Why RWA is Still Growing Amid the DeFi Downturn?

As trading activities of DeFi native assets weaken and some traditional crypto narratives cool off, RWA has become one of the few sectors still expanding. As of August 10, 2026, the market size of publicly distributed RWA, excluding stablecoins, has reached $38.17 billion, just $1.83 billion short of the $40 billion threshold. The total number of asset holders has increased by 56.18% in the past month, reaching 1.7 million.

This growth does not stem from new crypto narratives but rather from the on-chain demand for real-world assets like U.S. Treasury bonds and stocks. However, the key to RWA is not just whether it can be tokenized, but whether custody, legal rights, clearing paths, and redemption arrangements can truly be established after tokenization.

1. Growth Facts: $38.17 Billion and 1.7 Million Holders

As of June 30, 2026, the RWA market size was $32.65 billion, with 947,000 holders. In just over a month, these two metrics surged to $38.17 billion and 1.7 million, with monthly growth rates of 16.9% and 79.5%, respectively. Looking at a longer timeframe, RWA has maintained rapid growth since 2025, but the change in the second half of 2026 is that the incremental growth is no longer solely from asset issuance; the explosive growth in the number of holders indicates that demand is being activated.

However, this growth is highly concentrated. A report jointly released by BeInCrypto and RWA.xyz tracked over 7,000 tokenized products, of which only 62 assets accounted for 88% of the market value. According to another classification, about $32 billion belongs to assets that can freely circulate on public chains, while approximately $27 billion is closer to off-chain assets held on-chain, with limited actual on-chain usability. The RWA market is shifting from a "broad increase" to "structural differentiation."

Data Source: RWA.xyz, as of August 10, 2026

2. Where is the Growth Happening? Expansion Across U.S. Treasuries, Stocks, and Commodities

The growth of RWA is not evenly distributed but is concentrated in three clear asset categories.

U.S. Treasuries remain the largest cornerstone. As of August 10, the total value of tokenized U.S. Treasuries reached $16.21 billion, covering 87 different products. This alone has grown from $380 million in Q1 2023 to over $16 billion now. Circle's USYC leads with $3 billion, followed closely by BlackRock's BUIDL at $2.68 billion.

Tokenized stocks have become the largest user growth entry point. As of August 10, the number of tokenized stock holders reached 1.09 million, with a weekly growth rate of 117.93%, and a distributed value of $2.37 billion. Data from the Jupiter platform shows that the monthly trading volume of tokenized stocks has increased by 360% this year, with over 65% of trades occurring outside regular trading hours for U.S. stocks.

Commodities maintain steady expansion. The allocated value of tokenized commodities has reached $4.88 billion, with active addresses increasing by 124.42% month-over-month. Tether Gold leads this category. This indicates that the growth of RWA is expanding from a single institutional allocation logic to a dual-track structure that includes both institutional allocations and retail entry.

Data Source: RWA.xyz (asset scale trends as of August 10, 2026)

3. Who is Driving This? The Collective Entry of Traditional Financial Institutions

The most significant feature of this round of RWA growth is that it does not come from innovations in crypto-native projects but from the collective entry of traditional financial institutions.

BlackRock is one of the most representative forces. Its BUIDL fund has an on-chain scale of about $2.68 billion, deployed across Ethereum, Avalanche, and Solana. The fund primarily invests in U.S. Treasuries, repurchase agreements, and cash equivalents, providing an annualized yield of about 3%-5%. More importantly, BlackRock recently partnered with Securitize and Uniswap Labs to bring BUIDL onto UniswapX—qualified institutional investors can exchange this on-chain money market fund for USDC 24/7. BlackRock CEO Larry Fink also emphasized the importance of digital asset-related businesses in the company's overall layout in the 2026 shareholder letter.

Franklin Templeton saw its tokenized assets grow from $768 million in June 2025 to over $2.5 billion in June 2026, with its Benji platform transferring $1.5 billion in assets to BNB Chain in July. Ondo Finance has taken another path—packaging underlying yield-bearing assets into yield-generating dollar products, forming a substantial scale of users and asset accumulation on-chain.

At the same time, RWA is moving from "asset tokenization" to the practical application of on-chain finance. In Q2 2026, RWA deposits on DeFi platforms increased to $7.4 billion, about three times that of the same period last year, while total DeFi deposits decreased by about 15%. RWA spot trading volume increased by approximately 220% year-on-year, while overall DEX trading volume fell by about 70%. RWA collateral held in DeFi lending on Ethereum accounts for nearly 70%.

Data Source: CoinShares / Token Terminal, "The Growth of Hybrid Finance" report

4. Despite Growth, Bottlenecks Remain

Despite the impressive data, RWA is still far from true scalability.

First is asset concentration. 62 assets account for 88% of the market value, with about half of the assets showing no weekly capital movement. While many assets have been tokenized, they have not formed an active trading market.

Second is legal and custody structures. Users often purchase not the underlying assets themselves but the on-chain mapping of real assets. Robinhood's tokenized products clearly inform investors that the tokens provide economic exposure to the underlying securities but do not confer direct legal or beneficial ownership. Whether this structure can truly protect investor rights in extreme cases remains an open question.

Finally, regulatory expectations. The advancement of the U.S. market structure bill surrounding digital assets has, to some extent, enhanced market expectations for gradually clearer regulatory boundaries for RWA, but specific timelines and implementation methods remain uncertain.

The current development stage of RWA bears many similarities to stablecoins around 2019—at that time, the total market value of stablecoins was only about $5 billion, and it has now surpassed $300 billion. Demand has emerged, growth has begun, but institutional support is still on the way. Whether it can transform today's growth into sustainable institutional financial capabilities for tomorrow depends on whether custody structures, legal rights, and regulatory frameworks can truly be in place.

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