The on-chain RWA perpetuals market just posted another record, $751.9 billion in tracked volume for August, and if you’ve been following this space at all, you already know how the rest of the story goes: almost none of that gets priced without Pyth.
96.27%. Let that sink in..
Out of $751.9 billion in total volume, Pyth priced $723.77 billion of it while every other data provider combined, split up $28.13 billion.
Yup that’s it, that’s the whole competition!
Calling that “market share” feels like an understatement at this point, nobody else in this space is close to competing with Pyth on pricing, at this scale, it’s less a competitor and more the default source everyone else relies on.
A messier month, and a more interesting one
If you followed last month’s report, you already know the story: memory chips, up, every single day, well.. August broke that pattern.
Three separate stories drove the month, and the numbers behind each one tell you something different:
| Asset / Group | Volume | Share of Market | What Actually Happened |
| Memory chips (SanDisk, SK Hynix, Micron, others) | $327.4B | 43.5% | Rallied on a joint hardware spec announcement, then gave a chunk back when rates moved. Same trade, both directions. |
| Korea-linked (SK Hynix, KORU, SKHY) | $117.1B | 15.6% | KOSPI dropped almost 6% in one session, trading paused, then SK Hynix announced a buyback big enough to erase most of the loss the next day. |
| Moderna (MRNA) | $571.6M | 0.1% | Cancer vaccine trial data sent the stock up almost 177% in a session. Perps went live within hours, not days. |
Start with memory, SanDisk alone finished as the single biggest asset traded all month at $155.65 billion, more than double whatever came in second, four of the ten most-traded assets belonged to this group, it didn’t slow down from July, it just stopped being one directional.
Early in the month, SanDisk jumped 8%, Micron 6%, SK Hynix 4%, all in a single session on that hardware announcement, then rates moved and the same names handed a chunk of it back.
Korea had its own moment, the KOSPI selloff triggered an actual trading pause, and SK Hynix answered with a buyback announcement big enough to help the index recover almost everything by the next day.
Then there’s Moderna, and this one’s the real story of the month, even though the dollar figure looks small next to the chip trade, Moderna and Merck released positive trial results, the stock jumped almost 177% in a session, and perpetual markets for it were live within hours.
Almost 40% of MRNA’s entire monthly volume came in its first two sessions.
Equities aren’t just winning, they’re not even being challenged
Break it down by asset class and it’s not close.
- Equities: $487.3 billion, 64.8% of everything traded.
- Commodities: $152.3 billion, a distant second.
- Indices: $103.9 billion.
- FX: $8.3 billion. Just over 1% of the market, barely shows up.
Five venues, basically the whole market
Binance grew again, from $385.6 billion to $437.4 billion, and now holds 58.2% of total volume on its own, OKX climbed to second at 15.2%, Hyperliquid slid from second place all the way down to 11.3%, add in Bitget and Bybit and you get five venues holding 95% of everything, out of 22 tracked total.
The regulatory question nobody’s answered yet:
Here’s the one that actually matters long term: who gets to set the price when the traditional market is closed? Not a rhetorical question anymore, it’s sitting in front of the SEC right now, Douro Labs and the Hyperliquid Policy Center are pushing regulators to formally recognize independent on-chain reference prices when standard exchange data simply isn’t available.
A similar conversation is happening at the CFTC, this time about 24/7 futures in energy markets, where prices keep moving long after US markets shut for the night.
Where this leaves things?
Here’s what August actually leaves us with:
- The market got bigger. $751.9 billion, another all-time high.
- The market got stranger, chip reversals, a KOSPI pause, an event listed within hours.
- Pyth’s share grew 96.27% while all that happened.
Nobody’s found the ceiling yet, not for the market, not for how much of it runs through Pyth.
