RWA: The Next Explosive Point for Ethereum After DeFi

Recently, the passage of the "GENIUS Act" has reignited the market's interest in RWA. The RWA sector has achieved several important milestones, such as Kraken launching tokenized stocks and ETFs, Robinhood proposing to the SEC to grant tokenized assets equal status to traditional assets, and Centrifuge issuing a decentralized JTRSY fund of up to 400 million dollars on Solana.

At this critical juncture, this article will delve into the development dynamics of RWA on Ethereum and its Layer-2 networks.

Data Analysis: Ethereum RWA Growth Panorama

The RWA value of Ethereum has entered a clear growth cycle. The core driver comes from BlackRock's BUIDL fund, which currently stands at 2.7 billion USD. BUIDL has shown parabolic growth since March 2025, strongly driving the overall expansion of the Ethereum RWA ecosystem.

By asset class (excluding stablecoins), the market value of RWA on Ethereum is highly concentrated in two main categories: government bond projects (75.9%) and commodities (mainly gold, 20.3%).

From the perspective of protocols, the current leaders are mainly stablecoin issuers. Notably, the total value of the securitization protocol Securitize has significantly surpassed that of certain stablecoin projects such as FDUSD and USDC, climbing to the forefront.

BUIDL

BUIDL has rapidly risen to become the largest project by market capitalization in the Ethereum RWA ecosystem. Its explosive growth stems from multiple factors: institutional demand, product competitiveness (24/7 operation, faster settlement speeds, and high yields under a compliant framework), and the synergistic effects brought by DeFi integration.

The asset distribution of BUIDL is highly concentrated: about 93% is concentrated in the Ethereum mainnet. With the continuous expansion of asset management scale, BUIDL's monthly dividends have continuously set new highs, with dividends reaching 7.9 million USD in May 2025.

stablecoin

Since 2024, the total market value of Ethereum stablecoins has shown a steady upward trend. The market value of small projects continues to rise, and a number of new stablecoin projects have emerged. Medium-sized projects are becoming more diverse in 2025. The leading stablecoins continue to be dominated by USDT and USDC.

USDT and USDC experienced significant growth in November 2024, followed by several months of continued growth. However, market momentum has recently shifted noticeably, with Ethereum chain USDT experiencing a stagnation in growth over the past four months, and USDC seeing its first decline in May 2025 after several months of growth.

L2 ecosystem

In the broader RWA ecological landscape, Ethereum maintains an absolute dominant position with a market share of 59.23% (excluding stablecoins). Notably, zkSync has jumped to the second place with its Tradable project, while Stellar completely relies on the Franklin Templeton BENJI fund to occupy the third.

Most L2 networks are currently facing the challenge of insufficient ecological diversity, with their RWA market capitalization heavily dependent on 1-2 core projects.

Looking at the overall RWA market capitalization evolution of Layer-2 networks, its growth cycle is not completely synchronized with Layer-1. The end of 2024 marks a turning point for the development of L2 ecosystem RWA: it has entered a strong growth cycle.

Etherealize: Ethereum RWA New Engine

Etherealize systematically bridges the gap between technological breakthroughs and practical implementation by developing customized tools, building strategic cooperation networks, and deeply participating in policy-making.

Currently, Etherealize mainly promotes the popularization and application of Ethereum RWA through market education and content dissemination, as well as data dashboard tools. The team explains in the roadmap that it will develop an SDK for institutions, and it is worth keeping an eye on Etherealize's progress in promoting RWA products.

Ethereum RWA Strategic Moat

1. First-mover advantage: Ethereum had already completed experimental collaborations with several top financial institutions before the RWA wave emerged.

2. Ecological Accumulation: The Ethereum RWA ecosystem maintains a leading position in both breadth and depth.

3. Security: Ethereum's core advantage lies in its more decentralized architecture, reliable operating records, and thriving developer ecosystem.

4. Technological Evolution: The Ethereum technology roadmap will accelerate the development of RWA, including enhancing L1 performance, promoting L2 interoperability, strengthening security standards, and privacy protection mechanisms.

"Genius Act": A Double-Edged Sword of Regulation

The "Genius Act" injects regulatory certainty into the market, but it also brings some challenges. The bill requires that stablecoin reserves must be backed 1:1 by highly liquid safe assets such as US dollars or US Treasury securities, which will impact many existing stablecoin projects.

However, the resilience of the Ethereum stablecoin ecosystem stems from its diversity. The varied structure creates a natural risk isolation mechanism: even if some stablecoins adjust their strategies due to compliance requirements, there will still be projects continuously driving innovation and maintaining a decentralized core.

Conclusion

The RWA ecosystem of Ethereum has seen explosive growth in the past few months. BUIDL is the strongest driving force behind the recent development of RWA, while numerous treasury bond projects have also shown strong growth momentum.

Ethereum still holds a significant advantage in the RWA field. Whether it is the first-mover time advantage, security, deep ecological accumulation, grand technical roadmap updates, strong leadership in BUIDL, diversification of Layer 2, or the deep empowerment of Etherealize, these factors together construct the core barrier for Ethereum in the wave of traditional finance on-chain.

With the promotion of the "Genius Act", US dollar credit is rapidly integrating into the on-chain world. This not only brings a larger influx of funds, creating more income and growth opportunities, but also poses a challenge: it makes the underlying support of the Ethereum financial system more inclined towards fiat currency (USD), thus introducing fiat credit risks and potentially extending the on-chain settlement system as an extension of US dollar hegemony. In the context of this explosive growth, there are also hidden concerns, the core of which lies in Ethereum's exploration of its own positioning—namely, whether it supports a deep binding with the US dollar system.