What Is RWA?

In decentralised finance, RWA stands for Real World Asset.

Unlike cryptocurrencies and pure digital assets, like art NFTs, real-world assets have a real-world ownership representation.

RWAs can be

• Stablecoins

• Real-estate

• Bonds

• Stock

• Land

• Forest

• Energy

• Carbon certificates

RWAs can trade on lending protocols and decentralised exchanges. RWAs need special oracles to bring information about the real-world asset data to on-chain.

As the writing of this, most popular RWA classes are stablecoins and bonds.

For RWA case studies, see

• Circle’s and Uniswaps report on stablecoin usage in remittance and cross-border payments

• Siemens launching $60M bond on a public blockchain

See also

• Decentralised finance

• Stablecoin

• Lending protocol

• Decentralised exchange

• Aave

• Oracle