Ethereum’s dominance in the RWA market: Who is the next takeover?

Author: Chi Anh, Ryan Yoon, Tiger Research

Written by Tiger Research , this report analyzes Ethereum’s dominance in the current real-world asset tokenization market, examines its structural challenges, and explores which blockchain platforms are expected to lead the next phase of RWA growth.

Summary of key points

• With its first-mover advantage, past institutional experiments, deep on-chain liquidity and decentralized architecture, Ethereum currently leads the RWA market.
• However, a general blockchain with faster and cheaper transactions, as well as a dedicated RWA chain designed to meet regulatory requirements, is addressing Ethereum’s cost and performance limitations. These emerging platforms are positioning themselves as the next generation infrastructure by providing superior technology scalability or built-in compliance capabilities.
• The next phase of RWA growth will be led by a chain that successfully integrates three elements: on-chain regulatory compatibility, a service ecosystem built around real-world assets, and practical on-chain liquidity.

1. Where is the RWA market growing at the moment?

The tokenization of real-world assets (RWA) has become one of the most prominent themes in the blockchain industry. Global consulting firms such as BCG have released extensive market forecasts, and Tiger Research has also conducted in-depth analysis of emerging markets such as Indonesia – highlighting the growing importance of the field.

So, what exactly is RWA? It refers to the conversion of tangible assets such as real estate, bonds and commodities into digital tokens. This tokenization process requires blockchain infrastructure. Currently, Ethereum is the main infrastructure that supports these transactions.

Source: rwa.xyz, Tiger Research **
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Despite the increasing competition, Ethereum still maintains its dominance in the RWA market. Professional RWA blockchain has emerged, and mature platforms such as Solana in the DeFi field are also expanding into the RWA field. Even so, Ethereum still accounts for more than 50% of the total market activity, highlighting the stability of its current position.

This report examines the key factors that Ethereum currently dominates the RWA market and explores the evolution of conditions that may shape the next phase of growth and competition.

2. Why can Ethereum maintain its leading position?

2.1. First-mover advantage and institutional trust

There are clear reasons why Ethereum has become the default platform for institutional tokenization. It pioneered the introduction of smart contracts and actively prepared for the RWA market.

Supported by a highly active developer community, Ethereum established key tokenization standards such as ERC-1400 and ERC-3643 long before the advent of competing platforms. This early foundation provides the necessary technical and regulatory foundation for pilot projects.

Therefore, many institutions start evaluating Ethereum before considering alternatives. Several famous initiatives in the late 2010s helped to verify the role of Ethereum in institutional finance:

• JPMorgan’s Quorum and JPM Coin (2016-2017): To support enterprise use cases, JPMorgan developed Quorum, a licensed fork for Ethereum. The launch of JPM Coin for interbank transfers shows that Ethereum’s architecture—even in its private form—can meet regulatory requirements in data protection and compliance.

• Societe Generale Bond Issuance (2019): SocGen FORGE issued a secured bond worth 100 million euros on the Ethereum public mainnet. This suggests that regulated securities can be issued and settled on public blockchains while minimizing intermediary participation.

• European Investment Bank Digital Bonds (2021): European Investment Bank (EIB) has partnered with Goldman Sachs, Santander and Societe Generale to issue digital bonds worth 100 million euros on Ethereum. The bond is settled using central bank digital currency (CBDC) issued by the Bank of France, highlighting Ethereum's potential in a fully integrated capital market.

These successful pilot cases enhance Ethereum’s credibility. For institutions, trust is based on references to proven use cases and other regulated actors. Ethereum’s past records continue to attract attention, forming a reinforced cycle of adoption.

Source: Securitize **
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For example, in 2018, Securities announced in its official filing that it would build tools on Ethereum to manage the entire life cycle of digital securities. This move laid the foundation for the final launch of BlackRock's BUIDL fund, the largest tokenized fund currently issued on Ethereum.

2.2. A platform for real capital flows

Another key reason why Ethereum continues to dominate the RWA market is its ability to convert on-chain liquidity into actual purchasing power. Tokenization of real-world assets is more than just a technical process. A fully functional market requires capital that can actively invest and trade these assets. In this regard, Ethereum is the only platform with deep and on-chain liquidity.

Source: rwa.xyz, Arkham, Tiger Research **
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This is evident on platforms such as Ondo, Spark and Ethena, which all hold a large number of tokenized BUIDL funds on Ethereum. These platforms have attracted hundreds of millions of dollars in funding by providing products based on tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds, stablecoin-based lending, and synthetic interest-generating U.S. dollar tools.

• Ondo Finance has amassed over $600 million in total locked value (TVL) through its Treasury-backed products USDY and OUSG.

• Spark Protocol uses DAI liquidity from MakerDAO to purchase real-world Treasury bonds worth more than $2.4 billion.

• Ethena uses its synthetic stablecoins USDe and sUSDe on Ethereum to build a bankless earnings infrastructure that attracts institutional demand and DeFi liquidity.

These examples show that Ethereum is not just a platform for asset tokenization. It provides a strong liquidity base that enables real investment and asset management. In contrast, many emerging RWA platforms have difficulty ensuring capital inflows or secondary market activity after the initial token issuance phase.

The reason for this difference is clear. Ethereum has integrated stablecoins, DeFi protocols and compliant-ready infrastructure. This creates a comprehensive financial environment in which issuance, transactions and settlements can all be performed on-chain.

Therefore, Ethereum is the most effective environment for converting tokenized assets into actual purchasing activities. This gives it a structural advantage over simple market share.

2.3. Build trust through decentralization

Decentralization plays a key role in building trust. Tokenization of real-world assets involves transferring ownership and transaction records of high-value assets into digital systems. In this process, the organization 's focus is on the reliability and transparency of the system. This is where Ethereum’s decentralized architecture offers significant advantages.

Ethereum runs as a public blockchain, supported by thousands of independent nodes running around the world. The network is open to anyone and changes are determined by the consensus of participants rather than centralized control. Therefore, it avoids single point of failure, ensures resilience to hacking and censorship, and maintains uninterrupted uptime.

In the RWA market, this structure creates tangible value. Transactions are recorded on an immutable ledger, reducing the risk of fraud. Smart contracts enable trust transactions without intermediaries. Users can access services, execute agreements and participate in financial activities without centralized approval.

These features—transparency, security, and accessibility—make Ethereum a compelling choice for institutions exploring asset tokenization. Its decentralized system meets the key requirements for operating in a high-risk financial environment.

3. Emerging Challengers to Reshape the Landscape

The Ethereum main network proves the feasibility of tokenized finance. However, with success, it also exposed structural limitations that hindered wider institutional adoption. Key obstacles include limited transaction throughput, latency issues, and unpredictable fee structures.

To address these challenges, Layer 2 Rollup solutions such as Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon zkEVM have emerged. Major upgrades including the merger (The Merge, 2022), Dencun (2024) and the upcoming Pectra (2025) have brought about improvements in scalability. Nevertheless, the network has failed to match traditional financial infrastructure. For example, Visa processes more than 65,000 transactions per second, a level that Ethereum hasn't reached yet. These performance gaps remain a key constraint for institutions that require high-frequency trading or real-time settlement.

Delay also presents challenges. Block generation takes an average of 12 seconds, plus the additional confirmation required for secure settlement, and the finality usually takes up to three minutes. In the case of network congestion, this delay may increase further—which creates difficulties for time-sensitive financial operations.

More importantly, the volatility of Gas fees remains a worrying issue. During peak hours, transaction fees used to exceed $50, and even under normal circumstances, the costs often rise above $20. This level of fee uncertainty complicates business planning and may undermine competitiveness of Ethereum-based services.

Securitize illustrates this dynamic very well. After encountering Ethereum restrictions, the company expanded to other platforms such as Solana and Polygon, while also developing its own chain Converage. While Ethereum played a crucial role in facilitating early institutional experiments, it is now under increasing pressure to meet the needs of a more mature and performance-sensitive market.

**3.1. The rise of fast, efficient and cost-effective general

blockchain**

As Ethereum’s restrictions become increasingly apparent, institutions are increasingly exploring alternative advantages to complement Ethereum’s general blockchain in terms of key performance bottlenecks such as transaction speed, fee stability and finality time.

Source: rwa.xyz, Tiger Research **
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However, despite the ongoing collaboration with institutional players, the actual number of tokenized assets on these platforms (excluding stablecoins) remains much lower than Ethereum. In many cases, tokenized assets launched on general chains remain part of Ethereum-led multi-chain deployment strategy.

Even so, there are still signs of substantial progress. In the private credit field, new tokenization initiatives are emerging. For example, on zkSync, the Tradable platform has gained attention, accounting for more than 18% of the activity in the field - second only to Ethereum.

At this stage, general blockchain has just begun to establish a foothold. With its DeFi ecosystem like Solana, which has experienced a fast-growing platform, now faces a strategic question: how to translate this momentum into a sustainable position in the RWA space. Excellent technical performance alone is not enough. Competing with Ethereum requires providing infrastructure and services that meet institutional investors' trust and compliance expectations.

Ultimately, the success of these blockchains in the RWA market will depend less on the original throughput and more on their ability to provide tangible value. The differentiated ecosystem built around the unique advantages of each chain will determine their long-term positioning in this emerging field.

3.2. The emergence of RWA dedicated blockchain

More and more blockchain platforms are abandoning general design and adopting specialization in specific fields. This trend is also obvious in the RWA field, and a wave of new dedicated chains built specifically for the optimization of real-world asset tokenization is emerging.

Source: Tiger Research **
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The reason for RWA dedicated blockchain is clear. The tokenization of real-world assets requires direct integration with existing financial regulations, which makes it in many cases insufficient to use a common blockchain infrastructure. Specific technical requirements—especially around regulatory compliance—have to be addressed from the bottom.

A key area is compliance processing. KYC and AML programs are crucial to tokenization workflows, but these are traditionally handled off-chain. This approach limits innovation because it simply wraps traditional financial assets in a blockchain format without redesigning the underlying compliance logic.

The transition now is to transfer these compliance capabilities entirely to the chain. Demand for blockchain networks is growing, which not only record ownership but also enforce regulatory requirements natively at the protocol layer.

In response, some RWA-focused chains have begun to provide on-chain scale blocks. For example, MANTRA includes decentralized identity (DID) capabilities that support compliance execution at the infrastructure level. Other dedicated chains are expected to follow a similar path.

In addition to compliance, many such platforms also target specific asset classes with deep domain expertise. Maple Finance focuses on institutional lending and asset management, Centrifuge focuses on trade financing, and Polymesh focuses on regulated securities. Instead of extensively tokenizing widely held assets such as sovereign bonds or stablecoins, these chains use vertical specialization as a competitive strategy.

Having said that, many of these platforms are still in their early stages. Some have not yet launched mainnets, and most are still limited in size and adoption. If general chains are just beginning to gain attention in the RWA field, then special chains are still at the starting line.

4. Who will lead the next stage?

Ethereum's dominance in the RWA market is unlikely to continue in its current form. Today, the tokenized asset market is less than 2% of its expected potential, indicating that the industry is still in its early stages. To date, Ethereum's advantages stem mainly from its early discovery of product-market fit (PMF). However, as the market matures and scales, the competitive landscape is expected to undergo major changes.

Signs of this transformation are already obvious. Institutions no longer focus on Ethereum only. Both general and RWA-specific blockchains are being evaluated, and more and more services are exploring the deployment of custom chains. Tokenized assets originally issued on Ethereum are now expanding into a multi-chain ecosystem, breaking the previous monopoly structure.

A key turning point will be the application of on-chain compliance. For blockchain-based finance to represent real innovation, regulatory processes such as KYC and AML must be carried out directly on the chain. The current market landscape could be significantly disrupted if dedicated chains successfully provide scalable, protocol-level compliance and drive widespread adoption in the industry.

It is also important that the existence of actual purchasing power is present. They become investable only when active capital is willing to acquire tokenized assets. Regardless of technology, without meaningful liquidity, the utility of tokenization is limited. Therefore, the next generation of RWA platforms must cultivate a strong service ecosystem built on tokenized assets and ensure strong liquidity participation from users.

In short, the conditions for success are becoming clearer and clearer. The next leading RWA platform is likely to be a platform that implements the following three points:

1. A fully integrated on-chain compliance framework

2. A service ecosystem built on tokenized assets

3. Deep and sustainable liquidity to facilitate actual investment

The RWA market is still in its infancy. Ethereum has verified this concept. The opportunity now lies in platforms that can provide better solutions—those that meet institutional requirements while unlocking new value for tokenized economies.