The five types of RWA assets with the fastest growth in on-chain tokenization

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

In a recent research report, Standard Chartered Bank’s head of digital assets research, Geoff Kendrick, predicted that by 2030, the asset size in the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector could 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 figure to rise to 30% by 2030.

This would represent a 36x increase from the current scale. The ongoing acceleration in the tokenization of assets also gives Kendrick ample reason to remain optimistic.

Tokenized RWA assets include categories such as stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, carbon credits, and others. As of the end of June, their total on-chain circulating supply had reached $27k, nearly tripling compared with the market size of about $11.8 billion in the same period last year. If stablecoins are also included—products that are fundamentally fiat-tokenized—the overall market size of the broad tokenized asset category surpasses $328.8 billion.

Data platform RWA.xyz shows that the total number of RWA asset holders has grown to 937,928 people, and the number of users alone increased 13% month-over-month last month.

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

U.S. Treasuries

U.S. short-term treasuries, medium-term notes, and long-term treasuries are the largest on-chain tokenized asset category by scale, with a total size of $15 billion. For investors, these assets are highly acceptable, have lower risk, have sufficient liquidity, and can generate yield—features that stablecoins do not have yet.

The BUIDL fund under BlackRock was launched in March 2024. In June 2025, its peak total assets surpassed $2.9 billion. Due to fund rebalancing and competition across platform segments, the current size has fallen to $2.23 billion. The fund has cumulatively distributed more than $100 million in dividends and has been deployed to Ethereum, Solana, Polygon, Avalanche, Arbitrum, Optimism, Aptos, and BNB Chain.

In February 2026, Uniswap Labs and Securitize jointly announced that shares of the BlackRock BUIDL fund are now live for trading on UniswapX. This brings a regulated, institution-focused large tokenized fund into a decentralized exchange (though this product has access restrictions for trading participants).

Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, said: “This is the breakthrough we’ve been working to achieve—combining the credit backing of traditional finance and regulatory standards, with the efficient and open characteristics of decentralized finance.”

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

Other sizeable tokenized treasuries 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 originated by non-bank institutions, priced through negotiation, and held by the lenders themselves. It is another fast-growing segment within RWA assets.

Its appeal is similar to treasuries, but its yield is higher than that of government bonds. In addition, the private credit industry has long suffered from the pain point of capital being locked up for years. Asset tokenization can inject liquidity into it.

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

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

Stocks and ETFs

RWA.xyz data shows that the current overall size of tokenized stock assets is still small, at just $2.19 billion. However, over the past 30 days, the growth rate is close to 50%, with strong momentum—and the segment is expected to undergo another round of significant expansion in the near term.

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

The pilot is scheduled to start this month, and commercialization could be rolled out by October. The pilot covers underlying assets including Russell 1000 constituent stocks, mainstream index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. More than 50 financial institutions are participating, including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Citigroup, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Circle, Ondo Finance, and Ripple Prime.

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

Gold and Commodities

Tokenized gold is the largest subcategory among tokenized commodities, and related products have existed 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 happened to be closed, while the tokenized crude oil and gold markets kept trading 24/7.

After the U.S. and two related countries launched strikes against Iran earlier this year, major Wall Street trading desks became increasingly reliant on on-chain perpetual contract platforms. Whenever traditional markets are closed, these become the only real-time pricing channels for safe-haven assets such as gold and crude oil.

Since the start of 2026, weekend trading volume for on-chain commodities perpetual contracts has grown 8x. Currently, in contracts deployed by developers on decentralized exchanges, the share of on-chain commodities perpetual contracts exceeds 67%.

This shows that the tokenized commodities market never closes, and has real competitive advantages when geopolitical conflicts erupt (unconstrained 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 has continued to strengthen its linkage with the traditional gold market. Historically, the two have had generally weak correlation, but in the first quarter of 2026, the correlation coefficient exceeded 0.70, signaling that the on-chain gold market is moving toward maturity.

Real Estate

Real estate tokenization is currently mostly at the vision-and-development stage and has not yet achieved large-scale implementation.

As part of the RWA track, the total size of tokenized real estate assets is only $202.7 million; however, after several compliant products launched in two major core markets this year, the segment is expected to see sustained growth.

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

Real estate tokenization can offer a fractional ownership solution for investors who cannot meet the high investment thresholds for real estate. Each token represents a portion of the ownership rights; token holders can collect rent according to their share and can transfer their holdings at any time without having to wait for the entire property to be sold.

RWA’s overall scale is still relatively limited

Although tokenized real-world assets (RWA) continue to grow, the path ahead is still 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. treasuries market of about $30 trillion, the former’s scale is simply insignificant.

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) custody asset size is as high as $114 trillion, and tokenized stocks are almost negligible in comparison.

Liquidity across the track remains weak. Most RWA products see quiet secondary-market trading, and investors generally hold positions for long periods.

However, regulators are increasingly accepting this track. This March, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Nasdaq’s proposal to allow certain stocks to be traded and cleared via token form. Analysts and industry observers expect that stock token trading will soon receive broad greenlights; SEC Chair Paul Atkins is likely to move forward with an “innovation exemption rule” to give RWA development the go-ahead.

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