From July 13 to 19, trading volume for Real World Assets (RWA) on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid exceeded the combined turnover of all other categories for the first time, according to data from Blockworks.

Source: Blockworks.

During that week, tokenized assets accounted for $25.1 billion, representing 52% of the platform's total trading volume of $48.2 billion. Previously, no category had ever captured more than half of the exchange's turnover.

Lorenzo Valente, Director of Digital Asset Research at ARK Invest, described this trend as "a new era for DeFi."

We are entering a new era for DeFi.

For the first time ever, @HyperliquidX generated more volume from RWAs than crypto in a single week. RWAs accounted for 54% of total trading volume.

An even more interesting trend: since June, single stocks have overtaken indices and… pic.twitter.com/INbfCwc5pJ

— Lorenzo Valente (@LorenzoARK) July 23, 2026

"The RWA market on Hyperliquid alone surpassed the total trading volume of cryptocurrency perpetual contracts on all other DEXs," he commented.

The platform's revenue for the same week reached $7.6 million, according to DefiLlama. In this regard, Hyperliquid ranked third among crypto applications, trailing behind stablecoin issuers Tether and Circle, which generated $112 million and $45 million, respectively.

Tokenization Expands Beyond Crypto Markets

Jeremy Allaire, co-founder and CEO of Circle, referred to the rise in RWA trading on Hyperliquid as "a significant structural shift" in the crypto market. He noted that the industry is moving away from speculation on "endogenous digital commodities."

This is a major structural shift, and possibly the turning point in the evolution of crypto markets away from speculating on endogenous digital commodities and into crypto market infrastructure underpinning deeper global markets. Thrilled to have Circle and USDC play such a… https://t.co/wHQt8UtWk3

— Jeremy Allaire - jerallaire.arc (@jerallaire) July 24, 2026

The segment is also growing beyond Hyperliquid. In the past month, the number of RWA holders increased by nearly 35% to 1.3 million. The total value of these assets rose by 3.5% to $36.7 billion.

Source: RWA.xyz.

It is worth noting that in June, the open interest volume on Hyperliquid surpassed $10 billion, placing the protocol third among the largest platforms for trading perpetual futures.