Many projects boast RWA innovation, but in the end it’s a split between on-chain and off-chain reality—this a16z piece is a wake-up call, pouring a bucket of cold water on the industry.

ME News message: On May 27 (UTC+8), a16z crypto said in a post that not all tokenized assets are adequately utilized on-chain. Bonds are currently the largest category of tokenized assets, with a market value of $15.2 billion, but only about 5% of the supply is used in DeFi. Precious metals show a similar picture: although they are on-chain, most remain idle. By contrast, smaller categories perform differently: reinsurance tokens have 84% of their supply deployed in DeFi, and private credit stands at 33%. a16z believes this is logical, because the categories with the highest DeFi usage were built for DeFi from the start, such as Nexus Mutual and Maple Finance. a16z also noted that many practices currently referred to as “tokenization” are actually closer to digitization—meaning records are moved onto the blockchain but not