RWA: The Next Explosion Point of Ethereum After DeFi

Recently, the passage of the "GENIUS Act" has reignited market interest in RWA. In addition to stablecoins and significant legislative progress, the RWA sector has quietly achieved several important milestones: a sustained strong growth trend and a series of eye-catching breakthroughs. At a time when market attention is at an unprecedented high and broader adoption by traditional finance is imminent, it is crucial to take a deep dive into the current RWA landscape.

The RWA based on Ethereum has demonstrated an astonishing month-on-month growth rate, often maintaining a high double-digit figure. The growth rate in 2025 is expected to accelerate compared to the single-digit months of 2024. Another key factor driving this momentum is "Etherealize" as a catalyst for regulatory development, as well as the Ethereum Foundation prioritizing RWA as a strategic focus. This article will delve into the development dynamics of RWA on Ethereum and its Layer-2 networks.

Data Analysis: Ethereum RWA Growth Panorama

Data clearly indicates: the RWA value of Ethereum has entered a defined growth cycle. Looking at the total value trend of Ethereum's non-stablecoin RWA, its long-term trajectory is remarkable—maintaining in the range of 1-2 billion dollars for many years, until it enters a rapid growth phase in April 2024. This growth momentum continues to accelerate in 2025. The core driving force comes from BlackRock's BUIDL fund, which currently stands at 2.7 billion dollars.

According to asset class (excluding stablecoins), the market value of real-world assets (RWA) on Ethereum is highly concentrated in two main categories: government bond projects (75.9%) and commodities (led by gold, 20.3%), with other categories accounting for a smaller proportion. In contrast, within the composition of RWA market value in the entire crypto market, private credit has the highest proportion (57.4%), followed by government bond projects (30.9%).

Further focusing on the top assets of Ethereum RWA, the pie chart clearly reveals the dominance of BUIDL. A comparison to a year ago shows that BUIDL was then on par with products like PAXG and XAUT, but has now significantly surpassed them. Although the composition of the top ten projects remains relatively stable, the growth rate of government bond products is significantly outpacing that of gold products, leading to a continuous expansion of market share.

From the perspective of protocols, the current leaders are mainly stablecoin issuers—the top four protocols are Tether, Circle, MakerDAO (Dai stablecoin system), and Ethena. Notably, the total value of the securitization protocol Securitize has significantly surpassed some stablecoin projects like FDUSD and USDC, placing it among the top. Other securities protocols that have made it into the top ten include Ondo and Superstate.

Focusing on the monthly data from the beginning of 2024 to the present, the growth wave started in April 2024, achieving an astonishing increase of 26.6% that month - contributing a quarter of the total incremental growth of Ethereum RWA for that month. This momentum continued for the following three months, although it slightly slowed down from August to December 2024, the network still maintained an incremental growth of about 200 million USD/month (month-on-month growth rate of about 5%, annualized over 60%).

In January 2025, the growth rate exploded again, soaring by 33.2% month-on-month. After a brief pullback in February, Ethereum maintained double-digit growth for four consecutive months, with the month-on-month increase in April and May both exceeding 20%.

BUIDL

As BUIDL rapidly rises to become the largest project by market capitalization in the Ethereum RWA ecosystem, a detailed analysis of its growth trajectory is crucial. The month-on-month growth rate chart reveals that as of March 2025, the indicator remains relatively stable, followed by an explosive leap in March 2025. However, the latest data from May shows that the ultra-fast growth trend has slightly slowed down, but there is still an increase of 210 million USD, with a month-on-month growth rate of 8.38%.

The explosive growth of BUIDL stems from multiple factors. The growth mainly comes from institutional demand, and the competitiveness of the product is the key driving force for success: including 24/7 operation, faster settlement speeds compared to traditional finance, and high yields under a compliant framework. Notably, the integration of DeFi is achieving synergies and unlocking more utilities, such as the USDtb product from Ethena Labs—90% of its reserves are backed by BUIDL. At the same time, the recognition of BUIDL as high-quality collateral continues to rise, and the sBUIDL launched by Securitize further unlocks DeFi integration scenarios.

The asset distribution of BUIDL is highly concentrated: about 93% is concentrated in the Ethereum mainnet, while other ecological chains struggle to reach similar scales. Meanwhile, as the asset management scale continues to expand, BUIDL's monthly dividends have consistently set new highs, with dividends reaching 4.17 million dollars in March 2025, and skyrocketing to 7.9 million dollars by May.

stablecoin

Given that the "GENIUS Act" will have a structural impact on the regulatory framework for stablecoins, it is of significant forward-looking importance to systematically examine the development trajectory of the Ethereum stablecoin market. Since 2024, this sector has consistently shown a robust upward trend in total market value. Although the growth rate is slightly slower compared to other RWA sub-sectors, it still maintains a resilient monthly growth rhythm.

In small projects (less than 500 million USD), most projects experienced continuous contraction in early 2024. However, by the end of 2024, the market capitalization of most projects continued to rise, with GHO, M, and USDO showing sustained growth. At the same time, a number of new stablecoin projects crossed the 50M market cap threshold, and the Ethereum stablecoin ecosystem became more diverse, with small-cap projects continuing to thrive from 2025 onwards.

Medium-sized projects (500 million to 5 billion USD) will only have FDUSD and FRAX in 2024; BUSD will drop sharply from 1 billion USD in January 2024 to less than 500 million USD in March due to the cessation of issuance. However, in 2025, both USD0 and PYUSD will break through the 500 million USD threshold, making medium-sized stablecoins more diverse.

Major stablecoins (over $5 billion) continue to be dominated by USDT and USDC: USDT remained stable at a market cap of $40 billion for most of 2024, jumped to $70 billion in early December, and then gradually stabilized until its market cap recently declined; USDC steadily grew from $22 billion in January 2024 to $38 billion in May 2025. At the beginning of 2025, both USDS and USDe broke through the $5 billion mark, but USDT and USDC still lead significantly in market share.

USDT and USDC dominate absolutely, directly impacting the entire stablecoin ecosystem.

The growth in November 2024 is particularly noteworthy: USDT surged by 30.16% month-on-month, while USDC achieved a growth of 16.31%. Following this spike, there were several months of sustained growth, with USDC showing more robust growth in subsequent months, with monthly increases all above 5%. According to disclosures from the issuers: Tether attributes this to "the influx of collateral assets from exchanges and institutional trading desks in response to expected surges in trading volume"; Circle emphasized that "the circulating supply of USDC increased by 78% year-on-year... Apart from user demand, it also stems from the market confidence rebuilding and the improvement of standard systems driven by emerging stablecoin regulatory frameworks."

However, market momentum has clearly shifted recently - the Ethereum on-chain USDT has been stagnant in growth for the past four months, and for the first time in several months, USDC saw a decline in May 2025 after a period of growth. This phenomenon may signify that the market is transitioning to a new cycle phase.

L2 ecosystem

In the broader RWA ecological landscape, Ethereum maintains an absolute dominant position with a market share of 59.23% (excluding stablecoins), but it still faces key challenges.

It is worth noting that zkSync has jumped to second place driven by the Tradable project, while Stellar relies entirely on the Franklin Templeton BENJI Fund (with a scale of $455.9 million) to occupy third place. Although both public chains have impressive RWA balance sheet data, their structural flaws cannot be ignored: a lack of asset diversity and dependence on a single project.

As exhibited by the ecological characteristics of zkSync and Stellar, most L2 networks currently face the challenge of insufficient ecological diversity—its RWA market capitalization is highly dependent on 1-2 core projects. For example, Arbitrum: out of a total market capitalization of 256 million USD, BENJI contributes 111.9 million USD (43.7%), and Spiko accounts for 93.5 million USD (36.5%), with the two combined monopolizing over 80% of the market capitalization; Polygon also shows a similar distribution pattern, with core market capitalization sources concentrated in the two major projects, Spiko and Mercado Bitcoin.

Expanding the vision to the entire L2 ecosystem, the value and market share of RWA across networks present significant differentiation. Apart from zkSync, only Polygon and Arbitrum demonstrate substantial scale effects, while the rest of the L2s are still in the early stages of development. The success of Polygon and Arbitrum heavily relies on a single driving force, Spiko—this project contributes approximately one-third of the total RWA value across both networks.

Looking at the overall RWA of Layer-2 networks