What Is Real World Assets (RWA)?
Traditional assets like stocks, bonds, or real estate that are tokenized and brought on-chain.
Definition
RWA covers anything from outside crypto represented as a token on-chain: equities, bonds, property, commodities. The category is the meeting point between traditional finance and DeFi, and it currently contains two quite different things.
How it works
The first route is tokenization, where a custodian holds the real asset and issues tokens that claim it. xStocks works this way. The second is synthetic, where tokens track the price via an oracle and nobody holds the asset at all. Continuum works this way. The token looks similar in a wallet. What sits behind it does not.
In Continuum
Continuum gives you synthetic RWA exposure, so there is no custodian, no issuer, and no redemption queue at a company. The trade-off is honest: you get price exposure rather than ownership, so no dividends and no votes. What you gain is a token that lending markets will take as collateral.
Related terms
A token that tracks the price of another asset without requiring ownership of the underlying.
Assets deposited to back or secure a financial position.
A service that brings off-chain data (like prices) onto the blockchain.
The ability of DeFi protocols and tokens to work together like building blocks.
More defi terms
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