RWAs Build Mirrors Where They Need Building Blocks

Opinion by: Jakob Kronbichler, co-founder and CEO of Clearpool and Ozean

Real-world assets (RWAs) onchain aren’t just a concept anymore — they’re gaining real traction. 

Stablecoins are proof of that. They’ve become a dominant source of onchain volume, with annual transfers surpassing Visa and Mastercard by 7.7% last year. Tokenized US Treasurys are gaining interest from institutions hunting for yield.

Stablecoins represent more than just successful tokenization. They’ve evolved into financial infrastructure. They’re not merely digitized dollars but programmable money that other applications build upon. 

This platform dynamic separates winners from the many struggling RWA projects; most tokenized assets are designed as digital replicas when they should be architected as building blocks.

Tokenization does not equate to adoption

You can tokenize everything — that doesn’t mean it’s useful.

Take a quick look at RWA dashboards, and you’ll see growing total value locked, more issuers and increased attention. But most of that value sits in several wallets with minimal integration into decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystems.

This isn’t liquidity; it is parked capital.

Early RWA models focused on wrapping assets for custody or settlement, not making them usable within the constraints of DeFi. Legal classification compounds the issue, constraining how and where assets can move.

Stablecoins succeeded because they solved infrastructure problems, not just representation ones. They enable instant settlement, eliminate pre-funding for cross-border flows and integrate seamlessly into automated systems. Most RWAs are still designed as digital certificates rather than functional components of a broader financial stack.

That’s starting to change. Newer designs are compliance-aware and DeFi-compatible. Adoption will follow when tokenized assets are built to integrate, not just to exist. 

Integration isn’t just a technical challenge.

Compliance is the bottleneck

The biggest chokepoint for RWA growth is legal. When a tokenized T-bill is classified as a security offchain, it remains a security onchain. That limits what protocols it can interact with and who can access it.

So far, the workaround has been to create gated DeFi: KYC’d wallets, allowlists and permissioned access. But this approach kills composability and fragments liquidity, which are the very traits that make DeFi powerful in the first place.