GlossaryIntermediate

Real-World Asset (RWA)

A traditional, off-chain asset — such as real estate, treasury bills, or a commodity — represented on-chain as a token.

A Real-World Asset (RWA) is a traditional, off-chain asset — such as real estate, government debt, private credit, or a commodity — represented on-chain through a token, intended to make the underlying asset more easily tradable, divisible, or usable within crypto applications.

The token's actual value rests entirely on the legal and custodial arrangement backing it — a token claiming to represent a real-world asset is only as trustworthy as the real-world entity actually holding and administering that asset. See Kaavon's dedicated RWA tokenization guide for how this works in practice.

Examples

A tokenized treasury-bill product lets a holder gain exposure to that traditional asset's yield through an on-chain token.
An RWA token's trustworthiness depends on the legal and custodial structure behind it, not just the smart contract code itself.