Original author: flowie, ChainCatcher
Original editor: Nian Qing, ChainCatcher
The most critical driving force behind this bull market that started in 2024 is the traditional financial asset management giants led by BlackRock.
In the recently launched altcoin season, the first to lead the rise are the RWA, payment and other tracks that traditional financial giants have focused on. Among them, the tokens Ondo, CRV, ENA and other tokens closely related to traditional asset management giants such as BlackRock have seen very impressive increases. In the sharp decline of the market on the 10th and 11th, these tokens are also relatively resistant to declines or rebound quickly.
Empowering traditional finance, especially projects supported by traditional financial giants, may be one of the most certain directions in this bull market. ChainCatcher briefly sorted out the relevant projects. (Not including Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana, XRP encrypted ETFs)
BlackRock
In March this year, BlackRock launched the tokenized fund BUIDL through the compliant tokenization platform Securitize, and its current scale exceeds US$550 million.
Currently, most of BUIDL is still deployed on Ethereum. Last month, BlackRock announced the launch of BUIDL funds on Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, OP and Polygon. The partners or affiliates around BUIDL have performed well recently.
1. Ondo Finance (Ondo)
Ondo surged 40% last week to break through $1.93, a record high, and is currently trading at around $1.86. It has risen by more than 100% in the past month, and by more than 880% in the past year; its market value is nearly $2.6 billion, and FDV is more than $18 billion.
As the leading project in the RWA track, Ondo Finance’s close collaboration with BlackRock has helped boost its multiple rises.
Ondo Finances two core products are the tokenized U.S. Treasury product OUSG. Previously, the vast majority of OUSGs investment portfolio was BlackRocks iShares Short-Term Treasury Bond ETF (NASDAQ: SHV). In March this year, after BlackRock announced the launch of the tokenized fund BUIDL, Ondo also reallocated most of OUSGs assets to BUIDL. OUSG currently has a TVL of more than $180 million and has provided clients with more than $25 million in returns since its launch.
In addition to its close ties with BlackRock, Ondo Finance also counts Morgan Stanley, Ankura Trust, Clear Street and NAV Consulting as partners in its ecosystem directory published by X this year.
Most of the core team members of Ondo Finance also come from traditional well-known asset management companies. Its co-founder and CEO Nathan Allman was in charge of the global encrypted digital market in the digital asset department of Goldman Sachs. The other core members of Ondo Finance also come from top asset management companies such as Goldman Sachs, McKinsey, and Bridgewater.
In addition to U.S. Treasuries, Ondo Finance will also launch Ondo Global Markets on February 6, 2025, which will tokenize stocks and bonds on the chain.
2. Curve (CRV)
As a veteran DeFi leader, CRVs recent rise is also related to its cooperation with BlackRock. Curve is an important partner of BlackRock in its entry into DeFi.
On November 30, Curve announced that it had partnered with blockchain network Elixir to expand BlackRock’s tokenized money market fund BUIDL’s access to DeFi. Users will soon be able to use BlackRock BUIDL to mint Elixer’s yield stablecoin deUSD. CRV subsequently rose 60% from $0.5 to $0.8, approaching $1.3 on December 7.
As of press time, it is temporarily reported at $1.16. In terms of the increase, CRV has risen by nearly 300% in the past month; the market value exceeds $1.4 billion, and FDV exceeds $2.5 billion. The highest price in history of CRV was $60.5 in August 2020, and the lowest price in history was $0.18 in August this year.
In addition to the cooperation with BlackRock, Curves market demand has also surged after the bull market. Curve also said that within two weeks of Trump taking office, Curves revenue had doubled from the previous average of $268,000 to $581,000.
Recently, CurveDAO also launched the interest-bearing stablecoin Savings crvUSD (scrvUSD) to expand new use cases.
3. Ethena (ENA)
On November 29, stablecoin issuer Ethena and tokenization platform Securitize announced that they will work together to launch the stablecoin USDtb to participate in Sky (formerly MakerDAO)s lending platform Sparks $1 billion tokenization competition.
The reserves of the USDtb stablecoin will be invested in BlackRocks USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL), and USDtb will be the only stablecoin backed by BUIDL.
Influenced by this news, ENA continued to rise from around $0.7. Last week, it reached a high of $1.14 and has now fallen back to $1.1. In the past month, it has risen by nearly 80%, with a market value of over $3.2 billion and FDV of over $16.5 billion.
Ethena is also a project in which Franklin Templeton participated in the investment.
4. Velo (VELO)
Velo is a blockchain-based global settlement network that provides fast, secure and low-cost cross-border payments for individuals and businesses. DWF Labs made a strategic investment of $10 million in it last year.
In September this year, Velo announced that it had integrated BlackRock’s tokenized BUIDL fund into its USDV stablecoin, providing seamless trading and yield opportunities for more than 1 million users in Southeast Asia.
VELO surged 50% last week to break through $0.03, and has now fallen back to around $0.026. It has risen by more than 84% in the past month, with a market value of nearly $200 million, and FDV is nearly $800 million.
Fidelity
5. Chainlink (LINK)
Oracle networks are also indispensable for financial institutions to tokenize assets. Chainlink can help institutions link on-chain and off-chain data and unlock some DeFi use cases.
This year, Chainlink has collaborated with a number of traditional asset management and crypto leaders, Web2 giants, and the Trump crypto project.
Chainlink has partnered with Fidelity International and Sygnum to bring the net asset value (NAV) data of Fidelity’s $6.9 billion institutional liquidity fund to the blockchain in real time. Chainlink has also completed a pilot project with Swiss asset management giant UBS and SWIFT to provide settlement for tokenized fund subscription and redemption operations through the SWIFT network.
21 Shares integrated Chainlink’s Proof of Reserve system to provide transparency for its Ethereum ETF; Sony’s L2 network Soneium also chose Chainlink as a partner.
It is worth mentioning that the Trump family’s crypto project World Liberty recently announced that it will adopt Chainlink’s on-chain data and cross-chain connection standards. In the past 9 hours, World Liberty also purchased more than 40,000 LINK.
Last week, the price of LINK broke through $20 and reached a high of $27. After a brief decline, it rose again today to break through $29, a 24-hour surge of nearly 30%. In the past month, LINK has also risen by nearly 100%. The last time LINK was above $20 was in January 2020. The highest price in LINK history was $52.88 in May 2021.
As of press time, LINK’s market value exceeded US$18 billion and FDV’s market value exceeded US$28.9 billion.
Morgan
6. Avalanche (Avax)
Avax, the Avalanche token, is also a token that has seen good growth in the recently launched altcoin season. Avax reached a high of $55 last week and has now fallen back to around $50, up more than 37% in the past month. Avax currently has a market value of over $20.5 billion, and FDV is nearly $36 billion.
From the news perspective, the recent rise in Avax may be related to Avalanches layout and growth in RWA, in addition to the hype caused by the founder of Ava Labs hinting that it is in dialogue with the new US government to promote cooperation.
Avalanche has a great advantage in developing RWA, which allows developers or enterprises to create their own independent subnets.
Some RWA projects can therefore create dedicated subnets based on the legal requirements of different countries or regions to flexibly meet cooperation requirements.
JPMorgan Chase and Avalanche have a close partnership, and its digital asset platform Onyx uses Avalanche to create a tokenized fund.
In addition, other asset management giants and banks, payment giants, government agencies, and stablecoin giants have adopted Avalanche.
In November, BlackRock announced that Avalanche was one of the multiple public chains it was expanding. Tether announced the launch of Hadron, an asset tokenization platform, and Avalanche was also among the first public chains hosted.
In October, Latin American bank Littio abandoned Ethereum in favor of Avalanche.
In August, Franklin Templeton expanded its tokenized money market fund (FOBXX), which had previously traded on Stellar, Polygon, and Arbitrum, to the Avalanche network.
Earlier this year, Citibank, in partnership with WisdomTree and Wellington Management, also conducted a tokenization proof-of-concept trial for private equity funds on Avalanche’s subnet Spruce. The California Department of Motor Vehicles also digitized the state’s 42 million vehicle ownership certificates on Avalanche.
Franklin Templeton
Franklin Templetons tokenized fund FOBXX currently has a scale of over US$440 million. It was initially issued on the Stellar blockchain and subsequently expanded to Arbitrum, Polygon, Avalanche, Aptos, Ethereum, and Base.
Franklin Templeton has invested in about 30 crypto projects, including Aptos (APT),
Ethena (ENA), Sui (SUI), Puffer Finance (PUFFER), SHRAPNEL (SHRAP), LayerZero (ZRO), Spectral (SPEC), Arcade (ARC) have 8 issued tokens.
Puffer Finance, Ethena and SHRAPNEL are the projects invested in the past year. The tokens of PUFFER and ENA, the two projects invested this year, have seen the most impressive growth. As mentioned earlier, Ethena has cooperated with BlackRock Tokenization Fund on stablecoins, so I will not elaborate on it.
7. Stellar (XLM)
Stellar is another payment network founded by Ripple co-founder Jed McCaleb. More than half of Franklin Templeton’s tokenized fund FOBXX’s TVL is in Stellar.
Stellar also has a partnership with WisdomTree, and WisdomTree and other short-term Treasury digital funds are also issued on Stellar. WisdomTree launched the WisdomTree Prime app, which also uses the Stellar network to launch in 41 states.
XLM has risen several times in the past month, breaking through $0.6 at its highest point, and has now fallen back to around $0.44, with an increase of more than 260% in the past month. The market value exceeds $13.3 billion, and the FDV exceeds $22.1 billion.
8. Su i (SUI)
In addition to investing in Sui, Franklin Templeton also announced a strategic partnership with Sui in November, focusing on supporting Sui ecosystem builders and deploying new technologies using the Sui blockchain protocol.
Sui is currently trading at $4.81, up more than 53% in the past month, with a market value of over $14.1 billion, and FDV of over $48.1 billion.
9. Aptos (APT)
In addition to investments, Franklin Templeton’s tokenized fund FOBXX has now expanded to Aptos.
APT is currently trading at $13.87, with little increase in the past month, reaching a high of over $15. Its market value exceeds $7.4 billion, and its FDV reaches $15.6 billion.
10. Puffer Finance (PUFFER)
Puffer Finance is a liquidity pledge agreement based on EigenLayer. In Puffer Finances $18 million investment in April this year, Franklin Templeton and Avon Ventures, a venture capital fund associated with Fidelity Investments parent company, both participated in the investment.
Last week, PUFFER also rose sharply to nearly $1, and now it has fallen back to $0.82, a rise of nearly 130%. Its current market value is more than $84 million, and its FDV is over $820 million.
11. LayerZero (ZRO)
LayerZero, as one of the three cross-chain giants, has also seen a good rise recently. Last week, LayerZeros token ZRO hit a record high, breaking through $7.4, and has now fallen back to $6.98. It has risen by more than 77% in the past month. ZRO has a market value of $760 million and FDV of $6.9 billion.
It is worth noting recently that LayerZero (ZRO) will hold a referendum on December 19 to start the fee conversion.
The LayerZero protocol may charge a fee equal to the total cost of verification and execution of cross-chain messages. If the fee switch is activated through governance, the referendum treasury contract will collect the fees on the local chain and destroy them.
12. SHRAPNEL (SHRAP)
SHRAPNEL is a AAA FPS game, and its investment team also includes well-known institutions such as Polychain, IOSG Ventures, Dragonfly, DeFiance Capital, Mechanism Capital, and Spartan Group.
However, the Shrapnel team had an internal conflict at the end of last year, and Shrapnel game studio Neon Machine filed a lawsuit against several investors, claiming that they were trying to seize control of the company and its coffers.
SHRAP is currently priced at $0.04, with a market value of over $33 million, and FDV exceeds $124 million.
13. Spectral (SPEC)
Spectral was originally a machine intelligence network on the Base chain, and is now positioned as a platform to help users implement smart contract AI programming.
In March of this year, Spectral launched the artificial intelligence application Syntax, which can help anyone launch smart contracts for Ethereum and dozens of other blockchains. Users can compile, debug and deploy Solidity code generated by artificial intelligence.
In addition to Franklin Templetons investment, Polychain Capital, Galaxy Digital, Samsung, Circle Ventures, and Jump Capital are also early investors in Spectral.
The AI sector has led the market recently. SPEC broke through the historical high of US$18 last week and has now fallen back to US$13; the market value exceeds US$183 million and FDV exceeds US$1.3 billion.
14. Arcade (ARC)
Arcade is the GameFi platform that gives the community the opportunity to earn meaningful rewards from a variety of Play-and-Earn metaverse games without having to play the games directly or own in-game NFTs. Franklin Templeton invested in Arcade in 2021, and Pantera Capital, Crypto.com Capital, Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, GSR, LD Capital, KuCoin Labs and other well-known institutions are its early investors.
Earlier this year, Crypto.com Capital, Solana Ventures, Shima Capital, GSR, and KuCoin Labs invested in Arcade again.
ARC is currently trading at $0.038, with a market value of less than $1 million and an FDV of more than $30 million.
VanEck
In addition to its collaboration with Pudgy Penguins, in October this year, VanEck announced the launch of a $30 million venture capital fund to support the development of the encryption and AI industries.
It has also invested in at least 7 crypto projects before, among which GEODNET (GEOD), Parallel (PRIME), and 1inch (1INCH) have already issued tokens.
15. Pudgy Penguins (PENGU)
Last week, Pudgy Penguins, a fat penguin that plans to issue coins in 2024 and has airdrop expectations, also saw its floor price soar to over 27 ETH. Pudgy Penguins also has some connections with VanEck.
In June this year, asset management company VanEck changed its X platform social media profile to Pudgy Penguins, a fat penguin, and added the caption: The boss thinks this is too cute, and it has to be PFP. Pudgy Penguins also appeared in VanEcks ETH ETF promotional video.
However, recently, Pudgy Penguins token plan was launched on Solana.
16. Parallel (PRIME)
Parallel is a sci-fi themed trading card game (TCG). The team members of this project include senior developers of AAA games such as Assassins Creed and Valorant, as well as the participation of YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley.
In addition to VanEck, Paradigm, Solana Ventures, Base, Amber Group, Spartan Group and others participated in the investment. The first round of financing was in 2021, when Paradigm received a US$50 million investment, with a valuation of US$500 million.
This year, Parallel also launched the AI survival simulation game Colony on Solana and released the AI encryption game moon landing plan.
PRIME is currently priced at $15.78, up more than 53% in just one month. Its current market value exceeds $566 million, and FDV exceeds $1.7 billion.
17. GEODNET (GEOD)
GEODNET is a DEPIN project that uses a novel rooftop space weather station to collect dense, real-time geospatial data from the Earth and its atmosphere. In addition to VanEck, Animoca Brands, Pantera Capital, CoinFund and IoTeX are all investors. Animoca Brands has also reached a strategic partnership with GEODNET.
GEOD is currently priced at $0.24, with no significant increase recently. Its market value exceeds $48 million, and FDV exceeds $240 million.
18. 1inch (1INCH)
The old DEX aggregator 1inch is also the second largest aggregator in terms of market share. 1INCH broke through $0.6 last week and has now fallen back to $0.51, up more than 63% in the past month; its market value exceeds $720 million and its FDV exceeds $777 million.
After the price of the currency rose last week, the 1inch team sold 1INCH for three consecutive days from the 5th to the 7th, exchanging a total of 15.698 million 1INCH for 8.38 million USDC, with an average selling price of US$0.533.
WisdomTree
In addition to applying for XRP ETF, WisdomTree has also been actively tokenizing funds and other RWA products recently.
WisdomTree recently announced that platform users can now directly spend funds from the WisdomTree Government Money Market Digital Fund (WTGXX) through their Visa debit cards. Currently, the fund manages approximately $12 million in assets.
Additionally, WisdomTree has launched the RWA platform, which lets users access its custody fund tokens through any wallet or blockchain network, with plans to eventually expand access to these assets.
WisdomTree also obtained a NYDFS license and will launch the encryption application WisdomTree Prime
WisdomTrees short-term Treasury digital fund launched in 2022 was also first deployed on Ethereum and Stellar. WisdomTree also conducted a tokenization proof-of-concept test for private equity funds on the Avalanche subnet Spruce.
Goldman Sachs
Goldman Sachs layout in the crypto field in 2025 is also worth paying attention to.
Recently, there is market news that the CEO of Goldman Sachs said that if regulators allow it, it will evaluate participating in the Bitcoin or Ethereum market. Goldman Sachs attention to cryptocurrencies other than Bitcoin may also be an important shift.
Earlier, the head of Goldman Sachs digital assets said in the middle of this year that it plans to launch three tokenization projects by the end of the year, including its first U.S. project. Goldman Sachs is expanding its cryptocurrency services, focusing on the field of tokenization, and issuing real world assets such as money market funds and real estate through public or private blockchains.
At present, Goldman Sachs has not yet disclosed more project content and partners of the tokenized fund, so please continue to pay attention.
Goldman Sachs has previously invested in asset management or infrastructure projects such as Circle, BitGO, Blockdaemon, and Certik.
