Somewhere between Wall Street’s opening bell and its closing one, crypto decided it didn’t need either. Perpetual decentralized exchanges now list more than 1,000 real-world asset markets, and roughly three out of every four of them let you trade tokenized versions of publicly listed stocks.
The milestone, tracked by DefiLlama, marks a shift in what on-chain derivatives platforms actually look like in 2026. They’re no longer just venues for leveraged Bitcoin and Ethereum bets.
The numbers behind the thousand-market mark
Of the 1,000-plus RWA perp markets, 747 are tied to public equities. Those equity markets carry an open interest of $2.586 billion, which represents close to 47% of total RWA open interest across all perp DEXs. The 24-hour trading volume for public equity perps clocks in at $1.681 billion.
Other RWA categories, including precious metals, equity indices, and oil, exist but trail far behind in both market count and activity.
