MetaMask integration benefits ineffective! ONDO drops 37% in a month, exposing the RWA token dilemma

Ondo integrates with MetaMask, offering 200 securities; ONDO drops 37% monthly to $0.28. Users can trade tokenized stocks like Tesla, but access is restricted in the US, Europe, and China. RWA tokens generally decline 26-79%, TVL increases by 544%, yet holders do not benefit, exposing structural flaws.

MetaMask Launches 200 Tokenized Securities but No One Can Use Them

MetaMask and Ondo Finance announced their integration on February 3rd at the Ondo Global Summit. This partnership will bring over 200 tokenized U.S. securities into MetaMask mobile wallets via Ondo Global Markets. In supported jurisdictions, users can now buy, hold, and trade tokenized versions of major stocks, including Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon. The service also includes silver ETF (SLV), gold ETF (IAU), and tech ETF (QQQ).

This integration is implemented through MetaMask Swaps on the Ethereum mainnet. Users can acquire Ondo Global Markets tokens with USDC, with trading open five days a week, 24 hours a day. Token transfers are also available around the clock. Joe Lubin, founder and CEO of Consensys and co-founder of Ethereum, said: “Entering the US market still relies on traditional channels. Brokerage accounts, decentralized apps, and rigid trading windows have not fundamentally changed. Bringing Ondo’s tokenized US stocks and ETFs directly into MetaMask demonstrates a more advanced model prototype.”

Ondo Finance President Ian De Bode emphasized the strategic value of reaching MetaMask’s user base. He pointed out that this integration introduces a pricing model comparable to traditional brokers like Robinhood into a self-custodial on-chain environment. This disintermediated stock trading should theoretically reduce fees, increase efficiency, and give users full control over their assets. From a product perspective, this is indeed a major fintech innovation.

However, despite the announcement’s prominence, careful analysis reveals many limitations. The list of excluded jurisdictions nearly covers all major global financial markets. Users in the US, European Economic Area, UK, Switzerland, Canada, China (including Hong Kong), Singapore, Japan, Korea, and Brazil cannot access the service. These restrictions effectively narrow the service scope to emerging markets with less regulation.

Regional restrictions may explain the muted market response. While this integration marks a technological milestone, the potential market remains small. Most MetaMask users are concentrated in the US, Europe, and developed Asian markets, which are precisely excluded. Although emerging markets have large populations, crypto penetration is low, and demand for US stocks is relatively limited. When your product can only serve secondary markets, no matter how advanced the technology, the commercial value is significantly diminished.

Critical Limitations of MetaMask Integration

Excludes Major Markets: US, EU, UK, China, Japan, Singapore users cannot access

Serves Only Emerging Markets: Actual available regions have low crypto penetration and stock investment demand

Misaligned MetaMask User Base: Most MetaMask users are in excluded developed markets

Limited Commercial Value: A technological milestone but severely limited market scale

This regional restriction is not an active choice by Ondo but a reluctant compromise due to regulatory realities. In the US and Europe, tokenized securities involve complex securities laws and cross-border regulatory coordination. Ondo has chosen to first test in less regulated markets, awaiting clearer regulations in major markets. However, this strategy’s cost is the difficulty in achieving scale in the short term.

Structural Flaws in RWA Token Value Accumulation

The ONDO token ignores the news. As of press time, ONDO trades at $0.2811, down 37.3% from last month. 24-hour price volatility is only 0.2%, indicating the market perceives little impact from this integration on token value. Monthly charts show ONDO’s price declining from around $0.45 in early January to about $0.28 now. MetaMask’s announcement has failed to reverse or even halt this downward trend.

Market data shows ONDO’s market cap at $1.37 billion, with total value locked (TVL) exceeding $2 billion. The disconnect between protocol metrics and token performance reflects broader trends in the real-world assets (RWA) space. This dissonance is a core issue of RWA tokens: protocol activity flourishes, but token holders do not benefit.

Ondo’s price trend aligns with common patterns in RWA governance tokens. According to CoinGecko’s “2025 RWA Report,” most tokens in this sector experienced negative returns from January 2024 to April 2025, with declines between -26% and -79%. Only ONDO (+314.1%), SYRUP (+24%), and the brief surge of Mantra (OM, +733.9% before crashing 90%) are exceptions. Others like Centrifuge (CFG), Goldfinch (GFI), Ixinium (IXINA), and others have plummeted.

The report attributes this disconnection to structural factors. During bull markets, DeFi lending protocols offered alternative yields without RWA exposure. Meanwhile, capital mainly flowed into institutional products like BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and stablecoin infrastructure, rather than governance tokens. The market cap of tokenized treasuries grew 544%, reaching $5.6 billion, with BlackRock’s BUIDL accounting for 44%. Maple Finance’s private lending protocols dominate, accounting for 67% of active loans.

Yet, these successes rarely translate into returns for token holders. This pattern suggests RWA governance tokens serve more as speculative tools than as rights to protocol growth. When Ondo’s TVL increases, and tokenized assets expand, and integration with mainstream platforms like MetaMask occurs, these achievements do not create value for ONDO holders. Governance rights have limited practical value, and tokens do not share protocol revenues, reducing ONDO to a purely speculative asset.

For ONDO holders, this announcement is a reminder that in the RWA space, protocol milestones and token performance often diverge. MetaMask’s integration allows Ondo to grow amid regulatory changes, with infrastructure in place. But before key markets open, the actual impact remains limited. More fundamentally, even if all markets open and the business scales tenfold, if the tokenomics do not change, ONDO holders will still not benefit. This is a core structural issue that the entire RWA sector needs to address.