ON–233: Real World Assets 🌍
Coverage on Centrifuge, Provenance, Figure, Ondo Finance, Maple Finance, Superstate & Clearpool.
Distributed research for distributed networks – OurNetwork is crypto's go-to platform for onchain analytics.
EXCLUSIVE ONCHAIN COVERAGE:
Real World Assets 🌍
👥 Mac Naggar | Dashboard
📈 There are now +$162B of RWAs on Public Blockchains
Early RWA issuances existed primarily on private, permissioned blockchains such as Nasdaq Linq (2015) and JPM Quorum (2016). These platforms offered asset managers the controlled and confidential environments that TradFi players were used to. Over time, asset managers have increasingly turned to public blockchains, primarily out of a desire for interoperability. Recent public blockchain issuances come from asset managers like BlackRock (Ethereum) and Franklin Templeton (Stellar & Polygon).
Figure has been extremely active in the tokenization space, currently maintaining over $7B in consumer loans onchain. Specifically, Figure originates Home Equity Lines of Credit (HELOC) on the Provenance Blockchain — in 2022, the project was recognized as the largest non-bank HELOC provider in the USA.
Tether and Paxos, renowned for their dollar stablecoins, also offer significant tokenized gold products. Their tokenized gold, $PAXG and $XAUT, collectively exceed $824M in value. Notably, both issuers allow token holders to redeem their tokens for physical gold.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Composable RWA products are emerging. In April, BlackRock and Securitize launched $BUIDL, a tokenized money market fund (MMF) on Ethereum. Now the largest tokenized MMF, it boasts over $427M in AUM. Recognizing $BUIDL's success, other tokenized treasury products are exploring ways to leverage its infrastructure. As shown on the block explorer, Ondo's is the largest holder with +42% of $BUIDL's supply as of May 16 (first and fourth wallets). Mountain Protocol has also announced its role as a "seed client" for $BUIDL. Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said he expects more products to build on $BUIDL in the coming months.
① Centrifuge 🌀
👥 Devin Black | Website | Dashboard
📈 Centrifuge onboards Gnosis DAO treasury to T-bill RWAs
Centrifuge is the platform for tokenized real-world assets onchain. One of our products, Centrifuge Prime, provides DAOs the onchain infrastructure and support to allocate their treasury to RWAs. On Thursday, Gnosis DAO executed an onchain investment of $1M USDC (of $10M allocated) into the Anemoy Liquid Treasury Fund (US T-Bills) pool on Centrifuge. This investment was passed in GIP-91, which succeeded with 97% of GNO votes in favor of the DAO allocating part of its treasury to Centrifuge.
Centrifuge's TVL continues to steadily increase, as it has throughout the bear market, showcasing the stable nature of RWA yield — and more notably, RWA yields' characteristic of being decoupled from the state of cryptocurrency markets.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: DAO treasuries often sit idle without earning yield due to the various risks of many crypto-native yield strategies. RWAs fix this. With Gnosis DAO's onboarding RWAs via Centrifuge, we're seeing composability in action here, where DAOs now have the entirely onchain capability to invest in real-world assets via Centriuge. In addition, we've also worked with Gnosis DAO to help them set up Gnosis Assets Holding I Foundation (see: GIP-94) which provides for them the legal framework to allocate to real-world assets!
② Provenance & Figure 🅿️💼
👥 Will Leas | Website | Dashboard
📈 Provenance, a sleeping giant of RWA, crosses ~$12b TVL with $7b+ of active loans on-chain
Purpose built for tokenizing financial markets, Provenance is the leading L1 for RWA. Provenance has supported $16B+ in txns and has been leveraged by 60+ financial institutions across banking, private equity & asset management, lending, payments, & capital markets. Provenance boasts a laundry list of firsts for the industry - like the first tokenization of an asset-backed securitization - among other milestones. Provenance currently has ~$11B TVL; of all L1s/L2s, only Ethereum has more TVL.
Figure, an RWA pioneer with indisputable OG status, is the industry leader. Built on Provenance, Figure is the largest non-bank HELOC originator in the US. Figure has over $7B of active outstanding loans on-chain – a point often lost in the narrative of memecoins, NFTs and DeFi money games.
Provenance network activity has increased QoQ for the last two years. In Q1 2024, Provenance processed 1.45M transactions, representing 77.1% growth YoY and 6.9% growth QoQ.
③ Ondo Finance 🌊
👥 kindeagle | Website | Dashboard
📈 Ondo Finance Crosses $420M in TVL
Ondo Finance is the market leader in the tokenization of real-world assets, recently surpassing $420M in TVL for its cash equivalent products. Ondo recently launched USDY, a yield-bearing stablecoin, on multiple blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Mantle, and Sui. Ondo is prioritizing efforts to drive the adoption, integrations, and liquidity of these tokens. This milestone underscores Ondo's commitment to providing secure, yield-bearing DeFi solutions.
OUSG offers liquid exposure to short-term US Treasuries with 24/7 stablecoin mints & redemptions, providing stable returns & deep liquidity. The portfolio mainly includes BlackRock's BUIDL, with the rest in BlackRock’s FedFund, bank deposits, & USDC. OUSG has a TVL of $184.36M & offers a 4.96% APY.
USDY(Ondo US Dollar Yield Token) has surpassed $230M in TVL. USDY is a tokenized note that builds on the success of stablecoins to provide non-US investors a way to store dollar-denominated value while generating yield. USDY holders currently earn 5.20% APY.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: This transaction shows a mint of USDC -> 414,254.23 OUSG. It's a clear example of how OUSG and RWAs are showing a strong product market fit by addressing the demand for faster settlement times in crypto. In addition, they offer an ultra-low-risk investment option that delivers stable, predictable returns while providing deep liquidity.
④ Maple Finance 🥞
👥 fatmac | Website | Dashboard
📈 Maple Finance’s Secured Lending crosses 150MM+ in loan originations
Maple Finance’s Secured Lending pools offer corporate credit yield to lenders, through loans issued to institutions collateralized with digital assets like BTC and ETH. To date, the Blue Chip and High Yield Secured Lending Pools have issued >$150M in loans in just ~7 months, with TVL rising >70% over the last 30 days, following the peak in BTC price in mid-March.
Maple’s Cash Management product offers onchain access to US Treasury bills with daily liquidity. Towards the end of 2023, Cash Management and all other similar products saw outflows as market conditions changed. Following BTC’s peak in mid-March, yields have compressed across the DeFi ecosystem and Cash Management has seen new inflows from lenders seeking safety onchain. TVL is up 88% in the mainnet Pool, while Solana has remained subdued.
Since the beginning of April, Maple’s Blue Chip Secured Lending Pool has significantly outperformed the average daily APY in Aave v3 USDC, with a spread of 5.2%. As yields compress across the ecosystem, rates in Aave have trended back towards SOFR and are now just ~20% higher than Maple Cash Management.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: In April, Maple released Global Permissioning, an innovative new feature that enables seamless deposits across Maple Pools for compliant sources of capital. Here, here, and here you can see Global Permissioning in action when a Lender passes verification and then deposits $10M across 3 separate Pools in less than 5 minutes!
⑤ Superstate 🏦
👥 Superstate | Website | Dashboard
📈 Superstate’s USTB Fund Crosses $100M AUM in Less than Three Months
Superstate launched its first product, the Superstate Short Duration U.S. Government Securities Fund (USTB) in February 2024. The Fund invests in short duration U.S. Treasury securities, targeting returns in line with the federal funds rate. Shares of the fund can be purchased and redeemed using USD and USDC, and are represented by USTB, an Ethereum ERC-20 token, which can be held in self-custody or custodians including Anchorage and BitGo.
In less than three months, USTB acquired over $100M in AUM, representing a major milestone for the firm. This furthers Superstate’s ambition as an asset manager to build investment products that benefit from the speed, programmability, and compliance advantages of blockchain tokenization.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: On May 14, transfers of USTB were enabled, allowing for onchain peer-to-peer transfers of USTB between investors’ Allowlist addresses. Superstate’s USTB Fund has also begun efforts to join the decentralized treasury management landscape, with an application submission in April to the Arbitrum Stable Treasury Endowment Program (STEP).
⑥ Clearpool 🏊
👥 Clearpool | Website | Dashboard
📈 Clearpool Reaches $500M Milestone in Total Loan Originations
Clearpool is a decentralized credit marketplace where lenders provide liquidity to institutional borrowers of their choice and are compensated with risk-adjusted yields. A separate permissioned platform, Clearpool Prime, further meets the KYC and AML compliance needs of institutional market participants. Clearpool recently hit a major milestone with $500M in total loans originated, following the launches of various borrower pools and expansions to Mantle and Avalanche in the past few months.
CPOOL is the utility and governance token for Clearpool. Its current utilities include delegated staking, LP rewards, and governance. The number of unique wallet addresses holding CPOOL tokens has steadily increased, showing strong confidence and user growth — over 10,000 wallets hold CPOOL.
Recently, Clearpool has experienced a surge in institutional borrowers entering the protocol to launch pools due to the growing demand for on-chain credit. In the past two months, three notable firms have launched pools. Firstly, Banxa, a publicly listed and prominent global financial technology infrastructure provider, opened a Credit Vault. Secondly, leading global trading firm Flow Traders, listed on Euronext, initiated a USDC 10M loan on Clearpool Prime. Lastly, Clearpool welcomed its first prime brokerage borrower, August.
💦🔬 Tx-Level Alpha: Clearpool has a unique interest rate curve mechanism for permissionless pools that empower borrowers to optimize their rates. Here is an example of a borrower repaying USDT to reduce their interest rate and boost liquidity, allowing lenders to withdraw funds as needed easily.