TL;DR:

Using the stablecoin bill as an introduction, highlighting recent public attention and discussion on RWA, and then analyzing RWA data on Ethereum (with zkSync as a highlight). The emergence of Etherealize and its potential impact on Ethereum. Ethereum's stablecoin issuance and DeFi have always had a strong moat. Combining the new US policies, can RWA organically connect traditional finance and DeFi? As the most credible and decentralized blockchain, where do we continue to be optimistic about Ethereum?

Bill Catalysis and Market Attention

Against the backdrop of rapid evolution in traditional finance and regulatory environment, the recent passage of the GENIUS Bill has reignited market interest in RWA. Beyond stablecoins and major legislative progress, the RWA field has quietly achieved multiple important milestones: sustained strong growth and a series of eye-catching breakthroughs—such as Kraken launching tokenized stocks and ETFs, Robinhood proposing to the SEC to grant token assets equal status with traditional assets, and Centrifuge issuing a $400 million decentralized JTRSY fund on Solana.

At a time of unprecedented market attention and imminent broader adoption of traditional finance, it is crucial to closely examine the current RWA landscape—especially the position of leading platforms like Ethereum. RWA based on Ethereum has shown amazing month-on-month growth, consistently maintaining double-digit highs; the growth rate in 2025 is even more accelerated compared to single-digit months in 2024. Another key factor driving this momentum is "Etherealize" as a catalyst for regulatory development, and the Ethereum Foundation listing RWA as a strategic priority. At this critical juncture, this article will delve into the RWA development dynamics on Ethereum and its Layer-2 networks.

Data Analysis: Ethereum RWA Growth Panorama

The data clearly shows that the value of Ethereum's RWA has entered a definitive growth cycle. Looking at the long-term trend of Ethereum's non-stablecoin RWA total value, its trajectory is noteworthy—remaining in the $1-2 billion range for years until entering a rapid growth phase in April 2024. This growth momentum continues to accelerate in 2025. The core driving force comes from BlackRock's BUIDL fund, which currently has a scale of $2.7 billion. As the orange trend line shows, BUIDL has been exhibiting parabolic growth since March 2025, powerfully driving the overall expansion of the Ethereum RWA ecosystem.

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In small projects (＜$500 million), most projects experienced continued contraction in early 2024. However, towards the end of 2024, most project market values continued to rise, with GHO, M, and USDO market values showing continuous growth. Simultaneously, a batch of new stablecoin projects emerged, crossing the $50M market value threshold. The Ethereum stablecoin ecosystem became more diverse, with small market cap projects continuing to flourish since 2025.

In medium-sized projects ($500 million-$5 billion), only FDUSD and FRAX existed in 2024. BUSD, due to termination of issuance, plummeted from $1 billion in January 2024 to less than $500 million in March. However, in 2025, USDO and PYUSD both broke through the $500 million threshold, making medium-sized stablecoins more diverse.

Top-tier stablecoins (＞$5 billion) continued to be dominated by USDT and USDC: USDT remained stable at around $40 billion for most of 2024, surged to $70 billion in early December, then gradually stabilized, with recent market value decline. USDC steadily grew from $22 billion in January 2024 to $38 billion in May 2025. In early 2025, USDS and USDe both broke through $5 billion, but USDT and USDC still led by a significant margin in market share.

USDT and USDC occupy an absolutely dominant position, directly influencing the entire stablecoin ecosystem.

The growth in November 2024 was particularly noteworthy: USDT surged by 30.16% month-on-month, while USDC achieved 16.31% growth. After this surge, growth continued for several months, with USDC showing more stable growth in subsequent months, consistently above 5%. According to issuer disclosures: Tether attributed this to "a tide of collateral assets from exchanges and institutional trading desks in anticipation of increased trading volume"; Circle emphasized "USDC circulation grew 78% year-on-year... beyond user demand, this also stemmed from market confidence rebuilding and standard system improvement triggered by emerging stablecoin regulatory rules".

However, market momentum has recently changed significantly - in the past four months, USDT on the Ethereum chain has been stagnant in growth, and in May 2025, USDC experienced its first decline after months of growth. This phenomenon may signal the market is transitioning to a new cycle stage.

L2 Ecosystem

In the broader RWA ecosystem, Ethereum maintains absolute dominance with a 59.23% market share (excluding stablecoins), but still faces key challenges.

Notably, zkSync leaped to second place driven by a single Tradable project, while Stellar entirely relies on the Franklin Templeton BENJI fund (with a scale of $455.9 million) to occupy the third position. Although both public chains show impressive RWA accounting data, their structural deficiencies cannot be ignored: asset diversity is lacking, and they are overly dependent on single projects.

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In the fourth quarter, the team will focus on the international market: they plan to establish cooperation with Singapore Digital Port and the Swiss Crypto Valley Association, targeting localized product functions and compliance alignment based on regulatory environments and market needs in the Asia-Pacific and European regions.

Meanwhile, to reduce friction between different Layer-2 networks, the team will lead the promotion of Rollup standardization and build a unified cross-chain interface to achieve asset free flow, thereby integrating RWA under the Ethereum ecosystem and enhancing interoperability.

Lastly, to bridge the gap between traditional financial institutions and blockchain technology, the team will continue to adhere to a 24×7 support model, providing end-to-end professional services from legal document preparation to smart contract deployment.

Ethereum RWA Strategic Moat

First-Mover Advantage

Traditional financial institutions' decision-making processes differ from DeFi: regulatory review, pilot verification, and Proof of Concept (PoC) significantly extend deployment cycles. In the early stages, institutions often adopt a cautious strategy, initiating expansion only after pilot results are validated. Although top Ethereum projects like BUIDL dominate, they still experienced nearly a year of accumulation before explosive growth. Ethereum's core advantage lies in its ecosystem's early positioning - having completed experimental collaborations with multiple top financial institutions even before the RWA wave emerged.

Ecosystem Accumulation

Beyond institutional cooperation, RWA ecosystem maturity requires long-term sedimentation. Ethereum maintains its leadership position by:

Breadth: Covering diverse asset issuers and protocol architectureDepth: Multiple projects breaking the billion-dollar market value, forming scale effects

The integration of traditional finance and DeFi continues to deepen. Most RWA projects prioritize deployment on the Ethereum mainnet, directly utilizing mature decentralized lending, market-making, and derivatives protocols to enhance capital efficiency. Recent cases include Ethena using BUIDL as 90% of USDtb stablecoin reserves. The 'GENIUS Act' mandating stablecoin reserves to shift towards US Treasury bonds is driving the fusion of US Treasury bonds, on-chain Treasury products, and stablecoin protocols. Simultaneously, mainstream DeFi protocols are incorporating BUIDL into their core collateral systems.

Ethereum maintains an advantage in RWA liquidity: leading in active addresses, token varieties, and liquidity depth. While Layer2 ecosystems have uncertain collaboration mechanisms, they remain the core expansion path.

Security

Security is the cornerstone of the RWA ecosystem, with smart contract technological maturity being crucial. As RWA project logic becomes more complex, smart contract requirements increase. The May 2025 Cetus protocol hack on Sui chain (losing $223 million) exposed fatal risks of oracle manipulation and contract vulnerabilities. Although $162 million was chain-frozen, such passive emergency mechanisms highlight risk control limitations. In contrast, Ethereum's core advantages lie in its more decentralized architecture, reliable operation record, and thriving developer ecosystem.

Technical Evolution

Ethereum's technical roadmap will accelerate RWA development. First, improving L1 performance to bridge core gaps with high-performance public chains. Second, promoting L2 interoperability and focusing on the application layer to connect traditional finance with on-chain RWA.

Simultaneously, Ethereum's privacy roadmap strengthens security standards and privacy protection mechanisms (such as integrating privacy tools into mainstream wallets, simplifying anti-censorship transaction processes), providing guarantees for RWA transactions and constructing an institutional-grade asset confidentiality system.

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