Original author: Four Pillars
Original title: RWA Tokenization on Injective: Bringing Trillions On-Chain
Translation: Xianran
Recently, RWA has received widespread attention from the market. Since 2021, the market size of RWA has increased 38 times,its rapid growth can be attributed to multiple factors such as the approval of the Bitcoin ETF, the launch of the BlackRock BUIDL Fund, and the Trump administration's friendly policy toward cryptocurrencies. In this huge wave of RWA, whether it is Ethereum, Solana, Sui, Aptos, or INJ, they are all trying to seize the opportunity and lead the development of the RWA industry.
At present, Ethereum has taken the lead in the RWA ecosystem with its strong appeal. The circulation of BlackRock BUIDL Fund with more than US$2.7 billion is concentrated in Ethereum, accounting for more than 90% of the share, which is quite a dominant force; while INJ is trying to overtake on the curve and take the lead in making breakthroughs in technology and product adaptability.
Currently, INJ has launched a dedicated RWA module based on Cosmos SDK, including RWA oracles, cross-platform unified liquidity, and an iAssets framework specifically for stock RWA; at the ecological level, INJ already supports a variety of yield-based stablecoins, index funds, and stock RWAs. The iAssets-related RWA assets circulating on the Helix platform alone have exceeded US$350 million, and the potential should not be underestimated.
In this article, Four Pillars will explain the huge potential of the current RWA market and the efforts made by INJ in the RWA field from the perspectives of the development status of the RWA market, INJ's technological innovations for RWA, and the implementation of RWA on the INJ chain. Welcome to read below!
RWA: The next vane of Web3
From the summer of DeFi to NFT, Play to earn, memecoin and AI Agent projects, the crypto market has been driven by dopamine-driven hype. In contrast, today's market is surprisingly calm. With the launch of Bitcoin and Ethereum ETFs and the entry of traditional capital, the crypto market is gradually aligning with traditional industries.
In the current relatively calm state, RWA is growing steadily. According to data from rwa.xyz, the RWA market size has grown from approximately US$500 million in April 2021 to approximately US$19 billion today, an astonishing 38 times in just four years. In contrast, the total market value of cryptocurrencies has only increased by about 1.5 times during the same period, from US$2 trillion to US$3 trillion.
In addition to the performance at the data level, the momentum behind RWA is visible to the naked eye. News and discussions about RWA are emerging on platforms such as Twitter and Telegram, and VCs are investing more and more in RWA-focused projects. Obviously, RWA has become one of the hottest topics in the cryptocurrency field.
Why is now the best time to enter the RWA track?
So, why has people's interest in RWA soared so quickly? This is because the rise of RWA is not out of pure speculation, but because the market has a rigid demand for predictable sources of income, and people have more confidence in on-chain assets backed by real-world assets. This trend has become increasingly obvious after the approval of the ETF. With the changes in the US government's regulatory policies and the entry of traditional financial institutions, RWA has quickly become a new outlet.
Market sentiment changes after the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF
Source: Farside Investors
If there is one thing that has changed the traditional financial view of cryptocurrency, it must be the approval of the Bitcoin spot ETF. The application of the Bitcoin spot ETF by BlackRock, the world's largest asset management company, triggered a reversal of the market situation and led other asset management companies to follow suit. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink even publicly supported Bitcoin many times during this period. With the final approval and launch of the ETF, institutional investors' participation in the crypto market has increased, which not only brought a wave of capital inflows, but also significantly improved market sentiment.
In addition, The approval of the Ethereum spot ETF has further enhanced the interest of institutional investors in RWA. RWA assets need the support of smart contracts to be put on the chain. The approval of the Ethereum spot ETF by regulators is equivalent to endorsing Ethereum, which makes traditional institutions have confidence in smart contract platforms such as Ethereum and also contributes to the benefits of RWA.
Traditional financial institutions are accelerating their entry into the RWA market
Source:rwa.xyz
BlackRock launched an on-chain fund called BUIDL in partnership with Securitize in March 2024.
Source:rwa.xyz text="">The fund tokenizes real assets such as U.S. Treasuries and cash equivalents. In just over a year, the size of the BUIDL fund has grown from $600 million to $2.5 billion, accounting for more than 40% of the market share in the vertical field of U.S. Treasury tokenization.
Other traditional financial giants are also following BlackRock. Franklin Templeton's money market tokenized fund BENJI has grown to about $700 million, and WisdomTree's WTGXX tokenized fund has also reached about $100 million. The participation of these institutions not only provides liquidity to the RWA field, but also enhances the market confidence of the race, further promoting the explosive growth of RWA.
Regulatory and government policy changes
Finally, one of the biggest factors in the growth of RWA is the clarification of the US regulatory framework. In the past, regulatory uncertainty related to cryptocurrencies has made traditional institutions reluctant to get involved in Web3. But the Loomis-Gillibrand Act, passed in July 2024, has more clearly defined the jurisdiction of crypto assets, with most commodity tokens subject to the CFTC and security tokens subject to the SEC. This move eliminates years of regulatory confusion and paves the way for the establishment of a legal framework related to RWA.
In addition, with Trump's coming to power, the SEC's previous hostility to cryptocurrencies has eased. In early 2025, the SEC stopped investigations, enforcement and litigation against Immutable, Coinbase and Kraken, and many industry insiders believe that the SEC's policy shift is to provide clearer guidelines rather than indiscriminate crackdowns.
Although not directly related to RWA, two sets of bills focusing on stablecoins, the GENIUS Act and the STABLE Act, are also being considered by Congress. These initiatives are expected to quickly integrate stablecoins into the traditional financial system. The combination of government support, regulatory clarity and legislative action is eliminating uncertainty in the crypto market and creating an ideal environment for the integration and development of blockchain and real assets.
What types of RWA are there?
So, what exactly is RWA? What are its types? RWA refers to tokenized real-world assets, such as real estate, bonds, and gold. By establishing ownership binding between on-chain tokens and real assets, RWA can use blockchain to achieve a more efficient and transparent transaction experience.
As of April 26, 2025, the RWA sub-tracks sorted by market size are as follows:
Private credit ($12.9 billion)
U.S. Treasuries ($6.2 billion)
Commodities ($1.5 billion)
Equities ($484 million)
Institutional Alternative Investment Funds ($456 million)
Non-U.S. Government Bonds ($157 million)
Corporate Bonds ($15 million)
Other (real estate, intellectual property, etc.)
Source: Injective
If you are interested in the RWA field, INJ will be one of the representative projects worth paying attention to. Since the listing of Ondo's USDY in November 2023, a variety of yield-based stablecoins have been added to the INJ chain.In January 2024, INJ took an important step and integrated a dedicated RWA module at the bottom of the public chain, becoming the world's first blockchain that natively supports RWA.
INJ is particularly strong in the RWA field. Previously, RWA products on the market were mainly concentrated on bonds and stablecoins, but Injective not only supports such products, but also supports various assets including stocks. In March of this year, INJ officially launched an RWA tokenization framework called iAssets, which supports the tokenization of a variety of stocks. By April 2025, Injective has dominated the vertical field of on-chain stock tokens, surpassing other public chains. Currently, the asset trading volume related to iAssets has exceeded 350 million US dollars.
In short, Injective is strengthening its focus on RWA from a technical and business perspective. Let's take a deep look at how Inj achieves this goal.
What does INJ do for RWA?
From a technical perspective, one of the biggest reasons for converting real assets into RWA tokens is to promote high efficiency of transactions. To this end, the underlying public chain to which the RWA token is attached must have good TPS and settlement speed.
Injective achieves good instant settlement of assets. It is improved from Cosmos' Tendermint BFT consensus.Once a block is created, it will be finalized immediately and cannot be rolled back. This fast settlement is crucial for RWA transactions. It is worth mentioning that the block time of Inj is only 0.67 seconds, and each block can theoretically contain up to 100MB of data, so the INJ public chain can process a large number of transactions very quickly.
Overall, Injective has achieved efficiency improvements through a number of key optimizations:
Optimized state synchronization and data processing methods :
Enhanced resource management : text="">The Injective node client has improved the way of handling system resources and using disks;
Upgraded consensus algorithm:Injective has made improvements based on Cosmos' native Tendermint BFT consensus algorithm, which can complete block production and consensus faster.
Source: Injective
Some new features have been introduced in INJ's latest Lyora upgrade, such as dynamic Gas adjustment based on network demand, a new memory pool system that prioritizes urgent transactions, and enhanced security of core modules. Through these improvements, Injective has optimized its infrastructure in terms of scalability and security, making it very suitable for RWA transactions.
RWA-related modules
Inj is a blockchain built with modular components using the Cosmos SDK. The default modules include auth for account management, bank for token transfers, and staking for staking. In addition to these standard modules, Injective also provides customized modules specifically for financial applications, some of which are specifically for RWA.
Exchange module
The Exchange module is the core part of Injective, used to record and match buy and sell orders occurring on different order book platforms within the ecosystem. In the design of many public chains, even if multiple order book platforms are located on the same blockchain, liquidity still tends to be fragmented. In Injective, each platform shares unified liquidity through the Exchange module, providing better trading depth and excellent experience. (Note that the Exchange module currently mainly provides liquidity for plug-and-play on-chain order books, rather than for AMM.)
INJ's Exchange module supports spot and futures. Coupled with the high TPS mentioned above, INJ can process RWA transactions at high speed. In addition, INJ also has defenses against MEV attacks, such as frequent batch auctions, etc. These features can work together to create a highly optimized RWA trading environment.
RWA module
Injective's RWA module was introduced during the Volan mainnet upgrade in January 2024. The module has three main functions:
Tokenization: Ability to convert various real assets (such as government bonds, legal tender, and credit products) into digital tokens;
Access Control: Allows setting up lists, only specific addresses can participate in asset transactions, which helps with compliance;
Institutional Friendliness text="">：Give financial institutions the power to directly issue and manage assets, making it easier to launch on-chain financial products.
In addition,the Altaris mainnet upgrade in August 2024 brings the RWA oracle function, which can deliver real-time data of real-world assets to the blockchain,enabling dApps to access more reliable information at any time. Currently, the RWA oracle supports price feeds for a variety of assets, including stocks, bonds, and ETFs.
iAssets
In traditional finance, settlement delays such as T+1 or T+2 reduce the efficiency of capital utilization, some financial products are only available to a certain group of people, and complex intermediaries also make the trading experience worse. On-chain assets remove these obstacles and allow anyone to participate around the clock without intermediaries.
In essence,traditional RWA is a synthetic asset created through over-collateralization on the DeFi platform, and users often have to lock up a large number of tokens (such as ETH or SNX) to mint such synthetic assets, at the cost of making the use of funds less efficient.
Injective's iAssets takes a different approach. RWA assets issued based on iAssets do not require over-collateralization. In addition, due to the aforementioned Exchange module, liquidity can be shared throughout the ecosystem.Market makers or institutions that provide liquidity can operate instantly without locking up too much funds.
Currently, there are various iAsset assets circulating on Helix, such as iNVDA, iGOOGL, iHOOD, iMCD, iMSTR, iCOIN, iMSFT, iAAPL, iAMZN, iNFLX, iMETA, TTI and TRADFI. Assets starting with "i" mainly track the corresponding stocks. TTI and TRADFI are indices that track the stock prices of major US companies.
Because Helix uses INJ's Exchange module, its liquidity is very strong. In addition, the Exchange module also supports leveraged trading, allowing users to trade RWA stocks of some US companies with up to 25 times leverage.
Source: Helix
Injective is not only supporting RWA in technology and infrastructure, but also strategically attracting more valuable institutions to run INJ validation nodes. The participation of institutions such as Republic (a tokenization and private investment platform) and KDAC (a Korean cryptocurrency custody company) has enhanced the trend of Inj's cooperation with traditional finance. At the same time, Google Cloud, Deutsche Telekom and NTT Digital have also joined the operation of INJ's verification nodes, strengthening Injective's policy towards corporate and institutional users. RWA implementation results on the INJ chain So far, we have talked about the technical and business initiatives of Injective and why it is a blockchain specifically for RWA. Now let's take a look at the RWA asset information that has been implemented on Injective.
Stablecoins and US Treasuries
Ondo USDY：USDY is a yield-based stablecoin issued by Ondo Finance, backed by short-term US Treasuries and bank deposits. It will be available on Injective in November 2023.
Mountain USDM：USDM is a yield-based stablecoin issued by Mountain Protocol, backed by short-term US Treasuries. It was launched in July 2024 and circulated on Injective through the bridge wUSDM.
Paxos USDL：USDL is a yield-based stablecoin issued by Paxos International, backed by U.S. Treasuries and cash-equivalent assets. It was launched in October 2024 and bridged to INJ.
Agora AUSD：AUSD is a yield-based stablecoin issued by Agora Finance, with collateral including US dollars, short-term US Treasury bonds, etc. AUSD cooperates with asset management companies such as VanEck and State Street in asset management. AUSD was launched on INJ in October 2024.
BlackRock BUIDL Index：BUIDL is one of the largest RWA assets, issued by BlackRock in partnership with Securitize. Injective and Stork jointly developed the BUIDL Index, which is pegged to $1 and tracks the total issuance of BUIDL. The index fund was launched in September 2024.
AI Index:The AI Index, trading on Helix as AIX, tracks stocks like NVIDIA and TSMC, as well as AI-related Web3 tokens like ai16z and VIRTUALS. The index launches in January 2025.
TradFi Index:The TradFi Index, trading on Helix as TRADFI, tracks hundreds of U.S. companies, including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Goldman Sachs. The index launches in February 2025.
TradFi Tech Stock Index:The TradFi Tech Stock Index, traded as TTI on Helix, tracks the Nasdaq 100 Index, which includes companies such as Amazon, Google, Nvidia, and Tesla.
iAssets related stocks:On Helix, single-stock tracking tokens such as iNVDA, iGOOGL and iHOOD, as well as multi-stock indices such as TTI, are already listed.
Partnership with Libre:Libre is a platform jointly developed by WebN Group and Laser Digital, a subsidiary of Nomura Securities, to provide RWA tokenization services to institutions and qualified investors in a regulatory compliant manner and supports multiple blockchains including Injective. Assets tokenized through Libre on Injective can use the native RWA module. Currently, Libre RWA tokens available on Injective include Laser Digital's Laser Carry Fund, BlackRock's Money Market Fund and Hamilton Lane's SCOPE Senior Credit Fund.
Commodities:Injective's RWA ecosystem has been expanding into commodities since April 2025. It started with tokens that track the prices of gold (XAU) and silver (XAG), and plans to expand into precious metals, energy, agricultural products and foreign exchange in the future.
Source: Injective
Finally, although AINJ is not directly issued on Injective, it is worth mentioning that this is an ETP based on INJ. AINJ was created by 21Shares and allows institutional investors to invest in INJ through traditional financial markets and brokers.
AINJ is currently listed on Euronext Paris and Amsterdam Stock Exchange, and can be purchased through mainstream platforms such as Interactive Brokers, Saxo Bank, Swissquote Bank and eToro. It is worth mentioning that the underlying INJ assets of AINJ have been pledged, and the pledge income will be reinvested in AINJ.
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