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Opinion of: Aishwary Gupta, global head of payments and RWA at Polygon Labs
Most of the RWA numbers making headlines are smoke and mirrors. Unless the industry course corrects, it risks eroding the institutional trust it has spent years trying to build. Every week brings another announcement claiming billions in tokenized assets. When institutional investors ask for basic details, however, the answers become mysteriously vague.
OpenAI was forced to move away himself from Robinhood’s claims that it offers access to tokenized shares, clarifying that this does not represent real equity in the company. In May 2025, the SEC charged Unicoin for investors cheat over the value of tokenized real estate business.
From the container double counting problem to the cool opaque status of many tokens, it is clear that the RWA revolution still faces major obstacles to gain credibility.
This is actively damaging to the institutional adoption that everyone claims to want. The industry’s obsession with vanity metrics undermines the very credibility that RWAs need, so the ecosystem can unlock the trillions of institutional capital waiting on the sidelines.
The industrial complex of metric vanity
“The biggest risk today is to assume that a legal wrapper and a blockchain alone create value,” Forbes quoted Ian Balina, CEO of Token Metrics, as saying. “Without true composability, reliable secondary markets and trusted custody, tokenized assets remain stuck in marketing bridges rather than investment portfolios.”
Related: The RWA platform is entering a new phase, expanding full access to onchain assets
He is right. Treating the numbers on dashboards as if they were all that mattered is actively harmful. Any inflated claims make it harder for legitimate projects to be taken seriously. When a pension fund’s due diligence team cannot distinguish between real implementations and phantom TVLs, they are not interested in choosing the real one. They would prefer to stay away completely.
Blockchain’s entire value proposition is transparency and verifiability. Yet here we are, asking institutions to trust numbers that we can’t (or don’t want to) show.
Solve the trust problem
Chains that cannot demonstrate verifiable activity or regulatory alignment are not only putting their users at risk, but also undermining the integrity of the entire blockchain ecosystem. They are inflating expectations and mining trust in the whole concept of tokenization.
To maintain momentum and deliver the benefits of RWAs, we urgently need transparent and regulated implementations that align with actual adoption, rather than fabricated metrics.
What does authentic RWA adoption look like? A good place to start is in Wyoming. In September, the Equality State launched America’s first state-backed stablecoin, FRNT, with full regulatory approvals and fully verifiable reserves. Or look at Japan, where JPYC is emerging as a legally complete yen stablecoin that is creating new demand for Japanese government bonds. These projects solve real payment problems. They are more than just dashboards with the volume moving back and forth.
The adoption of RWA also resembles the Philippines. initiative to chain government budget recordsthe purpose of fighting corruption and increasing transparency in public spending. This type of dashboard means millions of citizens can check their government’s financial records in real time. It’s the adoption that matters.
BlackRock’s BUIDL fund is now over $1 billion in AUM. This fund carries institutional quality money market funds onchain. of Apollo ACREDMeanwhile, it brings the efficiency of blockchain to the operation of credit markets. These are regulated financial products with real capital and real users.
Stripe’s decision to integrate blockchain rails for global payments came about because they needed to leverage a chain based on real transaction volume and reliability, not social media engagement.
The transparency test
Any blockchain that claims RWA leadership just needs to show the money. TVL numbers are too easy. Can you show regulatory approval? Are institutional partners willing to go on the record? Do the transaction volumes prove that people are actually using these assets? Can we audit smart contracts? Can we check the reservations?
A lot of legitimate RWA work is happening across the ecosystem, but you risk being drowned in hype unless we set standards that show real adoption.
The RWA revolution doesn’t need hype to be exciting. The actual adoption comes from a municipal bond issue that saves a city 50 basis points. Or, from a cross-border payment that settles in seconds, instead of days. It can come from a small business accessing credit markets that were previously closed to them.
This is not to say that numbers don’t matter. Spending $1 billion in RWA is meaningless if those assets cannot be audited, liquidated or traded. The next frontier is not inflated dashboards. It’s building trust. Projects that embrace verifiability, regulatory clarity and composable performance will define RWA 2.0 – and attract the trillions waiting to move down the chain.
When transparency and accountability are established, RWAs will reach even higher, unlocking trillions in institutional capital.
Opinion of: Aishwary Gupta, global head of payments and RWA at Polygon Labs.
This article is for general information purposes and is not intended to be and should not be taken as legal or investment advice. The views, thoughts and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
