"Stablecoins are a trillion dollar opportunity." According to a research report published by Pantera Capital partners Ryan Barney and Mason Nystrom, stablecoins represent a trillion-dollar opportunity, which is not an exaggeration. As crypto assets pegged 1:1 to fiat currency and maintained in price through algorithms or reserves, stablecoins, with their non-speculative attributes, have grown from 3% of blockchain transactions in 2020 to over 50% currently.
Development history of the stablecoin market in the past two years
2024: A Year of Breakthrough
This year, stablecoins have achieved significant breakthroughs, with annual total trading volume reaching 5 trillion USD and nearly 200 million accounts generating over 1 billion transactions. Unlike the last bull market, the application of stablecoins has surpassed the limitations of the DeFi ecosystem, showing strong potential in the cross-border payment sector, especially with significant growth in emerging markets where demand for USD is high. Currently, both the supply and trading volume of on-chain stablecoins have reached historical highs.
Traditional financial technology giants are actively laying out:
Stripe acquires Bridge platform for 1.1 billion USD, praising stablecoins as "superconductors of financial services."
PayPal launched its own stablecoin PYUSD in 2023.
Robinhood announced cooperation with cryptocurrency companies to prepare a global stablecoin network.
The market size of US Treasury RWA has approached 3 billion USD, growing 30 times since the beginning of 2023, including: • Hashnote and Copper's USYC reached 880 million USD • BlackRock's BUIDL reached 560 million USD.
2025: Scale will further expand
Asset management giant Bitwise previously stated in its (Top 10 Predictions for the Crypto Market in 2025) that with the passage of US stablecoin legislation and the influx of institutional funds, the market cap of stablecoins is expected to double to 400 billion USD, while the tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) market is projected to reach 50 billion USD. ParaFi predicts that the tokenized RWA market could reach 2 trillion USD by 2030, and the Global Financial Markets Association has even predicted it could exceed 16 trillion USD.
Global Financial Giants Actively Layout:
Goldman Sachs: Digital asset platform launched, assisting European Investment Bank in issuing 100 million euros in digital bonds, and plans to build a private chain.
Siemens: The first to issue 60 million euros in on-chain digital bonds.
HSBC, JPMorgan, Citigroup: Exploring the tokenization of government bonds.
Next, let’s take a look at some important segments of RWA projects:
RWA Track
Ondo Finance (ONDO)
ONDO Finance is an RWA project focused on bringing traditional financial tools into DeFi by partnering with traditional financial institutions to acquire US Treasury assets. It then issues tokenized securities via smart contracts, dividing the ownership of these Treasury bonds into small portions, allowing investors to purchase these tokens and indirectly hold US Treasuries. The value of its tokens is closely linked to the value of the represented US Treasuries. Due to the important position and stability of US Treasuries in the global financial market, ONDO has attracted many investors seeking stable returns and hedging. During significant market fluctuations, its token prices remain relatively stable, and trading volumes show a steady growth trend. As more investors increase their demand for the digitalization of traditional financial assets, ONDO is expected to further expand its market share, especially among institutional and high-net-worth individual investors.
Circulating Market Cap: 2,407,391,199
Ranking: #51
Synthetix (SNX)
Synthetix is a protocol for building synthetic assets, allowing users to generate various synthetic assets tied to real-world assets by collateralizing SNX tokens. The value of these assets is linked to stocks, commodities, currencies, etc., in the real world. For example, a user can create a synthetic asset tied to the stock price of Apple, with the platform using an oracle to obtain external asset price information, reflecting the price fluctuations of Apple stock in traditional markets. SNX provides investors with a convenient way to invest in traditional market assets without directly holding these assets, broadening their investment channels. However, the transparency, liquidity of synthetic assets, and regulatory policies are crucial for their long-term development, and they must also face risks such as oracle feeding mechanisms and market manipulation.
Circulating Market Cap: 760,095,061
Ranking: #117
Plume Network
Plume Network is an emerging platform focused on the financialization of real assets (RWAfi), aiming to simplify the issuance, trading, and management of real assets through blockchain technology. It provides an infrastructure that allows companies and asset management institutions to easily bring traditional assets on-chain. The platform features various functions, including asset tokenization, trading matching, and liquidity provision. Its advantages lie in strong compatibility, capable of supporting various types of traditional assets such as real estate, bonds, equities, etc. This provides companies with more efficient financing channels, but how to effectively connect and ensure regulatory compliance with traditional financial institutions is its main challenge.
Stablecoin Track
Currently, among the top 10 stablecoins by market cap, USDT, with a total market cap of 142.7 billion USD, far outpaces the supply of other stablecoins. USDC ranks second, with a current market cap of 41.9 billion USD, but on-chain trading data indicates that USDC's usage rate has actually surpassed that of USDT, with a total trading volume nearly double that of USDT over the past month. This month, USDe's market cap has reached 6 billion USD, surpassing DAI (4.5 billion USD) to become the third largest stablecoin by market cap.
According to the CMC market cap ranking, we observe that the market cap of USD 0 has also reached 1.5 billion USD, growing by 77.17% over the past 7 days, and its ranking has jumped to 9th place. It is an innovative stablecoin protocol issued by the project Usual, launched on Binance Launchpool, integrating BlackRock, Ondo, Mountain Protocol, M0, and Hashnote, transforming them into permissionless, on-chain verifiable, and composable stablecoins. Recently, it offered users a very generous airdrop, and its platform token USUAL has also performed strongly. The following chapters will share some stablecoin projects worth participating in.
Usual (USUAL)
Usual is a secure and decentralized fiat stablecoin issuer, ensuring that its stablecoin USUAL can be exchanged for USD at a 1:1 ratio by holding USD reserves. At the same time, Usual allocates ownership and governance rights of the platform through its platform token USUAL. As a multi-chain infrastructure, Usual integrates the growing tokenized real-world assets (RWA) from institutions such as BlackRock, Ondo, Mountain Protocol, M0, and Hashnote into permissionless, on-chain verifiable, and composable stablecoin USD 0. USD 0 is its first liquidity deposit token (LDT), supported by real-world assets at a 1:1 ultra-short term basis, providing high stability and security. Users can conveniently and diversely operate by directly depositing RWA or indirectly minting USD 0 through USDC/USDT.
Circulating Market Cap: 634,268,673
Ranking: #133
Ethena (ENA)
Ethena is often seen as a decentralized stablecoin USDe project and Ethereum synthetic dollar protocol, providing crypto-native currency solutions and "internet bonds," aiming to solve the issues of autonomous currency issuance and basic pricing in the web3 world, returning the rights of currency issuance to the web3 world. In 2023, the on-chain trading settlement of stablecoins exceeded 12 trillion USD, and AllianceBernstein predicts that by 2028, the stablecoin market size could reach 2.8 trillion USD; ENA, if recognized by the market, has huge value potential. However, ENA also faces various risks. In terms of financing risk, while it can benefit from financing, it may incur costs, but negative yields are not lasting and there are reserve funds to protect users; regarding liquidation risk, the leverage of derivative trading is not high, and there are various ways to ensure that risk is controllable; custody risk relies on "over-the-counter settlement" providers, reducing risks through bankruptcy isolation trusts and multiple partners; risks of exchange bankruptcy can be diversified and mitigated through cooperation with multiple exchanges and retaining asset control; collateral risk, while supporting assets different from the underlying assets, has a low leverage ratio and small collateral discount, which minimizes its impact. Overall, the ENA project presents both opportunities and challenges, and its subsequent development is worth attention.
Circulating Market Cap: 3,030,206,926
Ranking: #42
Frax (FXS)
FRAX is the first partially collateralized and partially algorithmic stablecoin protocol, combining the advantages of traditional fiat collateral and algorithmic control. Through smart contracts, FRAX achieves a dynamic balance between stablecoin supply and market demand. The innovation of FRAX lies in its elastic collateral mechanism, allowing users to mint FRAX stablecoins by depositing USD or other cryptocurrencies. The protocol also introduces FRAX Share (FXS) as a governance token, enabling holders to participate in platform governance and share profits. The protocol features three applications. Fraxswap is an automated market maker with built-in TWAMM for conducting long-term bulk trades. Fraxlend is a lending platform creating ERC-20 token lending markets, supporting various functions, and can also create customized terms for over-the-counter debt markets. Fraxferry is a cross-chain bridge that safely transfers locally issued Frax protocol tokens without the need for bridging or third-party applications, with funds arriving within 24-48 hours. Frax Finance builds a rich DeFi ecosystem through stablecoins and applications, providing users with diverse services and choices in different scenarios.
Circulating Market Cap: 355,706,115
Ranking: #194
Lista DAO (LISTA)
Lista DAO is a liquidity staking and LSDFi project based on the BNB chain, originally Helio Protocol, merged with Synclub after receiving investment from Binance Labs. It aims to provide yield for staked crypto assets and support lending decentralized stablecoin LISUSD. The core mechanisms include stablecoin lending, liquidity staking, and innovative collateralization. Stablecoin lending operates through an over-collateralization model, LISUSD is a decentralized stablecoin that does not fully rely on fiat currency, supporting various collateral assets, and introducing new staking assets in the innovative area. In terms of liquidity staking, users stake crypto assets to receive liquidity tokens, such as staking BNB to get sLISBNB, which can operate across multiple platforms while earning staking rewards, and can also use sLISBNB to borrow LISUSD, currently with an interest rate of 0%. Overall, Lista DAO has great potential in the DeFi field and is expected to establish a foothold through its services and innovations.
Circulating Market Cap: 85,255,603
Ranking: #475
Summary
In summary, the RWA and stablecoin tracks demonstrate the immense potential of combining blockchain technology with traditional finance. As technology progresses and regulations gradually clarify, they are expected to mature further and become an important bridge connecting traditional finance with the blockchain world. These projects lower the financial participation threshold through innovative mechanisms, enhance asset liquidity and transparency, and are attracting an increasing number of institutional and individual investors. For investors, gaining a deep understanding of the operational models and potential risks of these projects will help seize opportunities in this field. However, the rapid development in this sector also comes with risks, including market volatility, regulatory policy uncertainties, and technological security issues.
One particularly noteworthy point is that while RWA and stablecoin projects provide investors with unprecedented opportunities, there are also potential pitfalls related to compliance and transparency. Therefore, investors should fully understand the related risks and carefully assess the investment returns and their own risk tolerance when participating in such projects. This report is for information sharing only and does not constitute any investment advice. In the future, as regulatory policies gradually clarify and technology continues to optimize, RWA and stablecoin tracks are expected to achieve broader applications and more profound impacts on a global scale.
