RWA Perps Where They’re Growing & What You’re Really Trading | Meredith Pitkoff (Stork) at ETHConf

Sun, Aug 2, 2026, 12:00 AM

In this talk, Meredith Pitkoff, CEO of Stork, walks through the explosive growth of RWA perpetual futures markets and explains what traders are actually buying when they trade commodity, equity, or pre IPO perps. Stork builds oracle infrastructure that powers more than half the volume in onchain perpetuals trading. She traces three waves of RWA perps growth in 2026. First, oil and commodities: WTI oil perps went from $76 million in January volume to $488 million in February, then $21.5 billion in March after war broke out in the Middle East on a Saturday and weekend events kept hitting, then $60.2 billion in April. Second, indexes: TradeXYZ on Hyperliquid built proxy indexes and secured a licensing deal with S&P Dow Jones for an officially sanctioned S&P 500 perp. Third, equities: AI adjacent names like Micron, SanDisk, and Nvidia drove equity perps volume from $25.6 billion to $62.8 billion in May alone, with listings nearly doubling from 196 to 391. There are now 569 different RWA perp markets across roughly a dozen tracked exchanges, and on May 29th the CFTC approved Bitcoin perpetuals for Kalshi, authorized Coinbase to serve foreign derivatives markets, and issued an advisory on 24/7 trading. Meredith digs into the mechanics. For commodities and indexes, traders are usually trading a proxy because CME and S&P Dow Jones data is expensive and not licensed broadly, so exchanges pull from secondary sources or construct their own facsimile indexes. Stork is tracking four NASDAQ 100 proxy perps and seven S&P 500 proxy perps, each printing slightly different prices. Perps are quoted in stablecoins which introduces basis risk and implicit currency exposure on foreign equities. When TradFi markets close on Friday at 4 PM Central, perp exchanges switch to internal oracles using impact prices, exponential moving averages, and hard caps, and TradeXYZ's WTI market moved with directional accuracy toward the CME Sunday open 90.5% of the time across 19 of 21 weekends in 2026. She covers pre IPO perps with both wins (Cerebras' perp predicted the IPO opening minute within 0.5%) and losses (Quantinuum's frothy perp price was double the actual opening). She closes by identifying the real barrier to the next volume unlock: professional traders wind down positions Fridays because they cannot hedge weekend RWA perps without liquid spot markets, leaving the market retail dominated and thin. 00:00 Introduction 00:35 Stork's Three Products and Today's Coverage 01:05 The RWA Perps Growth Story Begins 01:28 Oil Perps Explode After Middle East Events 02:09 The Index Wave and TradeXYZ's S&P 500 License 02:25 The Equity Wave Driven by the AI Trade 03:10 569 RWA Perp Markets Across Top Exchanges 03:29 The CFTC Steps In on May 29 03:55 What You're Actually Trading: Proxies 04:23 Multiple Index Proxies Printing Different Prices 04:54 Basis Risk From Stablecoin Denomination 05:20 Implicit Currency Exposure on Foreign Equities 05:48 How a WTI Perp Prices on Saturday Afternoon 06:25 Internal Oracles, Impact Prices, and Hard Caps 06:55 90.5% Directional Accuracy Across Weekends 07:25 How Smaller Exchanges Inherit TradeXYZ Pricing 07:54 Pre IPO Perps: SpaceX, Cerebras, Quantinuum 07:54 Cerebras: The Perp Predicted the Opening Minute 08:46 Quantinuum: When Pre IPO Perps Got It Wrong 09:47 Thin Liquidity and Manipulation Risk 10:15 Pre IPO Price Discovery Is Remarkable, Not Guaranteed 10:44 Why Oracles Matter for Perps 11:08 Stork's Sub Millisecond Latency 11:36 Why RWA Pricing Is Harder Outside Market Hours 12:02 Blue Ocean ATS and Overnight Equity Sessions 12:28 The Real Barrier: Professional Traders Cannot Hedge 12:59 The Path Forward: Tokenized Stocks and Deeper Markets 13:26 Where Stork Is Focused _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ *ETHConf 2026* ETHConf is a 3 day event for founders, industry leaders, and builders who are excited about the possibilities of building on top of Ethereum. Connect with 2,000+ top innovators in crypto, finance, technology, and policy at our inaugural three-day event packed with showcases, demos, partnerships, and conversations shaping the future of the global economy. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ✅ *Follow ETHConf* X: https://x.com/ethconf Website: https://ethconf.com _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ 🎟️ Get your early bird tickets for ETHConf 2027: https://ethconf.com/2027#tickets 🎤 View the full ETHConf 2026 Speaker Schedule: https://ethconf.com/schedule _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _