RWA perps will outpace tokenization
Active Strategies
The financial landscape is shifting as perpetual futures (perps) for real-world assets (RWAs) begin to outpace traditional tokenization in volume and growth. While tokenized assets have reached $34 billion in value, RWA perp volume surged to $347 billion in May 2026, representing a 1,472x increase from early 2025. Platforms like Hyperliquid are facilitating this growth by offering 24/7 trading access, which allows market participants to react to global events outside of traditional market hours. Unlike tokenized spot assets, which face significant legal and regulatory hurdles, perp markets are easier to launch and provide synthetic exposure to commodities and AI equities. Data shows that while spot tokenization maintains a larger user base of 180,845 wallets, perp holders are growing at a faster monthly rate of 33%. The accuracy of these synthetic markets is evidenced by pre-IPO perp pricing, which successfully predicted the Cerebras Nasdaq listing price within 1%. As retail brokerages like Robinhood begin integrating these products, perps are positioned to become the primary vehicle for trading diverse asset classes globally.
Key points
- ▸RWA perp volume reached $347 billion in May 2026, a 1,472x increase since early 2025.
- ▸Hyperliquid equity perp volume outperformed tokenized equity spot volume by 13-20x.
- ▸RWA perps grew from 1.3% to 31% of total onchain perp volume in 2026.
- ▸Pre-IPO perps on Hyperliquid priced Cerebras within 1% of its actual Nasdaq opening.
Background
Perpetual futures, or perps, are a type of derivative contract that allows traders to speculate on the price of an asset without an expiration date. Unlike traditional futures, they use a funding rate mechanism to keep the contract price anchored to the underlying spot price. In the context of RWAs, these instruments provide synthetic exposure to assets like stocks or commodities without requiring the actual ownership or custody of the underlying security.
Relevance
7.5/10