Stock exchanges have paid rebates on filled orders that were resting in their books for decades. While they wait, those orders give other traders prices to buy or sell against.
Venues offering perpetual contracts linked to shares, commodities and other traditional assets are now using similar incentives in real-world-asset (RWA) markets.
Listed equities alone were worth $151.94 trillion at the end of 2025, according to the World Federation of Exchanges. That figure only describes the underlying share market but does not tell us how much demand there is for contracts linked to those shares, or what price and size a trader will find on a particular venue.
At the moment, much of the activity across trading in RWA-linked perpetuals is concentrated within a small number of contracts. This makes the case for venues trying to build a usable order book to pay traders to post limit orders.
Maker rebates offer a path to that type of incentive; that said, the effectiveness ultimately depends on whether the added orders improve the prices and size other traders can actually use.
Paying Makers to Attract Orders
A limit order resting on an exchange offers a price to the next buyer or seller. When someone trades against it, the resting order has added liquidity. The person who placed it is the “maker”; the person who accepts the price is the “taker”. Under maker-taker pricing, the venue pays a rebate to the maker and charges the taker a fee.
Equity exchanges have used this arrangement for years to attract orders and give incoming traders prices and size to trade against. The US Securities and Exchange Commission has examined another side of it: rebates can influence where brokers send orders, and the payment may go to the exchange member without reaching its customer directly.
A study of incentives in fragmented equity markets found that liquidity increased on the venue introducing rebates, with no significant increase in liquidity or turnover across the market as a whole. That offers a useful comparison, but RWA perpetuals need to be judged on their own order-book data.
The Liquidity Question Behind RWA Volumes
Technically, an RWA-linked perpetual follows the price of an underlying asset but it does not imply ownership of the referenced asset. What’s unique about this type of contract is its availability which is not dependent on standard stock exchange times; as such, a trader posting a limit order has to decide whether to leave that price available while the underlying share market is shut.
In terms of market size, a CoinMarketCap Research report produced in partnership with Gate recorded $799.5 billion in RWA perpetual trading across 19 venues in August 2026. CMC’s RWA perpetuals dataset further revealed only a handful of contracts dominated the market, with five symbols accounting for 56% of cumulative volume across 557 symbols observed between 29 December 2025 and 31 August 2026.
The important distinction is that these numbers describe trading on the venues covered by the report, not the depth waiting in any one order book. A heavily traded contract may have plenty of interest near the current price while a less active one has little. This partly explains why a venue might pay traders to post limit orders in its RWA markets.
A Rebate Aimed at RWA Limit Orders
Grvt, an on-chain derivatives venue, is testing that incentive in its RWA markets. The platform’s published campaign terms set the default maker fee at −1 basis point on qualifying RWA limit orders that fill as maker orders. The campaign runs from 21 September to 21 December 2026, subject to Grvt’s right to change, pause or end it early.
To provide some more context, one basis point is equivalent to 0.01%. This means that on a qualifying $10,000 fill, the maker would receive $1, credited directly to the trading account while an order that never fills earns no rebate.
Grvt also outlines the boosted rate is limited to eligible retail accounts, with Institutional and VIP accounts, along with accounts on separately negotiated market-maker terms excluded from the campaign. Meanwhile, traders already entitled to a higher rebate keep that rate; the terms also exclude wash trades and self-matched trades.
That said, the bottom line on whether other traders get more usable prices will depend on the orders posted during the campaign.
What Could Count as Better Liquidity?
More orders on a screen are a start, a buyer or seller needs to be able to seamlessly check the spread, the size available around the best bid and offer, and how often orders fill. This is fundamental for answering questions such as do quotes remain when prices move, including while the underlying share market is closed?
For makers, a position entered for rebate purposes carries more risk than its face value; a fill just before the market moves against the position can produce a loss larger than the rebate. Leverage can also magnify that loss and lead to liquidation while funding payments and the eventual exit price also affect the result.
Pricing outside regular market hours is another factor that needs particular attention. Different index and mark-price methods across regular, extended and closed-market periods means that a particular index can be fixed on weekends or holidays even as the mark price changes with trading, ultimately outweighing a one-basis-point rebate.
The rebate experience in equities suggests looking past the number of orders posted. A bigger test for RWA venues is whether traders gain prices and size they can use and executions improve once trade prices, rebates and the risks of holding the contract are considered.
Key questions
What is a maker rebate?
Simply put, it is a financial incentive that is paid by an exchange to traders that contribute towards the order book liquidity by placing a resting limit order; however, it has to fill for it to earn something.
Can maker rebates improve liquidity in RWA derivatives?
It’s not a simple yes/no; on one hand, maker rebates can give traders a reason to post orders in RWA markets but whether that helps depends on the prices and sizes offered, how often orders fill and whether they remain available when trading turns volatile.
Does receiving a rebate make an RWA trade cheaper overall?
It lowers the fee on a qualifying execution; but the overall cheapness of the trade also depends on the price paid, funding while the perpetual is open and the eventual exit price.
References
World Federation of Exchanges 2025 public-market data – Global listed equity market capitalisation.
SEC Maker-Taker Fees on Equities Exchanges – How exchange rebates work and the questions they raise for order routing.
Leibniz Institute SAFE; Liquidity Provider Incentives in Fragmented Securities Markets – Research on the effect of rebates on venue and market-wide liquidity.
CoinMarketCap Research RWA Perpetuals: State of the Market, August 2026 – Trading volume and its concentration across contracts.
Grvt Paid Mode, On campaign terms – Dates, eligibility and rebate conditions.