The five RWA asset categories with the fastest growth in tokenization on-chain

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

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

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

This would represent a 36-fold increase from the current scale. The continuing acceleration in the tokenization of assets also gives Kendrick ample reasons to remain optimistic.

Tokenized RWA assets include categories such as stocks, bonds, real estate, gold, carbon credits, etc. As of the end of June, the total circulating on-chain supply had reached $27k, nearly triple the market scale of about $32.22B in the same period last year. If stablecoins—essentially tokenized fiat products—are included, the overall market size for tokenized assets on a broad basis exceeds $328.8 billion.

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

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

U.S. Treasuries

U.S. short-term Treasury bills, medium-term notes, and long-term bonds are the largest tokenized asset category by on-chain scale, with a total size of $15 billion. These assets are highly accepted by investors, have low risk, sufficient liquidity, and can generate yield, characteristics that stablecoins currently do not have.

BlackRock’s BUIDL fund launched in March 2024 and its total assets reached a peak of over $2.9 billion in June 2025. Due to fund reallocation and competition across platform tracks, the current scale has fallen to $2.23 billion. The fund has distributed more than $100 million in dividends and is deployed and running across 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 have been listed for trading on UniswapX. This brings a regulated, institution-focused large tokenized fund to a decentralized exchange (however, this product sets access restrictions for trading participants).

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

Another similar product is an on-chain U.S. government money market fund under Franklin Templeton, whose fund shares are issued in the form of the BENJI token. Its scale 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 Treasury products include Circle’s USYC ($3.1 billion), Ondo’s product suite ($3.7 billion), and Invesco’s WTGXX ($764 million).

Private Credit

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

Its appeal is similar to Treasuries—but with yields higher than government bonds. In addition, the private credit industry has long faced the pain point of capital being locked up for years. Asset tokenization can inject liquidity into it.

Today, 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 accounts for about 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 remains small at $2.19 billion. However, over the past 30 days, the size increase has been close to 50%, showing strong growth momentum and suggesting another round of significant expansion in the near term.

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

The pilot is set to start this month, with full commercial rollout expected in 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, leveraging its global markets platform, holds about 60% of the market share for tokenized stocks. In March 2026, the firm reached a cooperation with Franklin Templeton to issue tokenized versions of five ETFs. In April, it again partnered with Broadridge Financial Solutions to support tokenized stock and ETF holders submitting voting intents for the underlying corresponding shares.

Gold and Commodities

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

When tensions between the U.S. and Iran escalated sharply at the start of 2026, traditional financial markets were closed for the day, while tokenized oil and gold markets continued trading around the clock.

After the U.S. launched attacks on Iran with two countries at the beginning of this year, major trading desks on Wall Street became increasingly dependent on on-chain perpetual contract platforms. During the hours when traditional markets are shut, this becomes the only trading venue that can price safe-haven assets like gold and crude oil in real time.

Since the beginning of 2026 to date, the weekend trading volume of on-chain commodities perpetual contracts has grown by 8 times. Currently, among 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 takes a break and has clear competitive advantages when geopolitical conflicts erupt (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 correlation with traditional gold markets. The two have historically shown weak correlation, but in the first quarter of 2026 the correlation coefficient rose above 0.70, marking on-chain gold markets moving toward maturity.

Real Estate

Real estate tokenization is currently more at the vision-and-planning stage and has not yet scaled into widespread deployment.

As part of the RWA track, the total scale of tokenized real estate assets is only $202.7 million; but with multiple compliant products landing in two major core markets this year, the segment is set for 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 property units. In the same quarter, Hong Kong’s Securities and Futures Commission also approved a tokenized real estate product launched by Delin Holdings.

Real estate tokenization can provide a fractional ownership solution for investors who cannot meet high real estate investment thresholds. Each token represents a portion of ownership in the property; token holders can collect rental income proportionally and can transfer their holdings at any time without waiting for the entire property to be sold.

Overall RWA scale still relatively limited

Although tokenized real-world assets (RWA) continue to grow, the road ahead 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 scale is simply negligible.

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

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

However, regulators are gradually accepting the track. In March this year, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) approved Nasdaq’s proposal allowing certain stocks to be traded and cleared in token form. Analysts and industry observers expect tokenized stock trading to be broadly permitted soon; SEC Chair Paul Atkins is likely to give the RWA sector a green light via “innovation exemption regulations.”

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