Analysis of the RWA Tokenization Track: Scale Surpasses $19 Billion: U.S. Treasury Tokenization Leads

Since early 2025, the total market value of tokenized real-world assets has grown by 256.7% within 15 months, rising from $5.42 billion to $19.32 billion in Q1 2026. This growth rate not only far exceeds the performance of the broader crypto market during the same period but also surpasses the expansion speed of the stablecoin sector — the market cap of tokenized RWA has increased from 2.7% to 6.4% of the stablecoin market cap since early 2025.

From a macro-driven perspective, the core drivers of this growth come from two levels. First, the rigid demand from crypto-native institutions for on-chain stable yields. In the balance sheets of DeFi protocols, DAOs treasuries, and stablecoin issuers, large amounts of capital need to find “risk-free yield” allocation channels that surpass native token volatility. Second, the dual breakthroughs in regulatory frameworks and infrastructure. In December 2025, the US CFTC issued key guidelines allowing tokenized assets to serve as collateral for futures trading, affirming the principle of technological neutrality. Following this, legislative developments such as the GENIUS Act further established the legal status of stablecoins and their underlying government bond assets.

Meanwhile, at the end of 2025, the US DTCC announced the launch of asset tokenization services starting with US Treasuries, marking the official entry of core traditional financial infrastructure into this space. These structural changes have elevated tokenized RWAs from marginal narratives to one of the fastest-growing sectors in DeFi.

Why Tokenized US Treasuries Dominate with 67% Share

Out of the total $19.3 billion, tokenized US Treasuries hold an absolute dominance with a 67.2% share. The market cap of this single asset class increased by $9 billion, a 225.5% rise. On February 11, 2026, the market cap of tokenized Treasuries first surpassed $10 billion, and the growth momentum further accelerated thereafter.

This dominance has an internal logic. Short-term US Treasuries are considered “quasi-cash” in global capital markets, and tokenization preserves the creditworthiness of the underlying assets while adding blockchain features such as 24/7 tradability, divisibility, and programmability. Compared to traditional Treasuries, the tokenized versions break the minimum investment threshold, allowing $100 denominations from an initial $100k investment, significantly lowering participation barriers.

From a yield perspective, tokenized US Treasuries introduce a large-scale, sovereign-credit-backed stable interest rate benchmark to the crypto market for the first time. For a long time, the crypto world lacked such a benchmark rate, leading to chaotic capital cost pricing. Now, tokenized Treasuries are becoming a new standard for risk-adjusted yield measurement in DeFi protocols.

It’s noteworthy that although the absolute size of Treasuries continues to grow, their share in the entire RWA market has slightly declined from 73.7% to 67.2%. This structural shift indicates that other asset categories are accelerating their tokenization processes.

How Gold, Stocks, and ETFs Are Evolving in Other RWA Segments

Beyond Treasuries, tokenized commodities are the second-largest sector, accounting for 28.7% of the market. The market cap of tokenized commodities increased from $1.43 billion to $5.55 billion, a 289.1% increase. This growth is mainly driven by gold-backed tokens — Tether’s XAUT and Paxos’ PAXG contributed $2.52 billion and $2.32 billion respectively, together making up 89.1% of the tokenized commodities market expansion. In Q1 2026, the spot trading volume of tokenized gold reached $90.7 billion, surpassing the total $84.6 billion traded in all of 2025.

Tokenized stocks have been available since mid-2025, reaching a market cap of $500 million, led by tech stocks. In Q1 2026, the spot trading volume of tokenized stocks was $15.1 billion, exceeding the $14.8 billion in H2 2025. Tokenized ETFs reached a size of $300 million, with broad growth foundations and a significant long-tail effect.

Grayscale’s 2026 outlook report proposes a “three-wave” evolution roadmap to understand this trend: the first wave completed the tokenization of stablecoins; the second wave is the rapid explosion of gold and treasury tokenization; the third wave is expected to officially start between 2026 and 2027 as regulatory frameworks mature, reaching broader capital markets including stocks and private credit. According to this framework, the current stage is a critical window transitioning from the second to the third wave.

Which Core Players Are Shaping the RWA Competitive Landscape

In the core sector of tokenized Treasuries, the competitive landscape is becoming increasingly clear. BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund BUIDL is currently the largest single product in tokenized Treasuries, with about $2.52 billion in assets under management as of the end of March 2026. It is deployed across multiple blockchains including Ethereum, Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, and Polygon. BUIDL is custodied by BNY Mellon, with a minimum investment of $5 million, and its significance lies not only in the capital size but also in establishing a standard institutional model of “issuance + custody + verification” for RWAs.

Ondo Finance acts as a “connector” bringing institutional assets into the DeFi ecosystem. Its OUSG product’s underlying asset is BUIDL, with a total locked value of $704 million as of April 2026. Additionally, Ondo holds about 58%–80% of the market share in tokenized stocks, with total locked assets growing from approximately $534 million in 2024 to over $3 billion in 2026.

Fidelity’s OnChain US Government Money Market Fund BENJI is a pioneer of compliant tokenization, launched in 2021, and is the first US-registered mutual fund using public blockchains for transaction processing and share ownership records. The combined assets under management of these three entities exceed $7 billion, accounting for over half of the entire tokenized Treasury market. These participants are not merely in a zero-sum competition but serve as “ballast,” “trailblazers,” and “connectors” for institutional liquidity, compliance innovation, and asset composability, respectively.

Which Public Blockchains Are RWA Assets Concentrating On

The distribution of tokenized RWAs shows a clear multi-chain trend. Ethereum remains the leader in absolute size, but its market share has declined from 84% to about 60%, while BSC has risen to 13%. The tokenized Treasury market on Ethereum reached a historic high of $8 billion in May 2026. However, evaluating RWA ecosystems solely by TVL on blockchains can be misleading. In terms of asset utilization efficiency, 43.7% of active RWA value on Solana is deployed as collateral in DeFi lending, compared to only 6.1% on Ethereum. As of April 30, 2026, Solana’s share in the tokenized RWA lending market reached 58%.

Besides Ethereum and Solana, RWAs are distributed across 15 different blockchains including BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Base, Avalanche, Polygon, Stellar, and Celo. Different blockchains, based on their technical features and ecological endowments, have formed differentiated positioning in the RWA sector — Ethereum focuses on compliant asset issuance and institutional custody, while Solana emphasizes high-frequency capital deployment and on-chain credit cycles.

The Growth Path from the Current $19.3 Billion to $16 Trillion by 2030

The current $19.3 billion market size is still tiny compared to the macro landscape of traditional financial assets. The global stock market exceeds $100 trillion, US Treasuries surpass $26 trillion, and private credit exceeds $1.5 trillion — yet, tokenized US Treasuries only account for 0.03% of the US Treasury market. This enormous penetration gap underpins the future growth potential of the sector.

Consulting firms have different scale forecasts for the future. BCG predicts that by 2030, the tokenized RWA market could reach $16.1 trillion; Roland Berger estimates $10 trillion; McKinsey’s more conservative forecast is $2 trillion. Even with the most conservative estimate, this implies over 100 times growth from the current size.

Regarding the pace of asset class evolution, Grayscale’s “three-wave” framework provides a clear reference. The second wave (gold and treasury tokenization) is in a breakout phase, expected to continue expanding until market penetration reaches a critical point; the third wave (stock and private credit tokenization) is expected to officially commence between 2026 and 2027 as regulatory frameworks mature. If the US bipartisan crypto market structure bill passes in 2026, it will clear key legal hurdles for tokenization of stocks and other traditional securities. Moving from $100k to $16 trillion depends not only on the scalability of tokenization technology but also on the synchronized maturation of global regulatory frameworks across jurisdictions.

What Structural Risks and Trade-offs Exist in Asset On-Chain Processes

Bringing centralized assets into a decentralized environment inevitably involves structural trade-offs and risks.

The greatest cost lies in the friction between composability and compliance. High liquidity of on-chain Treasuries depends on meeting KYC/AML and other compliance requirements. This means these tokenized assets cannot freely circulate on permissionless decentralized exchanges like native crypto assets but are restricted within permissioned smart contracts or specific whitelisted participants. This “semi-decentralized” state objectively weakens the core advantage of blockchain’s trustless, permissionless nature.

Additionally, the security risks of infrastructure underpinning tokenized assets are equally important. When hundreds of millions of dollars in tokenized assets are deployed across multiple blockchains, vulnerabilities in smart contracts, cross-chain bridge attacks, and oracle manipulations can directly impact the value of the underlying physical assets. The IMF issued a warning in a March 2026 report about the accelerating financial risks associated with tokenization.

Another critical dimension is the risk of yield divergence. While the nominal yields of tokenized US Treasuries are similar to traditional Treasuries, the actual realized yields on-chain are affected by settlement cycles, gas fees, protocol fees, and other factors. Investors need to evaluate these factors comprehensively, considering fee structures, yield distribution methods, and the composition of underlying assets.

Summary

In Q1 2026, the global tokenized RWA market reached $19.3 billion, a 250%+ increase from early 2025, with US Treasuries accounting for 67% of the share. This growth results from the resonance of macro demand, regulatory breakthroughs, and traditional infrastructure entering the space. Segments like tokenized Treasuries, gold, stocks, and ETFs are expanding in parallel, with core players including BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ondo Finance, and Franklin’s BENJI forming the current competitive landscape. Ethereum maintains a leading position in TVL, while Solana demonstrates differentiated advantages in asset utilization efficiency. Although the current size is tiny compared to traditional financial assets measured in trillions, the continuous growth validates the core business logic. From $19.3B to the projected $16 trillion by 2030, the tokenized RWA sector is at a critical stage of transitioning from “narrative validation” to “scaling deployment.”

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)

Q: What is the core difference between tokenized US Treasuries and traditional US Treasuries?

Tokenized US Treasuries represent the rights to traditional US government debt in the form of blockchain tokens, allowing holders to transfer, use as collateral, or integrate into DeFi protocols 24/7. Traditional Treasuries settle within limited timeframes and cannot operate directly on-chain. The tokenized version retains the credit quality of the underlying assets while adding blockchain’s liquidity and programmability features.

Q: Does the current RWA market still rely on a few leading institutions?

As of March 2026, BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ondo Finance, and Franklin’s BENJI together manage over $7 billion, holding over half of the tokenized Treasury market share. Leading institutions have an advantage in asset issuance and compliance infrastructure, but projects in gold, stocks, ETFs, etc., are more dispersed, with new entrants continuously joining.

Q: Is RWA growth influenced by crypto market cycles?

Historical data shows that the size of tokenized US Treasuries continued to hit new highs during the crypto market downturn in late 2025 and early 2026. This indicates that RWA growth drivers differ significantly from native crypto speculative cycles, driven more by institutional capital allocation and on-chain yield management.

Q: How do tokenized gold and physical gold differ in trading?

Tokenized gold (like XAUT, PAXG) is anchored to physical gold and can be traded 24/7 on-chain, divisible into tiny units, and used as collateral in DeFi. In Q1 2026, the spot trading volume of tokenized gold reached $90.7 billion, surpassing the total for 2025. However, tokenized gold does not directly equate to on-chain mapped physical gold; holders should pay attention to custodianship, storage, and redemption mechanisms of the underlying gold assets.