💸 S&P Rates Sky, New RWA & Stablecoin Chains, and More RWA News

Summary and Key Takeaways

1. S&P Issues First DeFi Protocol Rating: “B-” for Sky Protocol

Traditional finance is adjusting to the new onchain economy and that goes for risk assessments and credit ratings as well. Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch have all been involved in rating bonds and funds but now we’re seeing the first DeFi protocol being issued a credit rating. Sky (formerly Maker) got a “B- (Stable Outlook)” rating from S&P on the creditworthiness of Sky’s liabilities, the USDS and DAI stablecoins and the sUSDS and sDAI savings tokens. Overall there are concerns over governance centralization & low voter turnout, reliance on the founder, weak capitalization, and other factors. If blockchain will be used to facilitate the future of capital markets it makes sense that the ratings agencies are adjusting and creating relevant methodologies to take these factors into account. This will continue to translate investor confidence in onchain assets as they migrate from TradFi to DeFi rails.

2. Treasuries for USDC: Full Onchain Financing on Canton Network with Major Players

Tokenized treasuries have referred to tokenized money market funds and other similar structures, however a big problem many face is that at the end of the day they’re bound by the underlying treasuries’ traditional market hours. We're now seeing the real-time, fully onchain financing of U.S. Treasuries against USDC. Done on a weekend, this group of financial institutions showed how they can purchase a treasury using stablecoin outside of normal market hours on Canton Network. Why is this significant? Collateral mobility on a 24/7 basis is the foundation of what’s to be built on top and this marks the start of enabling other assets to truly trade 24/7, reflected on everyone’s ledger without market-hour restrictions. With powerful players like Tradweb, Bank of America, Circle, Citadel, DTCC, Hidden Road, and more involved it’s exciting to think of what this working group could develop next after seeing this transaction’s success.

3. BNY Mellon to Take Over Management of OpenEden’s TBILL

The industry is maturing and here’s another example of that with OpenEden upgrading the management and custody of their TBILL to none other than BNY Mellon. This was already a quality offering as supported by Moody’s original “A” rating. This was downgraded to Baa-bf but having the large institution take over custody and investment management brings another level of legitimacy to the asset. According to Ledger Insights, Moody’s responded to their queries “noting the rating has been upgraded back to A-bf based on the appointment of BNY Mellon Investment Management Singapore as the investment manager.” The largest custodian is making multiple moves in the web3 space from managing Circle USDC’s reserve fund to their recent partnership with Goldman Sachs’ GS DAP. Now working with a token issuer will only increase their reach and participation in this new onchain economy. This pairs well as the TradFi and DeFi space continue to blend which even ratings agencies are adjusting to as we saw with Moody’s here and S&P with Sky earlier.

4. Siemens’ €300M Bond Trades on Secondary Markets: 360X

It’s been some time since we’ve really covered bonds, but this past week we heard a great update from Siemens. Their bond, which was issued back in September 2024, has now traded on secondary market venue 360X! The reason this is significant is because historically most bonds we track are institutional, in primary markets, and transacted among each other on private/permissioned blockchains. 

This could be the start of more onchain trading of fixed income products and hopefully more visibility as institutions continue to expand towards public ecosystems if they’re on private rails. If you’d like to learn more about this bond from its original issuance, visit the SIEMENS300M page on STM.co. You’ll notice it’s a 1-year bond, meaning this secondary market trade is happening just in time before the bond redeems in a few weeks. Will that redemption also use central bank money like its issuance? Will they try using a Euro stablecoin like Societe Generale’s? We’ll have to wait and see!

5. New Blockchains: Dinari, Stripe & Paradigm, and Circle

After the GENIUS Act gave stablecoins the green light the momentum has carried forward into IPOs, crypto treasury companies, bank applications, and of course more stablecoin issuers. This is just the beginning as RWAs as a whole have finally broken out as the talk of town and with that the new opportunities that arise. In this case we’re talking about having your own blockchain powering the RWA ecosystem. We’ve seen Robinhood, Coinbase, Securitize & Ethena, tZERO, and others announce theirs and this last week we’re seeing new ones enter the chat with RWAs, payments, and stablecoins as focuses.

The Dinari Financial Network is essentially a subnet of Avalanche which they refer to as L1s. This is meant to try to solve for liquidity fragmentation across blockchains, making it essentially an onchain order router or liquidity aggregator for tokenized stocks. Meanwhile on the stablecoin side, Stripe isn’t stopping with the Bridge acquisition in terms of infrastructure. Stripe is appointing Paradigm’s Matt Huang to lead their Tempo blockchain as CEO. Tempo is meant to be a payments-focused L1 blockchain compatible with Ethereum however other details are unclear.

Similarly, Circle is looking to launch Arc, with fintechs, payment service providers (PSPs), financial institutions, and global enterprises in mind. Solving for predictable fees, less volatile treasuries to pay gas from, payment sensitivity, and other concerns takes a village and Circle recognizes that. They’re making Arc an open L1 with some features being USDC as native gas, built-in FX engine, and a lot more purpose-built features. Overall these new blockchains also mean more RWA governance and utility tokens entering the market along with increased need for interoperability providers like Chainlink, Wormhole, LayerZero, Axelar, and others.

This is not financial advice.

RWA Foundation & WALLY DAO

Check out this new ad for RWAs created by STM in-house using AI and a weekend of messing around. Learn More at WALLYDAO.xyz

STM.co Data

This is not financial advice.

Think Like Herwig

Hello readers,

Stablecoins have officially set off another protocol mania which also means more native tokens tied to RWAs are coming soon! Nobody wants more chains but instead of being put off about it (or threatened by it as you can see from some vocal chain pundits on CT) I’ve decided to embrace the new wave of RWA chains as an opportunity. 

After all, crypto was always meant to be the next evolution of finance and therefore dominated by RWAs so another slew of protocols shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone. Coinbase truly paved the way for corporations to see blockchains as an enterprise business. I suspect it won’t be long until Visa or even PayPal considers this move, maybe even some banks in a permissioned or DLT model. Maybe acquisitions like R3 or stablecoin companies are more interesting to TradFi. 

Regardless, if you needed more proof that RWAs are the face of this cycle, there you have it. The race to tokenize money, assets, stocks, and all markets (on one’s own chain) is on!

Happy tokenizing, 
Herwig “Happy” Konings
CEO, Security Token Group 

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Reports

RWA Tokenization: Key Trends and 2025 Market Outlook

Check out a report we contributed to: RWA Tokenization: Key Trends and 2025 Market Outlook. Led by Brickken, this report brings multiple parties together in diving into tokenization, with STM.co supporting with both data and some of the written sections.

What’s Inside?

✅ A Breakdown of Tokenization and Related Benefits
✅ Key advantages for issuers, investors, and institutions
✅ How the market is evolving and trends shaping adoption in 2025
✅ What’s next? Expert insights on regulation, DeFi integration, institutional involvement, and market growth

STM’s RWA Market Prediction for 2030

STM.co is proud to release a thorough report on our prediction on the tokenized real world asset market growth. This report explores the variety of opportunities within each asset class to capture value on-chain.

Tokenization can be applied to just about any object and asset type. Art, carbon credits, life insurance, and other sub $5 trillion asset classes weren’t even considered in estimates.

In order for STM to derive its 2030 market predictions, the following asset classes were evaluated: currency, M2/M3, real estate, commodities, public equities, private companies and funds, bonds, credit and lending markets.

This is not financial or investment advice.

Helpful Resources

• $30 Trillion by 2030 - STM

• Global Tokenized Real Estate Market Guide 2024 - STM

• TokenizeThis 2024: Highlights and Key Takeaways - STM

• TokenizeThis 2023: Highlights and Key Takeaways - STM

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q4 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q3 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q2 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Q1 Extended - STA

• Real-World Asset Tokenization 2023 According to STM - STM

• Tokenizing an Asset in 3 Easy Steps - Security Token Show

• Rich Data in Private Assets - STM

• State of Security Tokens 2022 - STA

• State of Security Tokens 2023 - Institutional Edition - STA

• Tokenization for Institutions - What You Need to Know - STM, Arca (YouTube)