The RWA market rose sharply in the first half of 2025, but still faces multiple challenges

In the first half of 2025, the real world asset (RWA) tokenization market saw a significant rise. As of June 6, the global RWA market's total market capitalization reached $23.39 billion (excluding stablecoins), an increase of 48.9% since the beginning of the year. Private credit and U.S. Treasury bonds became the dominant forces in the market, accounting for approximately 58% and 31.2%, respectively.

However, behind this remarkable rise, the RWA market still faces numerous challenges. Issues such as high concentration of asset classes, limited liquidity, insufficient transparency, and low correlation with the native crypto ecosystem still exist, making it a long way for RWA to become a truly mainstream track.

In the field of private lending, a blockchain financial technology service platform ranks first with an active loan amount of $10.19 billion. The platform mainly offers Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) services, allowing users to obtain loans with a credit limit of 85% of their home's value. However, the platform adopts a design similar to a consortium chain, which, while beneficial for asset management, also limits the widespread circulation of these assets in the market.

US Treasuries are the second largest asset class in the RWA market. A token issued by a large asset management company currently has a total issuance of about $2.9 billion, becoming a major representative in this field. Compared to traditional treasury trading methods, this type of RWA product offers better flexibility and provides liquidity around the clock. However, its investment threshold is relatively high and is currently only open to qualified investors.

In terms of public chains, Ethereum remains the preferred network for RWA assets, holding about 55% of the market share. An unexpected change is that a certain Layer 2 network has become the second largest RWA public chain with an asset issuance of $2.25 billion. This is mainly due to the contribution of an asset management company that has introduced Web3 technology. However, there are certain doubts regarding the actual amount of assets on-chain by this company, as its contracts are not open source and there is no interaction with cryptocurrency assets.

Another notable trend is the rise of a certain established public chain in the RWA sector. The current issuance of RWA assets on this network is approximately $498 million, mainly from a monetized fund based on U.S. Treasury bonds issued by a large financial institution.

Despite the data showing a rapid rise in the RWA market, it still faces numerous challenges:

1. The asset categories are too concentrated, mainly focusing on private credit and U.S. Treasury bonds.
2. Some top projects lack data transparency, and asset liquidity is limited.
3. Government bond RWA products face competitive pressure from stablecoins.
4. The proportion of other asset types such as commodities, stocks, and funds remains relatively low.
5. The market size is still relatively small compared to the stablecoin market, and there is still a significant gap from the expected trillion scale.
6. The current RWA market mainly targets institutions and major players, with low participation from ordinary investors.

Overall, the RWA market in the first half of 2025 achieved nearly a 50% rise, but to truly become a mainstream financial track, breakthroughs are still needed in areas such as transparency, liquidity, and ecological integration.