Arbitrum DAO commits $15.5m to tokenized RWAs in latest treasury move

Arbitrum DAO is doubling down on real-world asset investments with the approval of a proposal to allocate more funds to the sector.

On Feb. 18, the Arbitrum DAO announced that the community had approved the allocation of 35 million ARB into various stable assets. At the current Arbitrum (ARB) price of approximately $0.44, the total investment is valued at roughly $15.5 million.

The funds come from the project’s Stable Treasury Endowment Program, which previously allocated 35 million ARB to investments in six products in June 2024.

STEP is an initiative aimed at investing 1% of the Arbitrum DAO treasury into tokenized RWAs. The program seeks to diversify the DAO’s treasury while leveraging sector growth to generate yield.

The latest allocation is part of Arbitrum DAO’s STEP 2.0 initiative. It adds to the 35 million ARB from STEP 1.0 and 15 million ARB from treasury management, bringing the total RWA investments to 85 million ARB. According to Arbitrum DAO, this investment is currently one of the largest by a DAO.

“So far, STEP has accrued $450K in interest for the DAO,” Arbitrum Foundation said in a post on X.

In July last year, the Arbitrum community approved allocations to BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ondo Finance’s USDY, and Superstate’s USTB. Other tokenized asset products selected for investment included Mountain Protocol’s USDM, OpenEden’s TBILL, and Backed Finance’s bIB01.

Arbitrum’s growing presence in the RWA market is evident in the total amount of on-chain assets launched on the network in 2024. With BlackRock and Franklin Templeton among those expanding their products to Arbitrum, the network’s RWA market share surged from around $100,000 at the start of the year to approximately $70 million.

According to rwa.xyz data, Ethereum currently leads the RWA market with over $3.8 billion in assets. ZKSync Era ranks second with nearly $2 billion, while Stellar follows in third with about $380 million.