Pendle and MANTRA surge as RWA sector outpaces crypto market, hitting $5.62B TVL despite Maker's decline
TL;DR…
- RWA sector booming: Total Value Locked (TVL) is up 37.6% year-over-year, even with Maker's significant outflows halving its RWA TVL.
- New projects thriving: Usual Money hits $227M TVL, and OpenEden sees an 8.26% surge, driven by strong market momentum and Binance backing.
- Major developments: Plume tokenizes U.S. mineral assets, Huma Finance secures $38M, and Swift announces its global RWA initiative with CBDC integration.
- Tokens outperforming: MANTRA (+21.95%) and PENDLE (+27.53%) lead the RWA charge, as the sector outpaces broader crypto markets this week.
The RWA sector is once again in the spotlight as some of its earliest and most ambitious projects have put on impressive performances.
In today’s weekly roundup, we take a look at what’s hot in the RWA space.
Let’s get caught up in all the most important news, tidbits and updates 👇.
RWA Industry Growth:
Despite the topsy-turvy broader crypto market conditions, the RWA sector continues to go from strength to strength in key metrics like total-value locked (TVL).
Following meteoric growth in TVL beginning in 2021, the total value locked in RWA projects and protocols began to drop off between Q4 2023 and Q2 2024 as interest stagnated.
Click here to keep tabs on your favorite RWA projects.
But now, the TVL is approaching all-time highs following a renewed wave of interest — despite large outflows from the Sky (formerly Maker) protocol. Indeed Maker RWA’s TVL has been almost slashed in half since the beginning of September.
The total TVL of all tracked RWA protocols now sits at $5.62 billion — up 37.6% in the year.
Several up-and-coming RWA projects have gathered serious momentum in the last week, seeing their TVL swell to back-to-back all-time highs.
This includes the decentralized fiat-backed stablecoin issuer (and direct Tether competitor) Usual Money. The platform has seen constant growth in TVL and recently reached a peak of $227.35 million. Meanwhile, OpenEden saw an 8.26% increase in TVL in the last 7 days ahead of recent Binance investment news.
RWA News Roundup
In a rush? Check out our roundup of the most significant news for the week and get your RWA fix in 2 minutes flat.
Here’s what happened since our last RWA weekly update:
- Plume launches tokenized mineral vault: Texas-based oil and gas investment firm Allegiance Oil & Gas is now using the RWA-focused L2 Plume Network to tokenize U.S. mineral interests, providing global investors secure access to valuable resources like oil and gas.
- Huma Finance bags $38 million in funding: Blockchain-powered payment financing (PayFi) network Huma Finance just raised $38 million in a funding round led by Distributed Global, with participation from Hashkey Capital, the Stellar Development Foundation and others. Part of the raise came as investments into RWA assets tokenized by Arf (now merged with Huma Finance).
- Centrifuge makes Polkadot bid: The team behind Centrifuge (a blockchain designed for the tokenization of fixed-income assets) proposes a $3 million investment from the Polkadot Community Foundation into its T-Bill pool. The move aims to stabilize Polkadot's treasury via the Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund and support tokenized fixed-income assets.
- Government-backed layer-2 for RWAs launches: The UAE-based fintech firm Fasset has launched an Ethereum-based L2 known as IOWN. The platform, which is regulated by Malaysia's Labuan Financial Services Authority (Labuan FSA) will provide a platform where users can easily and securely interact with a variety of tokenized RWAs.
- Swift announces new RWA initiative: Global payment processing giant Swift has just announced a global RWA initiative that involves integrating Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) and tokenized assets to global transactions using both fiat and emerging digital currencies.
RWA Price Action
From a price action perspective, the RWA sector is slightly outperforming the broader crypto market this week, with RWA tokens gaining an average of 7.91% in this time, compared to 7.33% for the market average.
As it stands, all but one of the top 10 largest RWA coins are in the green over the last 7 days.
Source: Top Real World Assets Tokens
As one of the best-performing assets of 2024, MANTRA (OM) has once again been climbing the rankings with an impressive 21.95% gain in the last 7 days, putting on +4.48% in the last 24 hours alone.
This may be due to the recent announcement of the MANTRA-led Cosmoverse RWA track. The new initiative aims to educate audiences about RWAs including their potential uses, helping to improve understanding and accessibility around tokenized RWAs.
Widely considered one of the trailblazers of the RWA space, the PENDLE token has put on a triumphant display in the last week — gaining 27.53% in this time alongside increasing trading volume.
Source: PENDLE coin page
At least part of this growth is likely attributed to the fact that Pendle recently expanded its BTCfi offering. The platform just launched several new BTC pools, allowing Bitcoin holders to gain access to fixed-yield opportunities.
Overall, the real world asset sector is now the third best performing sector over the last 30 days, trailing just behind the NFT Marketplace and Artificial Intelligence sectors in terms of BTC-denominated performance.
- - - - > Psst. Did you know we also publish a weekly AI news roundup? Check it out.
Meanwhile, Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov recently stated that he believes the “RWA industry's size can eventually surpass the cryptocurrency market as a whole”.
Well, we certainly hope so.
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