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

- Channel: [ETHGlobal](https://streameth.org/ethglobal)
- Date: 2026-07-09
- Duration: 13:48
- Topics: Stork, Meredith Pitkoff, ETHCom, RWA perps, perpetual futures, oracle infrastructure, WTI oil, gold, silver, commodities, equity perps, S&P 500, NASDAQ 100, TradeXYZ, Hyperliquid, pre IPO perps, SpaceX, Cerebras, Quantinuum, CME, S&P Dow Jones, CFTC, Kalshi, Coinbase, proxies, basis risk, stablecoin denomination, weekend trading, 24/7 markets, price discovery, internal oracles, impact prices, EMA, Blue Ocean ATS, professional traders, hedging, tokenized stocks, AI trade
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-bEgtmXzb1cY
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bEgtmXzb1cY

## Description

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

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