceeds $22.1 billion.
8, Sui (SUI)
In addition to investing in Sui, Franklin Templeton announced a strategic partnership with Sui in November, focusing on supporting Sui ecosystem builders and deploying new technologies using the Sui blockchain protocol.
Sui is currently quoted at $4.81, with an increase of over 53% in the past month, its market cap exceeds $14.1 billion, and FDV exceeds $48.1 billion.
9, Aptos (APT)
In addition to investments, Franklin Templeton's tokenized fund FOBXX has now expanded to Aptos.
APT is currently quoted at $13.87, with little increase over the past month, peaking at over $15, with a market cap exceeding $7.4 billion and FDV reaching $15.6 billion.
10, Puffer Finance (PUFFER)
Puffer Finance is a liquid staking protocol based on EigenLayer. In April this year, Franklin Templeton and Fidelity Investments' parent company associated venture capital fund Avon Ventures both participated in the $18 million investment in Puffer Finance.
Last week, PUFFER also surged significantly, approaching $1, currently retracing to $0.82, increasing nearly 130% recently. Its market cap is over $84 million, and FDV exceeds $820 million.
11, LayerZero (ZRO)
LayerZero, as one of the top three cross-chain protocols, has also seen a good upward trend recently. Last week, the LayerZero token ZRO set a new historical high, peaking above $7.4, currently retracing to $6.98. It has surged over 77% recently. ZRO's market cap is $760 million, and FDV reaches $6.9 billion.
Recently noteworthy is that LayerZero (ZRO) will hold a public referendum on December 19 to activate fee conversion.
The LayerZero protocol might charge a fee equivalent to the total cost of validating and executing cross-chain messages. If the fee switch is activated through governance, the referendum treasury contract will charge fees on the local chain and burn those fees.
12, SHRAPNEL (SHRAP)
SHRAPNEL is a AAA FPS game, with investment teams including well-known institutions such as Polychain, IOSG Ventures, Dragonfly, DeFiance Capital, Mechanism Capital, and Spartan Group.
However, the Shrapnel team experienced internal strife at the end of last year, and Shrapnel's game studio Neon Machine mentioned lawsuits to multiple investors, claiming attempts to seize control of the company and its vault.
SHRAP is currently quoted at $0.04, with a market cap exceeding $33 million and FDV exceeding $124 million.
13, Spectral (SPEC)
Spectral was originally a machine intelligence network on the Base chain, and is now positioned as a platform to help users implement smart contract AI programming.
In March this year, Spectral launched an AI application called Syntax, which helps anyone start smart contracts for Ethereum and several other blockchains, allowing users to compile, debug, and deploy AI-generated Solidity code.
In addition to Franklin Templeton's investment, Polychain Capital, Galaxy Digital, Samsung, Circle Ventures, and Jump Capital are also early investors in Spectral.
Recently, the AI sector is leading the market, with SPEC breaking through the historical high of $18, currently retracing to $13; its market cap exceeds $183 million, and FDV is over $1.3 billion.
14, Arcade (ARC)
Arcade is a GameFi platform that gives the community a chance to earn meaningful rewards from various Play-and-Earn metaverse games without having to play the games directly or own in-game NFTs. Franklin Templeton invested in Arcade in 2021, with notable early investors including Pantera Capital, Crypto.com Capital, Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, GSR, LD Capital, and KuCoin Labs.
Earlier this year, Crypto.com Capital, Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, GSR, and KuCoin Labs invested again in Arcade.
ARC is currently quoted at $0.038, with a market cap of less than $1 million, and FDV of over $30 million.
VanEck
In addition to the collaboration with Pudgy Penguins, in October this year, VanEck announced the launch of a $30 million venture capital fund to support the development of crypto and AI industries.
Previously, it invested in at least 7 crypto projects, among which GEODNET (GEOD), Parallel (PRIME), and 1inch (1INCH) have issued tokens.
15, Pudgy Penguins (PENGU)
Last week, Pudgy Penguins, which planned to issue tokens and had airdrop expectations in 2024, saw its floor price surge above 27 ETH, and Pudgy Penguins also has some connections with VanEck.
In June this year, asset management firm VanEck changed its social media avatar on X to that of Pudgy Penguins, also captioning: 'The boss thinks it's too cute; it can't be pfp without it.' Pudgy Penguins also appeared in the promotional video for VanEck's ETH ETF.
However, recently, Pudgy Penguins plans to launch its token on Solana.
16, Parallel (PRIME)
Parallel is a sci-fi themed collectible card game (TCG), and the project's team members include senior developers from AAA games such as Assassin's Creed and Valorant, as well as YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley's participation.
In addition to VanEck, Paradigm, Solana Ventures, Base, Amber Group, Spartan Group, etc. also participated in the investment. The first round of financing in 2021 received a $50 million investment from Paradigm, reaching a valuation of $500 million.
This year, Parallel also launched the AI survival simulation game Colony on Solana, and announced the AI crypto game moon landing plan.
PRIME is currently quoted at $15.78, having risen over 53% in just one month, with a market cap exceeding $566 million and FDV exceeding $1.7 billion.
17, GEODNET (GEOD)
GEODNET is a DEPIN project that uses a new type of rooftop meteorological station to collect dense real-time geospatial data from Earth and its atmosphere. In addition to VanEck, Animoca Brands, Pantera Capital, CoinFund, and IoTeX are also its investors. Animoca Brands has also formed a strategic partnership with GEODNET.
GEOD is currently quoted at $0.24, with no significant increase recently, its market cap exceeds $48 million, and FDV exceeds $240 million.
18, 1inch (1INCH)
The established DEX aggregator 1inch is also the second largest aggregator by market share. 1INCH broke through $0.6 last week, currently retracing to $0.51, with an increase of over 63% in the past month; its market cap exceeds $720 million, and FDV exceeds $777 million.
Last week, after the price increase, the 1inch team sold 1INCH over three consecutive days from the 5th to the 7th, converting a total of 15,698,000 1INCH for 8.38 million USDC, with an average selling price of $0.533.
WisdomTree
In addition to applying for an XRP ETF, WisdomTree has also been actively working on tokenized funds and other RWA products recently.
Recently, WisdomTree announced that platform users can directly spend funds from WisdomTree's government money market digital fund (WTGXX) using their Visa debit card. Currently, the assets managed by this fund are approximately $12 million.
In addition, WisdomTree has launched an RWA platform that allows users to access regulated fund tokens through any wallet or blockchain network and plans to eventually expand access to these assets.
WisdomTree has also obtained a license from NYDFS and will launch a crypto application WisdomTree Prime.
WisdomTree launched a short-term government bond digital fund in 2022, which was first deployed on Ethereum and Stellar. WisdomTree also conducted a tokenization proof-of-concept trial for private equity funds on Avalanche subnet Spruce.
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs' layout in the crypto field in 2025 is also worth noting.
Recently, market news indicated that the CEO of Goldman Sachs stated that if regulators allow, they will 'evaluate' participation in the Bitcoin or Ethereum markets. Goldman Sachs' attention to cryptocurrencies beyond Bitcoin may also represent an important shift.
Previously, the head of digital assets at Goldman Sachs stated mid-year that they plan to launch 3 tokenization projects by the end of the year, including their first U.S. project. Goldman Sachs is expanding its cryptocurrency services, focusing on tokenization, and plans to issue 'real-world assets' such as money market funds and real estate through public or private blockchains.
Currently, Goldman Sachs has not disclosed more project content and partners for its tokenized fund, which can be continuously monitored.
Previously, Goldman Sachs also invested in asset management or infrastructure projects such as Circle, BitGO, Blockdaemon, Certik.
