The agency predicts that RWA will continue to explode in 2025, highlighting four projects worth paying attention to

Author: Fu Ruo, Odaily Planet Daily

As we approach 2025, many institutions are making predictions about the future of the cryptocurrency market. Among them, the Real World Asset (RWA) sector has become a focal point. Bitwise, in its top ten predictions for the 2025 crypto market, pointed out that the market size for tokenized RWA is expected to reach $50 billion. This optimistic forecast has filled the market with anticipation for the prospects of RWA.

Recently, star projects within the RWA sector have performed particularly well, further fueling this enthusiasm. Established RWA projects have entered a new round of price increases: the price of ONDO tokens has surpassed 2.1 USDT, setting a new historical high; most RWA projects that have issued tokens, such as Maple and Swarm, have seen increases of over 200%.

Despite the market's high hopes for the RWA sector, actual participation contrasts sharply with the heated discussions. Due to high entry barriers and complex compliance requirements, most investors' understanding of RWA remains at a conceptual stage. This situation has led to a mixed market, with many projects claiming to be RWA emerging, attempting to ride the wave without genuine underlying support. This has caused confusion for ordinary investors, making it difficult to distinguish which are true RWA projects and which are merely disguised "blockchain + real assets" speculative hype.

Furthermore, the author has learned that the RWA sector covers a wide range of areas, roughly categorized into U.S. Treasury bonds, private credit, commodities, stocks, stablecoins, global bonds, and institutional funds. However, most projects themselves do not issue platform tokens; they are focused on tokenizing their products. Due to regulatory and compliance factors, these products often require KYC and other proofs, making them unsuitable for many small and medium-sized investors.

To this end, Odaily Planet Daily has reviewed projects with issued platform tokens from the many categories above, analyzing the fundamentals of these projects, which does not constitute investment advice.

U.S. Treasury Bonds: Ondo Finance

Ondo Finance was established in 2021, initially focusing on the Liquidity as a Service (LaaS) sector. However, as the crypto market entered a bear phase, the project's development faced bottlenecks. In response to the changing market environment, Ondo Finance strategically transitioned to the RWA sector in January 2023. This move coincided with the beginning of the RWA sector's surge, significantly increasing Ondo Finance's market visibility and allowing it to grow into one of the representative projects for on-chain U.S. Treasury bonds within just two years.

Ondo Finance's RWA products are primarily designed around mainstream financial assets in the U.S., with compliance and security being core considerations. To ensure compliant operations, Ondo Finance established a local company in the U.S. and set up special purpose vehicles (SPVs) to provide legal protection and operational support for its RWA products.

In terms of returns, Ondo Finance partnered with BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL in April 2023, replacing the underlying assets of its products with those of the BUIDL fund. This collaboration not only provided strong backing for Ondo Finance's products but also significantly enhanced the timeliness and convenience of returns, creating a more efficient return experience for investors.

Currently, Ondo Finance's RWA products have a total market capitalization of $623 million, with its core products including two types of tokenized assets:

• OUSG (U.S. Treasury Bonds): The underlying assets come from BlackRock's tokenized fund BUIDL, offering an annualized yield of 4.44%, supporting Ethereum, Polygon, and Solana networks.

• USDY (U.S. Dollar Interest Rate): Backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and bank deposits, it offers over-collateralization and daily transparency reports, with an annualized yield of 4.65%, and a low investment threshold of $500, supporting Ethereum, Mantle, Solana, Sui, Aptos, Noble, and Arbitrum networks.

Additionally, Ondo Finance has launched the Flux Finance lending platform to provide redemption liquidity for RWA products, further optimizing capital utilization.

Ondo Finance's native token ONDO was publicly offered through CoinList and will unlock circulation in early 2024. According to CoinGecko data, ONDO's current circulating market cap is approximately $2.8 billion. Since the token's circulating supply is still relatively low, accounting for only 15% of the total token supply, there is potential for price increases in the short term. However, most tokens are concentrated in the hands of the project team and early investors, posing a risk of sell-off. According to the token unlocking plan, 1.94 billion tokens will be unlocked on January 18 each year for the next four years, which may exert significant selling pressure on the market.

Recently, Ondo Finance has received positive news, with Grayscale listing ONDO as a potential future addition to its crypto assets, and Pantera Capital disclosing its holdings of ONDO tokens. Swiss wealth management company 21Shares has also added ONDO to its European products to increase ETPs, and the Trump family project has recently purchased ONDO tokens.

Subjective Judgment: Among U.S. Treasury RWA projects, Ondo Finance is one of the few with a platform token, and its product market cap ranks first, demonstrating a certain leading effect. At the same time, the governance function of ONDO has a high threshold, requiring at least 100 million ONDO tokens to participate. Recent market performance should pay attention to the potential sell-off risk brought by the unlocking cycle.

Private Credit: Maple Finance

Maple Finance is a comprehensive lending platform established in 2019, officially launched in 2021. Initially, Maple focused on providing unsecured credit lending services for market makers and trading firms. However, due to the financial fraud incident involving its partner Orthogonal Trading, a large amount of funds could not be returned, leading Maple, once a leader in unsecured lending, into difficulties, even rumors of insolvency.

To mitigate risks, Maple Finance gradually shifted to a collateralized lending model based on real-world assets (RWA). The platform launched a new cash management pool, allowing non-U.S. qualified investors and entities to invest in U.S. Treasury bonds through USDC. Additionally, Maple Finance introduced Maple Direct, providing over-collateralized loan services for BTC and ETH funds. This year, the platform launched a new product focused on DeFi lending called Syrup.fi. To date, Maple Finance has issued loans totaling approximately $2.46 billion, with an annualized yield (APY) of 9.69%.

Maple Finance's native token MPL has a total issuance of 10 million tokens, primarily used for distributing protocol revenue and equity rewards. However, in August of this year, the Maple community passed a proposal (MIP-010) to convert MPL into SYRUP tokens to expand community participation and enhance governance flexibility. According to the proposal, 1 MPL can be exchanged for 100 SYRUP, with the deadline for the token swap set for May 2025. Meanwhile, the SYRUP token introduces a staking mechanism, with staked tokens (stSYRUP) proposed as the sole governance token for Maple Finance, with the voting date set for December 25, likely to pass unanimously.

The total issuance of SYRUP is approximately 1.15 billion tokens, inheriting the value capture capabilities of MPL, including protocol revenue and staking rewards. This strategy is similar to MakerDAO's token swap plan, aimed at addressing the low total supply of MPL tokens and limiting community governance participation. As of now, CoinGecko shows that MPL is priced at approximately 19.8 USDT, with a circulating market cap of about $9 million, while SYRUP is priced at 0.19 USDT, with a circulating market cap of approximately $106 million.

Subjective Judgment: According to RWA.xyz data, Maple Finance ranks second in the RWA private credit sector. The private credit sector accounts for over 50% of the total market cap of RWA. Since the top-ranked Figure project is unlikely to issue tokens, Maple Finance has become one of the few projects with token value capture capabilities, indicating significant potential for future development.

Private Credit: Centrifuge

Centrifuge is a blockchain focused on tokenizing real-world assets, aiming to use blockchain technology to tokenize traditional assets (such as receivables, real estate, or loans) to enhance asset transparency and liquidity. Centrifuge is built on the Substrate framework and is part of the Polkadot ecosystem, interacting with other chains through parachains while benefiting from Polkadot's security and cross-chain capabilities.

The core product functions of the Centrifuge protocol include three important modules: the Centrifuge chain, Centrifuge pools, and NFTs as collateral for assets.

The Centrifuge chain serves as the protocol's infrastructure, built on the Substrate framework, operating as an independent blockchain and also as one of the parachains in the Polkadot ecosystem. This design ensures the independence of the Centrifuge chain while maintaining compatibility with other Polkadot chains, enabling efficient cross-chain operations. The Centrifuge chain has several advantages, including the ability to bring assets on-chain, converting real-world assets into non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for on-chain asset management. Additionally, the independent operation of the Centrifuge chain significantly reduces transaction costs.

Centrifuge pools are the core platform for interaction between asset issuers and investors, helping real-world assets achieve liquidity on-chain and supporting investment and redemption.

The structure of the pools includes:

• Senior Tranche: Provides stable returns, has high priority, and is protected by junior tokens.

• Junior Tranche: Bears default risk, earns higher returns, but carries greater risk.

The features of the pools include:

• Rolling Pools: Investors can lock or redeem investments at any time, with a decentralized solver mechanism ensuring liquidity and risk balance in the fund pools.

• Dynamic Net Asset Value Management: Each pool adjusts investment and redemption prices based on the net asset value (NAV) of the assets, ensuring transparent value calculations.

NFTs as collateral for assets is one of the innovative features of the Centrifuge protocol. Through the NFT module of the Centrifuge chain, real-world assets can be tokenized. These NFTs contain detailed information about the assets, such as contracts, credit ratings, etc., and serve as collateral in the pools to obtain financing. The financing limit for assets can reach up to 100% of their net asset value (NAV), and these limits are dynamically adjusted based on asset repayment status, default risk, and other factors. Through the collaboration of off-chain and on-chain operations, asset net values can be updated in real-time.

Additionally, Centrifuge is deeply integrated with mainstream DeFi protocols such as MakerDAO, allowing asset pools to directly mint DAI, providing investors with diversified liquidity solutions.

To date, Maple Finance has issued loans totaling approximately $560 million, with an annualized yield (APY) of 8.74%.

Centrifuge's native token CFG has a total issuance of 425 million tokens, with CoinGecko data showing the current price of CFG at 0.38 USDT and a circulating market cap of approximately $19.6 million. In addition to governance functions, CFG tokens can also be used to pay transaction fees and for network staking.

Subjective Judgment: Compared to Maple, Centrifuge's model is more attractive. Although both belong to the private lending sector, Centrifuge offers a wider variety of asset collateral types and greater transparency. By using NFTs as proof of real-world asset collateral, Centrifuge is more intuitive and operationally feasible.

Commodities & Stocks: Swarm

Swarm Markets issues on-chain tokenized products for stocks and bonds through its subsidiary SwarmX. SwarmX converts publicly traded stock securities into tokenized assets, with the underlying assets held by institutional custodians. The platform aims to provide liquidity solutions for RWA that comply with regulatory requirements, meeting the compliance standards of traditional financial markets while offering a decentralized trading experience.

The assets launched by Swarm Markets include:

• Stock Tokens: TSLA (Tesla), AAPL (Apple), COIN (Coinbase), CPNG (Coupang), INTC (Intel), MSFT (Microsoft), MSTR (MicroStrategy), NVDA (NVIDIA);

• Bond ETFs: TBONDS01 (U.S. Treasury Bonds 0-1 Year), TBONDS13 (U.S. Treasury Bonds 1-3 Years);

• Commodities: xGOLD (Gold)

Swarm Markets generates protocol revenue through exchange fees from mining pools, charging a fee of 25% of the exchange amount or 0.1% of the exchanged assets, whichever is greater. This revenue mechanism ensures the sustainability of the protocol while providing participants with a stable source of income.

Swarm Markets' native token is SMT, with a total supply of 250 million SMT. CoinGecko data shows that SMT is priced at 0.31 USDT, with a circulating market cap of $26 million. In addition to governance functions, Swarm Markets has established three types of SMT rewards:

• Liquidity Provider Rewards: Users participating in providing liquidity within the Open dOTC protocol will receive rewards based on their contributions to the market. Starting from December 2, 2024, rewards will only be issued for bids on dOTC v2.

• RWA Holder Rewards: Users holding RWA assets can receive corresponding rewards, calculated based on the market value of their held RWA assets, with a 4x multiplier applied.

• RWA Staking Rewards: Users staking RWA assets will receive rewards based on the ratio of their staked amount to the platform's TVL.

In addition to the above rewards, Swarm Markets will distribute SMT tokens based on the overall development of the platform and user participation, encouraging behaviors and activities beneficial to the platform.

As of now, the total market cap of Swarm Markets' products is approximately $765,000, ranking among the top in the stock RWA sector.

Subjective Judgment: Swarm Markets is one of the few stock RWA projects in the crypto space. In August of this year, Swarm Markets also launched the xGOLD gold RWA product, and the SMT token has a relatively low market cap. However, compared to the previous private lending and U.S. Treasury sectors, the market share of commodities and stocks RWA is relatively low, and the enthusiasm is not as high as the previous two sectors. Nonetheless, the subsequent development of the RWA sector may focus on the stock and commodity sectors, which are in a blue ocean market.