[DigitalToday reporter Jae-won Choi (최재원)] The market for RWA perpetual futures that track prices of real-world assets such as stocks and commodities is growing rapidly. Cumulative trading volume topped $2 trillion (about 2,694 trillion won) before the third quarter ended.

As of Sept. 7 (local time), Cryptopolitan reported that third-quarter trading volume in RWA perpetual futures surpassed $2 trillion this year, based on figures compiled by Cryptorank. That is already up more than 67 percent from about $1.2 trillion (about 1,616.4 trillion won) in the second quarter. Monthly volume surged in July and August after topping $100 billion (about 134.7 trillion won) in June.

RWA perpetual futures allow investors to take derivatives exposure to an asset's price moves without holding actual stocks or commodities. The trading universe in on-chain derivatives markets, once centered on cryptocurrencies, is rapidly expanding to stocks, indexes, gold and crude oil.

Recent trading has been concentrated in some popular assets. On TradeXYZ, an S&P 500-linked contract was the most active, and gold and oil also posted high volume, based on DeFiLlama. Trading also crowded into AI and semiconductor-related names this month, including SK Hynix.

Trading is also shifting from centralized exchanges (CEX) to decentralized exchanges (DEX). Binance led the market for most of this year, but Hyperliquid's HIP-3 ecosystem grew rapidly in August. As of Aug. 24, HIP-3 accounted for more than 87 percent of RWA perpetual futures trading.

HIP-3 enables developers to open new perpetual futures markets quickly, bringing forward contract launches for high-interest names such as SK Hynix and China's CXMT.

The broader RWA market is also growing. RWA market capitalization topped $45 billion (about 60.615 trillion won), and 51.9 percent of it is run on Ethereum, based on Token Terminal. Still, the market remains small compared with the overall cryptocurrency market, and it remains to be seen whether the recent surge in derivatives trading will translate into long-term liquidity.