Tokenized real-world assets ex-stablecoins have gone from $13.6 billion to $31.5 billion in a year across the four largest classes, with tokenized equities alone rising from $61 million to $2.47 billion. The synthetic side moved even faster: perpetuals on commodities and equities were 0.2% of Hyperliquid's volume last October and 51% of it by July, ahead of the venue's crypto-native book.
Seeing a market growing on both sides at once requires a holistic view. Dune's new RWA dataset covers nearly 3,000 products across 21 chains, identified the way an institution would identify them, by issuer, wrapper and regulator, so familiar instruments can be followed onchain: how much exists, who holds it, whether it trades, what it yields, and where it is posted as collateral.
All figures as of 24 August 2026 unless noted.
Tokenized assets are usually ranked by assets under management, and on that measure fixed income, nearly 90% of it US Treasuries, is more than half the market. Ranked by other dimensions, it comes last of the four.
Credit holds three quarters of everything posted as collateral in lending markets on under a quarter of the capital, while equities lead on trading and holders from the smallest asset base.
Retention is the only measure on which the four look alike, at 86% to 89% of the addresses holding each class ninety days ago, although the equity holder base has more than doubled in a quarter while the treasury base has shrunk.
Only gold and equities exist onchain in two forms: the token is a claim on the asset, redeemable for metal or passing through a dividend. The perpetual is cash-settled exposure to the price.
Both assets are worth owning outright, so positions have built up in the token, most visibly in commodities. Both also move enough that adjusting or hedging that position through a perpetual costs less than trading the underlying. Perpetuals now carry 97% of the total volume in both classes, surging from $756 million of volume in October 2025 to $114 billion in July.
Fixed Income and Credit have neither a perpetual market nor much of a secondary one, at $2.7 million of spot volume against $16.46 billion outstanding. Twelve of the largest funds, recorded no exchange trades at all over thirty days while updating their marks regularly. Holders redeem with the issuer, which settles offchain over several days, and facilities are emerging to shorten that: Grove's Basin advances up to $1 billion a day in stablecoins against approved redemptions of BUIDL and JTRSY.
Nine issuers hold the same short-dated US government paper, and the yield on it has commoditised. All nine pay less than the bill they hold, within a spread of 45 to 60 basis points that has held for a year.
However, the instruments underneath have not converged the way the yields have. USTB and thBILL both pay 3.51%: one is a tokenized share class of an Invesco fund, the other a wrapper holding Wellington's ULTRA and Fidelity International's FILQ. Weighted average maturity runs from 57 days at Spiko to 165 at Ondo, and three of the nine hold other tokenized funds rather than bills, with each layer taking a fee.
One important dimension where these products differ is accessibility. USDY and thBILL impose no transfer restriction once issued, which is what lets a token circulate as collateral, though subscribing still requires onboarding and USDY is limited to non-US investors under Reg S. The other seven run allowlists, so a position cannot move to a counterparty the issuer has not approved. They also differ by redemption time, and the two dimensions trade off: the three that settle onchain in real time are all allowlisted, while the two that transfer freely take several days to redeem offchain.
Where treasuries cluster, credit spread out with yield ranging from 3.24% to 12.13%, and it sorts by what secures the loan. AAA-rated CLO tranches sit at the bottom, with Janus Henderson's JAAA at 4.08% and Securitize's STAC at 4.25%, because a AAA tranche is the last part of the structure to take a loss. At the top are Brazilian consumer credit-card receivables, where BlackOpal's OALS2T pays 12.13% and Nest's nOPAL 11.09% on the same underlying pool. Maple's lending to crypto trading firms lands in the middle at 4.85%, because Maple's loans are overcollateralized and a borrower who has posted more than they borrowed does not pay much of a premium.
Thirty per cent of tokenized commodities sit at exchanges, where Binance is the largest holder of PAXG at 18.6%, so most gold onchain is a customer balance held in custody. Credit sits somewhere else entirely, with 24% in lending protocols as posted collateral and effectively nothing at exchanges. Equities split more evenly, 20% at exchanges and 28% in smart contracts, and show the highest share of liquidity on decentralised exchanges across the four classes.
Equity and commodity liquidity on decentralised exchanges is still very thin. Identified pools hold $39 million of tokenized equities against $2.48 billion outstanding and $44 million of gold against $5.52 billion, so under 2% of either class is available to buy at any moment. The deepest single equity name is Binance's SPCXB at $5 million, and the largest gold pools are PAXG at $23.4 million across 73 of them.
Lending is where more of this supply is put to work, and deposits have grown from $595 million a year ago to $2.36 billion across seven venues. Credit accounts for most of it. Equities barely register at $38 million, almost all xStocks on Jupiter Lend and Kamino, led by $17 million of SPYx.
Thin liquidity and volatility are some of the factors that hold that back, since a pooled variable-rate market liquidates against an oracle price and there is often no depth to liquidate into. Deposits are likely to grow fast as newer designs address these limitations. Morpho's Midnight and Jupiter's Offerbook both match lenders and borrowers directly at a fixed rate and term rather than pooling capital against an oracle price, which is what collateral this thin requires.
Real-world assets are arriving onchain quickly and they are not arriving as one monolithic asset class. They differ by accessibility, redemption mechanics, yield, legal wrapper and how they get used once issued, and those differences matter when choosing where to allocate.
We expect equities to keep growing fastest. The accessibility barrier is the lowest of the four, they compose natively with lending, they pay a dividend, and they move enough to be worth trading and levering. That growth will arrive as many onchain versions of the same company, and choosing between them will depend on having clear data about the issuer, the wrapper and the redemption terms behind each ticker.
We also expect treasuries to become more accessible as issuers wrap them back into traditional products. On 12 August the SEC's Investment Management division granted Franklin Templeton no-action relief to hold BENJI, its tokenized money market fund, inside conventional ETFs and mutual funds from as early as the fourth quarter, which puts these instruments in front of investors who will never touch a token directly.
If the past year is any guide the tokenized side doubles again while the synthetic side keeps taking share of the trading, and the differences that matter only become visible when supply, holders, trading and DeFi integration are measured together.
The analysis above was built with Dune's RWA dataset
Nothing in this newsletter constitutes financial advice. Always do your own research.
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