The RWA tokenization market is experiencing rapid growth in the first half of 2025, but there are concerns about its development.

In the first half of 2025, the real-world asset (RWA) tokenization market witnessed explosive rise. As of June 6, the total market capitalization of the global RWA market soared to $23.39 billion (excluding stablecoins), a significant increase of 48.9% from the beginning of the year. Private credit and US Treasury bonds have become the absolute main forces in the market, together accounting for nearly ninety percent of the share.

However, behind this impressive report card lie deep-seated issues such as a high concentration of asset classes, limited liquidity, questionable transparency, and a low correlation with the native crypto ecosystem. RWA still faces many challenges to become a truly mainstream track.

Private Lending and U.S. Treasury Bonds Dominate the Market

Private credit has become the hottest asset type in the RWA market, with a total scale of $13.5 billion, accounting for approximately 57.7%. Among them, a certain blockchain financial technology service platform ranks first with an active loan amount of $10.19 billion. This platform mainly operates Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) business, allowing users to obtain a credit limit loan of 85% of their home's value.

However, the blockchain adopted by the platform is a public yet permissioned L1 blockchain, similar to the design of a consortium chain. This design, while facilitating asset management, also hinders the possibility of such assets being widely circulated in the market. Therefore, despite the issuance of assets exceeding $10 billion, the correlation with the crypto market is not high, as these assets are primarily tokenized in the form of collateralized notes and currently lack trading circulation attributes.

U.S. Treasury securities are the second largest asset class in the RWA market. This type of RWA converts traditional U.S. Treasury securities, cash, and repurchase agreements denominated in dollars into digital tokens through blockchain technology. The total issuance of tokens by a major asset management company is currently about $2.9 billion, making it the largest project in terms of issuance in the U.S. Treasury sector.

The Token was originally launched on the Ethereum blockchain and has now expanded to multiple blockchain networks. The vast majority of assets (approximately 93%) are still issued on Ethereum. This RWA offers better flexibility compared to the traditional method of directly purchasing U.S. Treasury bonds, providing round-the-clock liquidity. However, the Token is currently only open to accredited investors, with a minimum investment threshold of 5 million dollars.

Apart from private credit and U.S. Treasury bonds, commodities rank as the third RWA asset class, mainly consisting of tokenized gold issued by certain institutions, with a current total market value of approximately $1.51 billion.

The landscape of public chains is changing

In the comparison of public chains, Ethereum remains the most favored blockchain network for RWA assets. Currently, its market capitalization of 7.4 billion USD accounts for 55%. Among this, 2.7 billion USD worth of U.S. Treasury tokenized assets constitutes 36.48% of Ethereum, while the rest includes some tokenized gold.

Surprisingly, a certain Layer 2 network has become the second-ranked RWA public chain with an asset issuance volume of 2.25 billion dollars. This is mainly due to an asset management company that has introduced web3 technology. The company allows institutions to initiate investment opportunities on its application, and investors can choose according to their needs. However, the company seems to lack motivation in its external promotion and operations, and there are some doubts regarding its contract information.

In addition, Stellar has become the third-ranked network in the RWA market, which is also an unexpected result. Currently, the issuance of RWA assets on this network is approximately $498 million, with tokens issued by a certain asset management company accounting for about $489 million, becoming the absolute mainstay. Recently, Stellar has been promoting collaborations with various institutions, which has allowed it to surpass some popular public chains in the RWA field.

The issuance of RWA on the Solana network ranks fourth, at about $349 million. Although the amount is not large, the rise rate is quite fast, having increased by 101% since January 2025.

Challenges Facing the RWA Market

Despite the impressive data, the RWA market still faces some potential challenges:

1. Concentration of asset classes: Mainly focused on private credit and U.S. Treasury bonds. Some leading projects lack transparency in their data, and some assets do not possess true trading attributes.

2. Competing with stablecoins: Interest-bearing stablecoins backed by U.S. Treasury bonds offer similar yield effects, creating competitive pressure on RWA products.

3. Single asset class: Apart from government bonds and private credit, the proportion of products such as commodities, stocks, and funds remains very low, with development limited by various challenges such as physical storage, legal compliance, and costs.

4. Limited scale: The total size of the RWA market is only $23.3 billion, far below the stablecoin market ($236 billion), and significantly different from the market expectation of a trillion scale.

5. Difficulty for ordinary investors to participate: Currently, RWA is almost exclusively the domain of institutions and major players, with a significant gap compared to the operation methods of the traditional crypto market.

Overall, the RWA market achieved significant rise in the first half of 2025, but still faces numerous challenges. How to make breakthroughs in areas such as transparency, liquidity, and ecological integration will determine whether RWA can truly become an important force in the new financial domain.