Deconstructing institutional-level RWA assets: Taking OpenEden as an example

Author: Castle Labs, compiled by Shaw bitchain vision

Market Outlook

Real-world assets (RWA) tokenized market capitalization soared to $29 billion in 2025, up more than 380% over the past three years.This is certainly worth celebrating, but objectively speaking, it only accounts for 0.0116% of the global total assets of $250 trillion.

arriveIn 2030, the market’s growth forecast ranges from $2 trillion (McKinsey) to $16 trillion (Boston Consulting Group), which shows both a huge opportunity and an uncertainty in its adoption trajectory.Trillions of $100 million of RWA are expected to be transferred to the chain, and only providers that meet institutional standards can seize this growth opportunity.

This article takes OpenEden as an example to help understand the needs of “organizational-level” products.To do this, we will first explore opportunities and structural frictions in the RWA field, and then analyze the major asset classes and suppliers.

RWA Opportunities

This section provides an overview of RWA opportunities, divided into asset classes, providers, and blockchain networks, laying the foundation for subsequent chapters.

Like stablecoins, real-world assets (RWA) are the fastest growing decentralized finance (DeFi) narrative in 2025.

As early as 2018, the on-chain tokenization experiment based on Ethereum smart contracts was registered.

Despite rapid growth,RWA tokenization was previously restricted by several bottlenecks:

• Dispersed regulation in various countries

• Infrastructure gaps in settlement and custody

• Technical and security risks (such as smart contract risks, cross-chain bridge attacks)

In fact, the industry experienced its biggest growth in 2025.In less than a year, the total value of on-chain RWA has doubled, from $15 billion in January to more than $29 billion in September, with a compound annual growth rate of about 43% by 2029.

It must be noted, however, that this does not happen in isolation.It is not an independent development, but the result of years of positioning and infrastructure construction, which ultimately creates an environment that can operate on a large scale.

EspeciallyThe past few years have revolutionized the economic and regulatory environment of tokenized RWA.

After the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to 5.5% in 2023, a sharp adjustment in interest rates redefined the economic landscape.This revolutionized the risk-reward situation of many on-chain assets and lending protocols, prompting funds to flow to safer channels, such as starting to offer higher interest rates.

Overnight, tokenized treasury bonds became a high-quality investment tool for on-chain retail investors and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) treasury risks.Web3 participants have also begun to follow suit: a notable example is Grove, a subsidiary of Sky (formerly MakerDAO), which has invested $1 billion in tokenized Treasury products.

All of this is due to changes in the overall regulatory environment of RWA and cryptocurrencies.Legislations such as MiCA provide clear guidance for digital asset regulation in Europe, while the OECD’s Crypto Asset Reporting Framework (CARF) provides a “standardized global framework” for “Automatic Exchange of Information Related to Crypto Asset Transactions (AEOI).

In the United States, Trump made it clear that the administration welcomed developments in the field and recently approved the GENIUS Act, an important milestone in the popularity of stablecoins.Meanwhile, other countries such as the UAE and Singapore continue to publicly support the popularization and development of cryptocurrencies in their regions.

It can be said thatOne of the biggest highlights of the development of on-chain RWA is the entry of some traditional financial giants.The launch of funds led by well-known institutions such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton further consolidates the stability and legalization of the industry.BlackRock’s BUIDL is currently the largest on-chain RWA asset with a total value of over $2.2 billion.

As can be seen from the above table, most of the top 10 RWA assets on the chain are related to U.S. Treasury bonds and commodities (especially gold).

The on-chain tokenization process brings significant benefits to these institutional assets because theyAbility to use on-chain platforms to obtain DeFi liquidity while maintaining compliance.

They can further improve and incorporate existing opportunities (e.g., merge RWA assets with existing vault structures to earn benefits) and provide powerful differentiation elements to rebalance crypto-native portfolios, “providing access to previously unavailable asset classes through tokenization, thus expanding the available set of opportunities.”

To understand the market’s demand for RWA assets, we classify them by asset type.

The dominant portion ($16.7 billion, or more than 60% of the industry’s total market capitalization) is composed of private credit.

In traditional financial forms,Private credit is often limited by accessibility and distribution, and the liquidity of secondary market transactions is limited.

By tokenizing private credit opportunities, they are open to the wider public.

The most commonly used asset examples include Figure’s home purchase and home renovation credit lines, and Apollo’s ACRED fund, which uses a leverage cycle strategy to amplify yields on earning assets, both of which offer better conditions than traditional finance.

Following closely behind are U.S. Treasury instruments.As we have emphasized above, the rise of US Treasury bond interest rates from 4.33% to 5.5% has played a role in the overall change in the market situation.It is no exaggeration to say that US Treasury is the biggest factor in the institutional adoption of tokenized RWA.These low-risk assets, backed by the U.S. government, are clearly regulated and widely used.Currently, only $7.4 billion worth of assets are tokenized (30% of the total RWA tokenized assets), with nearly 30% of which are held by BlackRock’s BUIDL Fund.

The main benefits of putting treasury bonds on the chain include:Extend its trading hours to transcend traditional markets; enable instant settlement and wider allocation; and create opportunities for further combination applications of these assets in the DeFi sector.

Commodities rank third, with most of them made up of real estate, worth $2 billion, accounting for less than 7.5% of the total asset value.This is mainly due to regulatory complexity, differences in different jurisdictions, and inherent trust issues related to the nature of the assets.However, commodities are one of the areas with the most long-term potential and fastest growth this year (over 200%).

Institutional alternative funds also have a similar size value ($1.9 billion), including venture capital, private equity, private credit and hedge funds.

Last but not least, we find non-U.S. government bonds are worth $1.33 billion, stocks are $520 million and corporate bonds are $265 million.

It is no surprise that most of the total locked RWA value (about 59%) is on Ethereum, and as early as 2019, institutions have begun to try on-chain tokenization on Ethereum.

In addition to Ethereum, some Layer 2 platforms are also trying RWA.ZK Sync leads with a scale of over $2.4 billion, mostly private credit.

Followed by Polygon, holdings of $1.1 billion, most of which are invested in commodities (more than $500 million) and corporate bonds; Aptos is $700 million, focusing on private credit issuance in emerging markets.

It is particularly noteworthy that Arbitrum was the first to use RWA as the “help-haven collateral” for the DAO treasury, which led to the creation of a $370 million field in L2.

The growing popularity of RWA can serve as a template for the industry’s next phase of growth.This begs the question: How can we break into this market and meet institutional needs?

The next section will explore in-depth what conditions are needed to be considered “institutional level”, highlighting the requirements of institutional investors, and introducing how existing institutions such as OpenEden are positioned through their products and waiters.

Introduction to OpenEden

If the RWA industry wants to transform into future financial infrastructure, the platform must show five key aspects:

• Regulatory clarity

• Independent verification

• Institutional Hosting

• transparency

• Compositionality

Let’s emphasize the importance of each element through OpenEden’s case study.

OpenEden is an RWA protocol focused on tokenizing U.S. Treasury bonds, providing opportunities for on-chain investors seeking “low-risk” liquidity investment solutions.

They are one of the few tokenized funds to receive the S&P AA+f Fund Credit Quality Rating and the S1+ Fund Volatility Rating, stand out among existing funds, demonstrating their “consideration of money market fund allocation as a supplement to U.S. Treasury holdings and enhance portfolio liquidity without damaging credit quality.”In addition, they received Moody’s A-bf bond fund rating.

Since its launch in 2023,OpenEden’s total locked value (TVL) has accumulated more than US$300 million, becoming “the largest US Treasury tokenization issuer in Asia and Europe”.

OpenEden offers two main products: TBILL and USDO.In the next section, we will dig into them and evaluate them based on the above five key institutional requirements.

TBILL

Through the TBILL token, OpenEden’s Treasury Vault (“TBILL Vault”) provides investors with investment opportunities to access short-term (with a maturity of less than 3 months).

Each TBILL token is pegged to short-term U.S. Treasury bonds and the U.S. dollar in a 1:1 ratio.The value of the TBILL token is expected to rise with the yield on the underlying U.S. Treasury bonds.

TBILL provides qualified investors native to cryptocurrencies with opportunities to earn low-risk returns through stablecoins.Since Treasury bonds have always been one of the main products of off-chain investment, OpenEden is introducing this market to the chain.

One of the most important aspects when providing an institutional asset is ensuring it is fully compliant.OpenEden operates through a fund regulated by the British Virgin Islands (BVI) Financial Services Commission (“Token Issuer”).It has been independently verified.

The fund received a S&P AA+f Fund Credit Quality Rating and a S1+ Fund Volatility Rating, which means the fund meets the same standards as traditional money market funds.The custody and investment management of the asset is under the responsibility of Bank of New York Mellon (BNY), the bank’s first to manage tokenized funds on the public chain, which fully demonstrates the credibility of OpenEden.

Access to TBILL vaults is restricted and is only available to qualified investors.They receive TBILL tokens by depositing at least USDC in the vault.

Once received, the TBILL token will be stored in the investor’s wallet and kept by the investor’s own custody.

Investors can redeem their tokens by joining the redemption queue, which is expected to process their orders within about 1 day.

To give everyone an idea of ​​the coordination required to launch these products, the TBILL Vault has the following features:

• Token Issuer: Funds registered in the British Islands.

• Investment Manager: Bank of New York Mellon is the main custodian of investment management and underlying assets.

• Fintech Service Provider: In this case, River Labs provides the technology needed to run TBILL Vault.

The fund currently has an annual fee of 0.30%, with a transaction fee (subscription and redemption) of 5 basis points (bps).

To improve the composability of DeFi, TBILL will integrate with Aave’s institution-centric platform Horizon.

USDO

As part of its product, OpenEden has also launched “OpenDollar” (USDO), a regulated, earning stablecoin backed by U.S. Treasury and reverse repurchase agreements.

The token comes in two different formats:

• USDO: USDO is a daily adjustment anchor token set to value at $1 to simplify profit distribution.User income will be reflected in the balance change.

• cUSDO: The balance is constant.The cumulative returns are reflected in the price increase.

USDO is currently available on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Base, and is backed 100% by U.S. Treasury bonds including TBILL, and provides proof of reserves on Chainlink.

USDO is issued by the Bankruptcy Separation Account Company (SAC) OpenEden Digital (OED), officially authorized by the Bermuda Financial Authority (BMA), to ensure its compliance.

Similar to TBILL, USDO’s casting and redemption are limited to qualified investors who meet the following conditions:

1. As a non-US resident

2. Minimum initial purchase amount is $100,000

3. Complete KYC verification

As an example of its composability, cUSDO has now been integrated into the “first “earnings off-market collateral (OEC)” on Binance Banking Platform Triparty and Ceffu’s MirrorRSV.

OECs are becoming increasingly public because they can protect over-the-counter collateral, eliminate platform counterparty risks, improve funding efficiency, and enable users to continue to earn from earning collateral.

Using cUSDO as an OEC, institutions “can now trade on one of the world’s largest exchanges while their collateral remains securely kept in quarantine wallets and continue to generate revenue.”

Evaluation of TBILL and USDO based on organizational needs

This section provides a practical understanding of how existing businesses, such as OpenEden, build their products to meet institutional needs.

To this end, we evaluate TBILL and USDO based on the five key institutional needs highlighted above, and we first briefly introduce these requirements.

• Regulatory clarity: Institutional investors need to gain clarity from a regulatory perspective, with a clear judicial structure and licensed providers.

• Independent verification: Traditional financial (TradFi) assets are independently verified by rating agencies using standardized methods.To be recognized, tokenized RWA assets must be consistent with them because they cannot rely on self-report.

• Institutional Hosting: Hosting can be said to be the most concerned aspect of institutional participants.Using a mature hosting agency can greatly enhance trust and simplify the inbound process.

• transparency: On-chain RWA promises to improve transparency, which must be achieved in terms of reserve proof, audit, etc.

• Compositionality: If RWA can be used as collateral, traded, or built into new earnings products, it can unlock huge value in DeFi.

Only when all five requirements are met can a product be considered an institutional product.Failure to fully consider regulatory requirements, judicial structures and trusteeship can actually lead to a loss of trust immediately and difficulty in accessing the market.

Future Outlook and Conclusion

The scale of RWA tokenization is expected to grow 70 to 100 times by 2030, and this growth is likely to be gradual rather than linear., similar to what we are experiencing now, growth will be limited until infrastructure is ready for explosive growth (such as 2025).In the future, breakthroughs in custody, settlement, supervision and asset types will open up a new round of application waves and opportunities.

Among them, we expect the main drivers of growth in the short term will still revolve around Treasury bonds and money market funds, while the fastest growth in the medium term and long term will be the private credit and real estate sectors respectively.