Author: RWA Research Institute

In March 2026, a set of data attracted widespread attention in the digital asset industry. According to data from RWA.xyz, as of March 8, the total on-chain value of tokenized real-world assets (RWA), excluding stablecoins, had exceeded $25 billion . This figure represents nearly four times the approximately $6.4 billion of a year earlier, with a year-on-year increase of 289%.

Almost simultaneously, a series of moves by traditional financial giants surfaced. BlackRock expanded its tokenization fund, BUIDL, to include five public blockchains: Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, and Polygon, making it the largest publicly traded blockchain tokenized money market fund. JPMorgan Chase renamed its blockchain division, Onyx, to Kinexys, marking the global financial institution's formal shift from "exploring blockchain" to "scaled application."

These seemingly independent events all point to the same conclusion: RWA is crossing a historic tipping point from "proof of concept" to "scaled deployment".

The on-chain size of six major asset classes—US Treasury bonds, commodities, private credit, institutional alternative investment funds, corporate bonds, and non-US government debt—has all exceeded $1 billion. This is no longer a testing ground for fringe innovators, but a new battleground where mainstream financial institutions are voting with real money. The market value of $25 billion is not only a summary of the achievements of the past few years, but also the starting point for explosive growth in the next decade.

I. All six major assets are flourishing.

The maturation of any market requires a shift from being driven by a single product category to being supported by a diversified structure. The RWA market is currently undergoing this process.

According to RWA.xyz statistics, the current growth of on-chain tokenized assets is not dominated by any single asset class. US Treasury bonds and commodities remain the largest segment, accounting for over 58% combined, with a total size exceeding $16 billion. However, at the same time, private lending, institutional alternative investment funds, corporate bonds, and non-US government debt have all surpassed the $1 billion mark. Data shows that the concentration of top assets has decreased by 61% in the past year, indicating intensified market competition and more asset types finding suitable tokenization paths.

The tokenization of US Treasury bonds has provided global investors with on-chain yield tools. For example, BlackRock's BUIDL fund invests 100% of its total assets in cash, US Treasury bonds, and repurchase agreements, allowing investors to earn dollar returns while holding tokens on the blockchain. As of early March, BUIDL's market capitalization had reached $517 million.

The tokenization of commodities is exemplified by Tether Gold and Paxos Gold, with on-chain assets of $2.96 billion and $2.56 billion respectively. These assets combine the stability of physical gold with the programmability of blockchain, providing investors with new allocation options.

The tokenization of private lending and institutional alternative investment funds represents a deeper structural change. Traditional private lending markets suffer from opacity, poor liquidity, and high barriers to entry, while tokenization allows these assets to be broken down into smaller shares, enabling automated profit distribution through smart contracts. Ondo Finance's on-chain assets have exceeded $2 billion, some of which are yield products built on BlackRock's BUIDL platform.

A Bernstein analyst report points out that tokenized funds launched by traditional financial institutions like BlackRock are "bringing legitimacy" to public smart contract blockchains like Ethereum. This legitimacy is not only reflected in the technology but also in regulatory approval and institutional trust. When the world's largest asset management companies choose to issue products on public blockchains, and when the blockchain departments of traditional banks begin processing billions of dollars in real-world transactions, RWA is no longer a concept that needs to be proven, but a market that is taking shape.

Second, BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase are casting their votes of confidence with real money.

If 2024 and 2025 were the period when traditional financial institutions “focused on RWA”, then 2026 marked their formal transition from “observers” to “participants”.

BlackRock's approach is the most typical example. Following the launch of its spot Bitcoin ETF, this asset management company with over $11 trillion in assets under management has accelerated its expansion in the tokenized asset space. Its BUIDL fund, launched in partnership with Securitize, initially only offered on Ethereum, has now expanded to five public chains: Aptos, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Optimism, and Polygon. Notably, BUIDL's management fees on Aptos, Avalanche, and Polygon are only 20 basis points, lower than the 50 basis points on other chains; this cost is subsidized by the respective public chain foundations. This detail reflects that the public chain ecosystem is actively seeking to attract traditional assets, while traditional assets are also searching for the most suitable underlying infrastructure.

Even more noteworthy is BlackRock's exploration in the DeFi space. In February of this year, BlackRock, through Securitize, introduced its BUIDL fund to the UniswapX trading platform, allowing investors to achieve near-instantaneous exchange between BUIDL and USDC on this decentralized trading system. Simultaneously, BlackRock also made a strategic investment in the UNI token, marking the first time the world's largest asset management company has directly entered a DeFi protocol. Robert Mitchnick, Global Head of Digital Assets at BlackRock, commented on this collaboration, stating, "This is an important step in the integration of tokenized assets and decentralized finance."

JPMorgan Chase's transformation is equally significant. Earlier this year, the bank renamed its blockchain division from Onyx to Kinexys, explicitly shifting its strategic focus from "exploration" to "scaled application." According to The Asian Banker, the Kinexys platform processes over $2 billion in daily transaction value, with cumulative transaction volume exceeding $1.5 trillion. Its core product, JPM Coin, has been renamed Kinexys Digital Payment, supporting on-chain settlement in USD and EUR, aiming to reduce foreign exchange settlement risks and accelerate cross-border transactions.

In the repurchase market, Kinexys' distributed ledger repurchase platform, developed in partnership with Broadridge Financial Solutions, processes over $1 trillion in tokenized repurchase transactions monthly. This figure far exceeds most people's expectations and demonstrates the real value of blockchain technology in transforming traditional financial market infrastructure. Toh Wee Kee, Global Head of Business Architecture at Kinexys, emphasized in an interview that Kinexys' strategic direction is to work with industry partners to build an interconnected financial ecosystem, using blockchain technology to improve transparency, efficiency, and regulatory compliance.

Franklin Templeton migrated its US government money market fund, FOBXX, to the Solana blockchain, becoming one of the earliest traditional asset management companies to embrace a high-performance public blockchain. The Solana network currently boasts a record 163,000 RWA holders, and institutions such as Electric Capital and Goldman Sachs have allocated over $240 million to Solana-related products. These figures indicate that traditional financial institutions' participation in RWA is no longer limited to a few pioneers but is forming a widespread trend.

III. From "Institutional Game" to "Mass Participation": The Number of Asset Holders Reaches a New High

The growth in market size is accompanied by an increase in the number of participants. Data from Token Terminal shows that the number of RWA asset holders has reached new highs across all major public blockchains.

The number of RWA asset holders on Ethereum reached 169,000, followed closely by Solana with 163,000, while Celo and BNB Chain recorded 77,000 and 42,000 respectively. Other public chains such as Base and Arbitrum One also showed significant growth. As of early March, the total number of RWA asset holders across all chains exceeded 663,000, a 4% increase from the previous period. Meanwhile, the number of stablecoin holders grew to 233 million, an increase of 5%.

The growth in the number of holders is significant. It means that RWA's investor structure is spreading from early "insiders" to a wider group. When hundreds of thousands of independent addresses hold tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds or private credit tranches, these assets are no longer the exclusive domain of a few institutions, but rather represent a true decentralization of ownership.

This decentralization is precisely one of the core characteristics that distinguishes RWA from traditional finance. In traditional markets, investing in US Treasury bonds or private equity funds requires meeting high entry barriers and is subject to liquidity constraints. In on-chain markets, however, these assets can be broken down into smaller units and transferred instantly via smart contracts, allowing holders to be located globally. Of course, current entry restrictions still exist—for example, BlackRock's BUIDL requires investors to be accredited buyers with a minimum investment of $5 million—but these are primarily regulatory restrictions rather than limitations on technological capabilities. As the regulatory framework improves and product design evolves, the entry barriers are expected to gradually decrease.

Data also shows that currently only about 12% of RWA-backed stablecoins have entered the DeFi space. This means that most RWA assets are still mainly held by institutions, and the penetration rate of DeFi is at a low level. This indicates that there is still huge room for integration between RWA and DeFi, and also shows that the current growth of RWA is mainly driven by institutional demand rather than speculative funds.

IV. 25 billion is just the beginning. Who is driving the next wave?

Standing at the $25 billion mark, it's necessary to ask: What are the core driving forces propelling RWA from proof-of-concept to large-scale deployment? And where will future growth come from?

The first driving force is the gradual clarification of the regulatory framework. In 2026, the world's three largest economies almost simultaneously released regulatory signals. In March, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority officially issued its first batch of fiat-backed stablecoin issuer licenses, including HSBC, Standard Chartered, and OSL. The US OCC proposed a comprehensive regulatory framework for stablecoins based on the GENIUS Act. The EU's MiCA Act has already come into effect. As the "lifeblood" of the RWA ecosystem, the compliance of stablecoins will provide a more solid foundation for the entire market. In China, while Document No. 42, jointly issued by eight departments, explicitly prohibits RWA tokenization activities within the country, it also retains a compliance channel for "overseas registration." This "dual-track system" provides relatively clear boundaries for the overseas RWA business of domestic enterprises.

The second driving force is the continuous improvement of infrastructure. On March 6th, the TX platform officially launched, merging the Sologenic and Coreum blockchain projects, aiming to provide a unified infrastructure, compliance layer, and application marketplace for RWA. The emergence of a unified infrastructure means that RWA projects no longer need to build their technology stack from scratch, but can quickly build applications based on standardization. This is similar to the development path of the traditional internet—when cloud services like AWS emerged, startups no longer needed to build their own servers and could focus on business innovation. The RWA field is undergoing a similar process.

The third driving force is the rise of the AI agent economy. While this article focuses on the RWA market itself, it's undeniable that the integration of AI and RWA is creating new demand. Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of the NEAR protocol, predicts that the main users of blockchain in the future will be AI agents. When millions of AI agents need to autonomously manage assets, execute transactions, and earn rewards on-chain, their demand for RWA will be enormous. Circle and Stripe are racing to build stablecoin payment infrastructure for AI agents, and OpenAI has partnered with Paradigm to launch EVMbench to test AI's capabilities in smart contract security. These developments all point in one direction: an on-chain economy comprised of AI agents is taking shape, and RWA will be one of the most important asset classes in this economy.

Looking back from March 2026, the evolution of RWA will be clearly visible.

From "proof of concept" in 2024, to "project emergence" in 2025, and then to "mainstream entry" in 2026—this path confirms the basic laws of the evolution of digital civilization: new technologies always start from the periphery and gradually penetrate towards the center; new markets are always pioneered by a few forerunners, and then attract mainstream forces to follow suit. $25 billion in on-chain value, six assets all surpassing the $1 billion threshold, comprehensive investments by BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase, and over 660,000 holders—these are no longer characteristics of a niche market, but rather signs of an asset class maturing.

RWA Research Institute firmly believes that both sides of digital civilization are indispensable. AI represents ultimate productivity, enabling assets to be created and operated more efficiently; while RWA and the blockchain technology behind it represent advanced production relations, allowing asset ownership to circulate within a transparent, fair, and trustworthy framework. With all six asset classes flourishing and traditional financial institutions voting with real money, we have reason to believe that RWA has crossed the critical point from "proof of concept" to "scaled deployment."

The next questions are: Who will lead the next wave? Which asset classes will be the first to achieve a breakthrough in scale? How will the regulatory framework evolve further? There are no standard answers to these questions, but they are worth the continued consideration of everyone who is concerned about the evolution of digital civilization.

$25 billion is the result of the past few years, and also the starting line for the next decade. This transformation has only just begun.

(Data and case studies in this article are sourced from: RWA.xyz, The Asian Banker, BlockBeats, Gate News, and MEXC News. All overseas cases are based on the compliance framework of their respective jurisdictions and do not constitute any operational advice for the Chinese mainland market.)

福克斯记者：众议院金融服务数字资产小组委员会将在下周三讨论RWA问题

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