Forty-four times more in twelve months. The a16z crypto fund estimates monthly volume in August 2026 of perpetual futures contracts backed by real-world assets at $117.3 billion. And 86% of these exchanges now pass through on-chain protocols.
Behind these figures, gold, oil, currency pairs, stock indices and now stocks are traded 24 hours a day from a wallet, without a broker or opening hours.
Key Points
Perpetual derivatives backed by gold, currencies, indices or stocks generated $117.3 billion in August, a 44-fold increase in volume in one year
More than eight out of ten transactions now take place on-chain rather than on centralized platforms
These contracts do not tokenize anything: a price oracle and stablecoin collateral are enough to create exposure
On the European side, MiCA does not cover these products; they remain under MiFID II, and ESMA caps the leverage for the general public, a framework that DEXs do not apply
RWA: $117.3 billion in perps in one month
On Wednesday September 23, the a16z crypto investment fund, the digital assets branch of Andreessen Horowitz, published an article on X discussing the rise of perpetual markets linked to real-world assets (RWA).
In total, the fund identified $117.3 billion in volume in these markets in one month. For comparison, a year earlier, the same segment was around $2.7 billion per month.
The shift is due to a unique product, the perpetual future or futures contract without expiration date. So without expiration yes, but it is continuously rebalanced thanks to a financing rate paid between buyers and sellers, the only mechanism which keeps its price glued to that of the underlying. Applied to a barrel of Brent or an Nvidia share, it offers exposure settled in stablecoins, without any asset changing hands.
On the ground, liquidity has been concentrated in a handful of protocols. Ostium, deployed on Arbitrum, specializes in commodities and Forex. Avantis on Base completes the offer with other indices. Finally, Hyperliquid opened its HIP-3 standard in October 2025, which allows any team to deploy its own perpetual market, including stocks.
Perps RWA: 86% of volume now on-chain
But the real break lies in the distribution of these 117.3 billion dollars. Indeed, 86% are exchanged on-chain, or around 101 billion, compared to only 16 billion on centralized platforms. CFD brokers and CEXs still concentrated two thirds of the volume followed until November 2025 when the shift then took place. Hyperliquid opened the door to HIP-3s the month before, just a coincidence?
The weekend weighs heavily in this migration. When the CME and Nasdaq close on Friday evening, gold and American indices continue to trade on the on-chain protocols until Sunday, and traders find there a hedge against the opening gaps on Monday. Market makers, the spread to capture.
The regulatory blind spot of perps on real assets
This architecture has a direct consequence. Nothing is tied up in a depository. No transfer agent registers a bearer in the register, and the protocol makes do with a price oracle and a pool of stablecoin collateral. Adding cocoa or the Mexican peso costs a line of configuration, where tokenizing a stock requires months of legal work.
Hester Peirce, Commissioner of the SEC, already warned issuers of tokenized shares on July 9, 2025.
âTokenized securities remain securities. »
Hester Peirce, Commissioner of the Securities and Exchange Commission
Equity perps do not fall under this sentence: they are treated as derivatives and in principle come under the CFTC in the United States, even if the border with the SEC is not definitively clear. Most protocols also block American addresses. In Europe, MiCA does not cover derivatives backed by non-crypto underlyings, which remain within the scope of MiFID II. ESMA caps retail leverage at 5:1 on an individual stock, 20:1 on gold or a major index, and 30:1 on major currency pairs. DEXs commonly display 50 to 100 times the stake on currency pairs.
