RWA Perpetuals Surpass Tokenization Growth in Traditional Finance
The growth of real-world assets (RWA) perpetuals has surpassed that of tokenization in traditional finance and blockchain infrastructure, according to data from May 2026. RWA perps trading volume reached $347 billion, a 1,472-fold increase from the $230 million recorded at the start of 2025.
The daily open interest on decentralized exchanges peaked at $4.5 billion in July 2026, with cumulative volume reaching $1.32 trillion by May 2026. This represents 13 times the total volume for all of 2025.
RWA perps have become a significant portion of the derivatives market, with perpetuals on these assets exceeding tokenized assets in growth and trading volume. Tokenization creates digital representations of underlying assets, while perpetuals operate as derivatives on those representations.