RWA Tokens Rally 81% In One Week As Institutions Dive Deeper Into On-Chain Finance

Real-world assets (RWAs) are on fire, with RWA governance tokens surging as institutions explore new use cases for on-chain finance.

The combined capitalization of RWA protocols’ governance tokens jumped 28% in 24 hours and 81% over the past seven days to tag $8 billion, according to CoinGecko.

Six of the top 15 RWA tokens posted triple-digit gains in the past week. Ondo (OND) is the leading RWA token with a 123% rally and $1.3 billion market cap, followed by Polymesh (POLYX) with $643 million after growing 211%, and Mantra (OM) at $586 million after posting the sole weekly loss among the top 67 RWA assets with a 13% pullback.

The sector ranks as the second-strongest performing category on CoinGecko for the past week.

New use cases for RWAs

The bullish market momentum comes as legacy financial institutions continue to explore bringing real-world assets on-chain.

On March 19, Chainlink released its findings from a pilot conducted by Australia and New Zealand Bank (ANZ), a “big four” bank in both Australasian nations, transferring tokenized assets between public networks by leveraging Chainlink’s cross-chain interoperability protocol (CCIP).

The initiative encompassed an ANZ Digital Asset Services (DAS) user purchasing New Zealand dollar stables on Avalanche, before trading the tokens for NFTs representing tokenized Australian natural resources denominated in Australian dollars on Ethereum. The ANZ DAS also facilitated foreign exchange conversion between the two fiat currencies to complete the trade.

“This ANZ project illustrates how innovative traditional financial service providers are preparing for a new version of capital markets enhanced by blockchain,” said John Wu, president of Ava Labs. “In these tests, ANZ is pioneering on-chain value transfer, while the infrastructure created by Chainlink and Avalanche offer interoperability and customizability.”

Chainlink noted that ANZ joins a growing list of tradfi institutions exploring how its CCIP protocol can underpin applications for RWAs on-chain. Other institutions that have piloted CCIP include major financial institutions in the United States, Europe, and the United Kingdom, such as BNY Mellon, Citi, BNP Paribas, Euroclear, Lloyds Banking Group, and SIX Digital Exchange.

According to Dune Analytics, CCIP has generated $480,615 in fees for Chainlink since its permissioned launch phase began in July, 43% of which was captured during March alone.

On March 25, DigitFT, a regulated exchange for on-chain RWAs licensed by the Monetary Authority of Singapore, launched the first tokenized depository receipts (DRs) representing direct beneficial ownership of U.S. Treasury Bills.

DigiFT said that the tokens legally represent the direct beneficial interest of tokenholders while facilitating on-chain settlement. “The tokens represent a fractional beneficial interest in the underlying capital market securities, allowing investors to legally lay claim to and directly benefit from the economic returns generated by the underlying assets,” the firm said.