In short Real-World Assets — treasuries, credit, real estate and other traditional assets issued as on-chain tokens, connecting TradFi yields with DeFi rails.
The token is a claim, and a claim is only worth the legal structure behind it: who holds the asset, under which jurisdiction, and what happens in a default. That makes RWA the corner of crypto where paperwork matters more than code — the chain handles transfer and settlement, but the enforcement still runs through courts. Tokenised treasuries have been the breakout case, because the underlying asset is simple and the yield is legible.