Capital markets are reaching a turning point. 

Over $28 billion in real-world assets (RWAs) have already been tokenized on public blockchains, more than doubling in the past year. Real-world assets (RWAs) are traditional financial or physical assets - such as equities, bonds, real estate, commodities, or private market instruments - that are represented digitally on a blockchain through tokenization.

RWAs bring offchain value onchain, merging the permissionless and programmable nature of crypto with the scale of traditional markets. Among these assets, equities stand out as the next frontier - unlocking programmability, composability, and global access for the world’s most established asset class.

Benefits of equities coming onchain:

• 24/7 global trading: Tokenized equities can be traded anytime, making them accessible for trading 24/7/365.
• Fractional ownership: Users can buy fractions of shares at minimal amounts, increasing accessibility to equity ownership.
• Instant settlement & composability: Settlement occurs onchain with near-zero latency. Tokens can be deployed as collateral, pooled in AMMs, or used across DeFi protocols.
• Open and transparent: Enables more transparent and open access, especially for non-U.S. users facing high fees or limited access via traditional brokers.

With clearer regulatory frameworks emerging across the U.S and other countries, and institutional adoption from the likes of BlackRock, Visa, and PayPal, widespread adoption of tokenized equities appears to be only a matter of time.

McKinsey projects that the total market capitalization of tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), excluding stablecoins, could reach $2 trillion by 2030. Beyond efficiency, these assets offer auditability, automated compliance, and interoperability with DeFi, enabling equities to flow seamlessly across global financial networks.

‍

Unlocking tokenized equities with performant, composable DEX infrastructure

For equities to come onchain, it requires infrastructure that is both performant and composable. This is where Solana’s architecture delivers unique advantages. Solana enables settlement to occur in near real-time. With sub-second finality, near-zero fees, and proven resilience under Nasdaq-scale transaction loads, Solana provides the throughput and reliability needed for global equity trading onchain.

‍

‍

At the same time, its Token Extensions natively support programmable compliance like KYC/KYB, automated policy enforcement, and corporate actions, reducing the need for custom contract development. This integrated model positions Solana as a purpose-built network for digital securities issuance.

Trading infrastructure is the other half of the equation. Tokenized equity markets will also require deep, efficient liquidity in order to compete with traditional markets. Solana’s DEX ecosystem is already integrating tokenized stocks into its liquidity pools, enabling real use cases like AMM swaps, a first step. Tokenized assets can also plug directly into DeFi markets via composable, compliance-gated liquidity pools and wrapped SPL tokens - enabling tokenized equities to be used as collateral in lending protocols and integrated into automated strategies.

‍

The emergence of tokenized equities on Solana

The momentum is already visible. xStocks, launched in mid-2025, brings more than 60 U.S. equities and ETFs onchain as fully backed, tradable SPL tokens. By leveraging Solana’s infrastructure, xStocks enables non-U.S. users to access stocks like Apple, Nvidia, and the S&P 500, while making them usable across both centralized venues and DeFi protocols.

‍

‍

Backed by actual shares via a regulated custodian, each SPL token is fully pegged 1:1 to the underlying equity. xStocks are integrated both with centralized exchanges like Kraken and Bybit, alongside DeFi protocols and apps like Raydium, Kamino, and Phantom.

xStocks surpassed $300 million in trading volume within four weeks of launch and by early August 2025 it had reached $2.24 billion in volume across all venues - representing 58% of all tokenized-stock trading.

Meanwhile, Superstate’s “Opening Bell” platform takes a regulated-first approach, enabling companies to issue publicly registered equity directly onchain (not synthetics or wrappers) via a registered blockchain-enabled transfer agent. Superstate supports real company shares, enabling 24/7 trading, programmability, and DeFi integration, while fostering paths for private firms to up-list to broader markets.

Together, these projects illustrate two complementary paths: democratized, DeFi-native access to bluechip equities through composable tokens and institutionally-compliant issuance aligned with U.S. securities law that will enable companies to go public onchain.

However, as onchain RWA adoption accelerates and new platforms emerge across a number of chains and ecosystems, institutional grade trading infrastructure will be needed to power this massive new onchain market if it hopes to truly compete with TradFi.

‍

Institutional grade trading infrastructure built to power the future of onchain equities

0x APIs offer the infrastructure layer to unify DEX equity liquidity and deliver a seamless trading experience to users.

‍

‍

• Best-in-class aggregation: 0x APIs aggregate liquidity across hundreds of sources, including AMMs and our proprietary RFQ liquidity.
• Optimal trade execution: 0x utilizes a state-of-the-art pricing engine to deliver optimal trade execution - bringing a CEX-like experience to DeFi with lightning fast latency and the lowest revert rate in the industry. 
• Institutional-grade reliability: Enterprise grade services you can build your business on, battle-tested with 99.98% uptime. 0x APIs are built with security first and multiple third party audits to ensure there are no vulnerabilities to exploit.
• Support for cross-chain expansion: As tokenized equities become accessible across different chains and ecosystems, 0x’s interoperability tools will help maintain seamless liquidity access across chains. Making it easy for platforms and apps to integrate cross-chain trading with a single API.
• Trusted Web3 Leader: 0x has been building in Web3 since 2017 and is a market leader in the onchain routing and execution space, trusted by over 500 companies, including Coinbase, Robinhood, Phantom, and more.

By being able to efficiently aggregate liquidity and deliver optimal execution across Solana’s DEX ecosystem and beyond, 0x will ensure that tokenized equities achieve the same liquidity depth and execution quality as today’s most liquid markets.

0x’s cross-chain capabilities will also prepare the ecosystem for a multi-chain RWA future, where tokenized equities live across Solana, Ethereum, and many other networks but require unified liquidity access.

What’s clear is that tokenized RWAs, including tokenized equities, are no longer theoretical - they are quickly becoming the next phase of global financial infrastructure.

Solana provides the technical foundation unlocking this potential today, while trading infrastructure like 0x will ensure deep liquidity and CEX-like execution quality across onchain RWA markets.

We are delivering on a vision where equities are globally accessible, permissionless, and open to everyone from day one.

‍