How Does Silhouette’s RFQ System Work?
Silhouette has launched its request-for-quote system on Hyperliquid mainnet, introducing a new way to trade tokenized equities without requiring every asset to maintain its own order book.
The block trading layer initially supports xStocks, Payward’s tokenized equity framework. Traders can request a quote for a supported xStock, receive competing prices from onboarded market makers and select the winning quote, with the transaction settling onchain.
The structure differs from conventional exchange trading, where buyers and sellers interact through a continuously updated order book. Under Silhouette’s RFQ model, liquidity providers compete directly for individual trades, which could make it easier to support tokenized shares that have not yet generated enough activity for a standalone market.
Silhouette said assets that attract sufficient trading flow through the RFQ system can later graduate to dedicated HyperCore markets. That creates a potential route from relatively thin initial trading to a conventional order-book market if demand develops.
“Tokenized stocks keep arriving onchain, and most of them have nowhere to trade,” Silhouette founder Chandler De Kock said. “Market makers compete for every trade, settlement is onchain, and the assets that prove real flow graduate to their own HyperCore markets.”
Why Could RFQ Trading Matter For Tokenized Equities?
Tokenizing a stock does not automatically create a liquid secondary market. Each new asset normally needs buyers, sellers and market makers willing to maintain quotes, which becomes harder as the number of tokenized securities increases.
An RFQ model can reduce that problem by allowing multiple assets to draw on the same group of liquidity providers rather than requiring dedicated order books from launch. This could be particularly useful for tokenized shares outside the handful of large technology companies that already attract substantial crypto trading interest.
The structure may also appeal to traders executing larger transactions. Instead of placing a large order into a relatively shallow market and potentially moving the price, a trader can ask several market makers to compete for the entire transaction.
For Hyperliquid, the launch adds another route for bringing real-world assets into its trading ecosystem. The more important test will be whether RFQ activity produces recurring volume rather than one-off interest around newly tokenized stocks.
Investor Takeaway
Silhouette is addressing one of tokenized equities’ main trading problems: new assets need liquidity before they can support active order books. An RFQ layer lets market makers compete for that flow first, while the most heavily traded tokens can later move into dedicated HyperCore markets.
How Large Has The xStocks Market Become?
xStocks launched in June 2025 and has processed more than $40 billion in total trading volume across more than 200,000 holders, according to Payward. Nearly $20 billion of that activity has settled onchain.
The framework issues tokens backed 1:1 by publicly listed shares and has expanded beyond U.S. equities into assets linked to companies across Europe and Asia.
Tokenized equities now have a combined market value of about $2.53 billion, according to RWA.xyz data. xStocks accounts for roughly $620.1 million, placing it narrowly behind bStocks at about $621.5 million. Ondo remains the largest issuer in the category at roughly $856.3 million.
Those figures show that tokenized stocks remain small compared with conventional equity markets, but the infrastructure surrounding them is expanding quickly. Issuers are adding more securities while trading platforms are testing different approaches to liquidity, settlement and market making.
Can More Tokenized Stocks Create Enough Trading Demand?
The Silhouette launch arrives as Payward prepares another major expansion of xStocks. The company said earlier Tuesday that it plans to tokenize the 100 largest companies listed on the London Stock Exchange, with the first London-listed xStocks expected in the coming weeks, subject to regulatory approval.
Adding dozens of securities creates a liquidity challenge as well as a product opportunity. Trading activity is unlikely to be distributed evenly across every token, meaning some shares could support active markets while others attract only occasional demand.
Silhouette’s RFQ model provides one answer. Lower-volume assets can remain available through competitive market-maker quotes without requiring permanent order books, while securities that attract sustained activity can move to HyperCore.
That makes trading volume the next metric to watch. The tokenized equity market already has growing issuance and billions of dollars in recorded activity, but its next stage depends on whether platforms can create reliable secondary liquidity across a much wider range of stocks. Silhouette is betting that RFQ trading can bridge that gap.
