RWA Perpetuals Hit $347 Billion Monthly Volume, Outpacing Tokenisation Growth

A commentary piece by Martin Lee, markets insight lead at DWF Labs, argues that perpetual futures contracts tied to real-world assets (RWAs) are scaling faster and will prove more consequential than tokenisation itself. Lee cites RWA perp volume reaching $347 billion in May 2026, a 1,472-times increase from the $230 million traded at the start of 2025, with cumulative exchange volume hitting $1.32 trillion by end of May, thirteen times the total recorded across all of 2025.

The piece attributes the surge to two forces: crypto traders seeking exposure to commodities and AI equities, and the structural advantages perps hold over traditional instruments such as futures and options. Perps operate continuously, carry no expiry, and strip out the complexity of derivatives pricing, a combination that allowed oil perps on Hyperliquid to reflect the Iran conflict before the CME reopened. Daily open interest on decentralised exchanges alone reached a new high of $4.5 billion in July.

Lee points to pre-IPO perp markets as the clearest illustration of the format’s edge over tokenisation in terms of speed to market. When Cerebras listed on Nasdaq in May, Hyperliquid’s pre-IPO perp had priced it at $354, within roughly one percent of the $350 opening price and well ahead of the $185 IPO price set the night before. RWA perps have grown from 1.3 percent of onchain perp volume at the start of the year to 31 percent, and Robinhood is already offering the product to European customers.

While the wallet count for tokenised equities (180,845) still exceeds that for equity perps (24,378), perp holder numbers are compounding at roughly 33 percent a month against spot’s 17 percent. The broader argument is that onchain products reaching scale tend to be adopted upstream by regulated intermediaries, and perps may follow the same path as tokenisation did in attracting institutional attention.