Crypto news

The market for tokenized real-world assets (RWA) continues to show explosive growth, and recent events only confirm this. The hybrid CeDeFi platform Grvt has announced a strategic partnership with RWA product issuer Ondo Finance. Over the next twelve months, the exchange intends to grow its position in the tokenized USDY instrument to $100 million.

A yield of 3.5% per annum (APY) will be integrated into a single base rate that users already receive through the Grvt Earn product. This is an addition to existing passive income sources, including integration with the Aave protocol. Essentially, the platform materially rewards clients for providing liquidity: after making a deposit, the user automatically starts earning income.

According to my data from the RWA.xyz analytics platform, Ondo Finance's total assets under management (AUM) currently stands at approximately $2.59 billion. This capital is distributed across two key products:

• USDY — $2.1 billion, deployed across eight networks;
• OUSG — $500 million, available only to qualified investors from the US.

USDY is a tokenized instrument backed by short-term US Treasury bonds and bank deposits. Grvt's planned position of $100 million would represent about 3.8% of USDY's current AUM, which is a quite significant contribution to the product's liquidity.

This partnership is a vivid marker of a broader trend: tokenized Treasury bonds are ceasing to be just an investment product and are becoming a foundational infrastructure layer for DeFi platforms. For Ondo, this is also an elegant solution to the distribution problem, which has long been a bottleneck in scaling USDY. The integration with Grvt Earn allows for expanding reach without the need for a direct retail market entry.

Grvt operates on the ZKsync L2 solution. In September 2025, the platform raised $19 million in a Series A round, and on July 30, 2026, the GRVT token TGE took place.

Meanwhile, another key player, Coinbase, is actively expanding its footprint in the RWA segment. On August 11, the exchange's management announced the opening of an international tokenization hub in Abu Dhabi. This became possible after obtaining a financial services license from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority of the Abu Dhabi Global Market. Coinbase intends to use this license to offer digital securities backed by underlying equities.

This move comes amid growing interest from traditional financial institutions in tokenization. The world's largest asset managers and banks are actively moving funds, bonds, and equities onto blockchain rails. Proponents of the technology see it as a way to simplify round-the-clock transfer of securities, enable near-instant settlement of trades, and use them as collateral in on-chain markets. The new division in Abu Dhabi will operate in parallel with Coinbase's derivatives business in Dubai, creating two anchor bases for international expansion beyond the US market.

My comment: Such steps are clear proof that tokenization is moving from the pilot project stage into a phase of large-scale adoption. However, one should not forget about the risks: the conflict over control at Ondo Finance following the founder's death reminds us that even the most promising projects need transparent governance and a clear legal framework. The RWA market is becoming too large to ignore these fundamental issues.