Where are we in the RWA cycle?

More and more traditional assets are moving onchain. But how far are we into the RWA cycle? We discussed that with several major RWA providers on 1inch.

Eventually, most real-world assets are going to be traded onchain. But we are still closer to the beginning of that road, and a few hurdles will have to be cleared before onchain trading of tokenized assets becomes universally accepted.

“First car on the road”

Industry insiders say that tokenized assets have moved beyond the early adoption stage, as volumes of RWA onchain trade have proven.

“The diversity of assets held, the consistency of net inflows, and the caliber of institutional integration proves that tokenized securities have moved beyond early adoption into a fundamental capital markets product,” says Ian De Bode, President of Ondo Finance.

However, there are entire asset classes that haven’t yet been touched by tokenization, which suggests that the process is likely to be still in an early stage.

“Tokenized real-world assets hit $38 bln onchain this year, nearly triple the total from twelve months ago,” adds Val Gui, GM of xStocks. “That's live capital running through production infrastructure. Offchain, equities, credit, and real estate markets add up to tens of trillions of dollars, and almost none of that has touched a blockchain yet. This is early. The growth curve suggests that won't last.”

“It's still very early days,” agrees Martin de Rijke, Head of Commercial at Maple. “We've seen T-bills come onchain, several private credit structures, a handful of corporate bonds, and tokenized stocks that are just starting to move. But the total across all of it still sits around ten to twenty billion. Think of it like the first car on the road. Someone's uncle's uncle's uncle owns one, and everyone else is still watching.”

Tokenized Treasuries take the lead

According to RWA issuers, tokenized versions of Treasury bills have so far been the most popular asset class onchain.

“Tokenized Treasuries lead by a wide margin, sitting around $15 bln onchain. Institutions treat this category as production-grade, backed by more than a hundred distinct products,” says xStocks’ Val Gui. “Private credit sits close behind in dollar terms, though a large share of that volume traces back to a small number of issuers. Tokenized equities are smaller by total value but the fastest growing by product count. xStocks went from 60 tokenized stocks and ETFs at launch to more than 500 in the first year.”

“Tokenized yield products, tokenized stocks, T-bills, and private credit structures are where the activity is concentrated right now,” adds Martin de Rijke. “Tokenized stocks in particular are starting to gain traction on Robinhood Chain and Solana.”

The biggest bottlenecks

Still, bottlenecks preventing asset tokenization from rolling out more rapidly need to be resolved first, such as insufficient liquidity and a lack of clear regulation.

“Two things need to move before the market can really scale,” says Maple’s Martin de Rijke. “First, regulatory clarity: the US Clarity Act is the catalyst that unlocks broader institutional participation, the same way earlier clarity did for stablecoins. Second, liquidity: Real liquidity flow onchain hasn't properly started yet. Once both regulation and liquidity are in place, adoption follows.”

xStocks’ Val Gui, GM, agrees that liquidity is the biggest bottleneck. “Most tokenized Treasuries and private credit get minted and redeemed rather than traded on a secondary market, so a lot of that capital just sits there,” he explains. “What liquidity exists gets split across issuers, chains, and trading venues instead of pooling somewhere deep enough to trade well.”

“Regulatory frameworks still vary sharply by jurisdiction, which adds cost and delay for anything built to operate globally,” he adds.

Direction: onchain

At this point, few doubt that the process of assets moving onchain is irreversible. The question is how fast it is going to be and what share of real-world assets will be available in a tokenized form.

“You should prepare for a world in which tokenized securities coexist with normal securities,” says Ondo Finance’s Ian De Bode.

“Right now we're at the beginning of an S-curve for trading moving onchain, and that curve hasn't really started in earnest yet,” says Maple’s Martin de Rijke, adding that the pace of growth is likely to accelerate once the regulatory and liquidity bottlenecks have been cleared.

“Here's the mechanism,” Martin de Rijke goes on to say. “Liquidity enables arbitrage, arbitrage draws in more liquidity, and more liquidity produces better prices. Onchain markets run 24 hours a day, every day, with a global pool of participants able to trade at any time. That combination makes onchain markets a more accurate representation of an asset's true price than their offchain equivalents. Once price discovery happens onchain, trading follows it there, because that's where the real opportunity sits.”

xStocks’ Val Gui agrees. “Onchain markets run continuously, settle in seconds, and reach anyone with an internet connection regardless of where they live,” he explains. “Those advantages get stronger as more liquidity and more assets show up in the same place. I won't attach a percentage or a year to it. The direction is set, and the infrastructure to support it is close to ready.”

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