The five fastest-growing RWA asset categories in on-chain tokenization

Author: Aaron Wood; Source: Cointelegraph; Translated by Shaw, Golden Finance

Geoff Kendrick, Head of Digital Asset Research at Standard Chartered Bank, predicts in a recent research report that by 2030, the asset size in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector may reach $2.7 trillion.

He said that currently only 3% of stablecoins and 10% of tokenized real-world assets (RWA) applications are used in the DeFi ecosystem, but he expects this ratio to rise to 30% by 2030.

This figure represents a 36-fold increase from the current scale. And as the development momentum continues to accelerate tokenization of assets, Kendrick has ample reason to remain optimistic.

Tokenized RWA assets cover categories such as stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, carbon credits, and more. As of the end of June, their total on-chain circulating market size had reached $32.22 billion, nearly tripling compared with the market size of about $11.8 billion in the same period last year. If stablecoins—products that are essentially tokenized fiat—are included, the overall tokenized assets market size for the broad category exceeds $27k.

Data platform RWA.xyz shows that the total number of RWA asset holders has increased to 937,928 people, with user numbers rising 13% month-over-month just last month.

Below, we break down the key growth drivers across each RWA track.

U.S. Treasuries

U.S. short-term treasuries, medium-term notes, and long-term treasuries are the largest tokenized asset category by on-chain scale, with a total size of $15 billion. These assets are highly acceptable to investors, with low risk, sufficient liquidity, and the ability to generate yield, which is a characteristic stablecoins currently do not have.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund launched in March 2024, and its peak total assets under management exceeded $2.9 billion in June 2025. Due to changes in capital allocation and competition across platform tracks, the current scale has fallen to $2.23 billion. The fund has cumulatively paid out dividends of more than $100 million and is deployed and operating across Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Aptos, and BNB Chain.

In February 2026, Uniswap Labs and Securitize jointly announced that BlackRock’s BUIDL fund shares have been listed for trading on UniswapX. This brings a regulated, institutional-grade large tokenized fund to a decentralized exchange (though the product imposes access restrictions on trading participants).

Securitize CEO Carlos Domingo said, “This is the breakthrough we’ve been working toward: integrating the credit endorsement and regulatory standards of traditional finance with the efficient, open features that decentralized finance offers.”

A similar product is Franklin Templeton’s on-chain U.S. government money market fund, whose shares are issued in the form of BENJI tokens. Its scale has reached $2.44 billion and is deployed on multiple public chains including Avalanche, Arbitrum, Aptos, Base, BNB Chain, Stellar, Ethereum, Solana, and Polygon.

Other sizable tokenized treasury products include Circle’s USYC ($3.1 billion), Ondo’s series of products ($3.7 billion), and Invesco’s WTGXX ($764 million).

Private Credit

Private credit refers to loans issued by non-bank institutions, priced through negotiation, and held by the lenders. It is another fast-growing subcategory within RWA assets.

Its appeal is similar to treasuries, but its yield is higher than government bonds. In addition, the private credit industry has long suffered from the pain point of multi-year capital lock-up periods, while asset tokenization can inject liquidity into it.

Today, private credit positions held by corporate finance leaders and asset managers can be transferred on-chain, used as collateral, and also support redemption operations.

The two leading issuance platforms for tokenized private credit are Maple Finance and Stokr. According to data from RWA.xyz, the two account for about 22% of the market each, and the overall market size of tokenized private credit is about $6.2 billion.

Stocks and ETFs

RWA.xyz data shows that the overall size of stock tokenized assets is still small, at just $2.19 billion. However, over the past 30 days, its growth nearly approached 50%, with a strong momentum, and it is expected to see another round of major expansion in the short term.

In May, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) announced it would run pilots for tokenized securities trading. DTCC handles clearing and settlement for nearly all stock trading in the U.S., with the total custody value of securities exceeding $114 trillion.

The pilot is scheduled to begin this month, with commercialization potentially taking place in October. The pilot includes underlying assets such as Russell 1000 constituent stocks, mainstream index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. More than 50 financial institutions are participating in the pilot, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Circle, Ondo Finance, and Ripple Prime.

Ondo Finance leverages its global markets platform and holds about 60% of the tokenized stock market share. In March 2026, the firm reached a partnership with Franklin Templeton to issue tokenized versions of five ETFs. In April, it again partnered with Broadridge Financial Solutions to support tokenized stocks and the submission of voting intent by ETF holders for the underlying corresponding shares.

Gold and Commodities

Tokenized gold is the largest subcategory within tokenized commodities, and related products have been on the market for years, but 2026 brings an unexpected stress test.

At the start of 2026, when tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated sharply, traditional financial markets were closed, while tokenized crude oil and gold markets remained open for trading 24/7.

After the U.S. launched strikes on Iran with the two countries at the beginning of this year, major trading desks on Wall Street became increasingly reliant on on-chain perpetual contract platforms. Whenever traditional markets are closed, these platforms become the only trading channel where safe-haven assets such as gold and crude oil can be priced in real time.

Since the beginning of 2026 to date, weekend trading volume of on-chain commodities perpetual contracts has grown by 8 times. Currently, among the contracts deployed by developers on decentralized exchanges, commodities on-chain perpetual contracts account for more than 67%.

This shows that the tokenized commodities market never sleeps, and has tangible competitive advantages when geopolitical conflicts break out (not constrained by traditional trading hours).

In March 2026, the total size of tokenized commodities reached $5.8 billion, but has since fallen to $4.7 billion, with the gold category accounting for the vast majority of the share.

The trading volume trend of tokenized gold continues to strengthen its linkage with traditional gold markets. While the historical correlation between the two has long been relatively weak, in Q1 2026 the correlation coefficient exceeded 0.70, signaling that the on-chain gold market is gradually maturing.

Real Estate

Real estate tokenization currently remains more at the vision-development stage and has not yet achieved large-scale rollout.

As part of the RWA track, the total size of currently tokenized real estate assets is only $202.7 million; but after several compliant products entered the two core markets this year, the scale of this track will see sustained growth.

Dubai Land Department launched the second phase of its real estate tokenization project in February 2026, opening secondary trading for tokenized property units. In the same quarter, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission also approved a real estate tokenization product launched by Delin Holding.

Real estate tokenization can offer a fractional holding solution to investors who cannot afford the high entry threshold for property investment. For a token representing part of the rights of a property, holders can collect rent in proportion to their shares, and they can transfer their holdings at any time without waiting for the entire building to be sold.

RWA’s overall scale still remains relatively limited

Although tokenized real-world assets (RWA) continue to grow, the road to development remains long. Tokenized treasury products are the largest and most mature category within RWA, with a total size of nearly $15 billion. Compared with the traditional U.S. Treasury market of about $30 trillion, the former’s volume is negligible.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) custody assets total $114 trillion, and tokenized stocks are almost insignificant by comparison.

Liquidity across the track remains relatively weak. Most RWA products have quiet secondary-market trading, and investors typically hold for longer periods.

However, regulators are gradually accepting this track. This March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Nasdaq’s proposal, allowing certain stocks to be traded and cleared in tokenized form. Analysts and industry observers expect that tokenized stock trading will soon receive broad clearance. SEC Chair Paul Atkins will likely give RWA development a green light through an “innovative exemption rule.”

The focus of industry debate is no longer whether real-world assets will move toward tokenization, but rather how fast this process will happen.