Tokenized Treasury Boom Drives Growth in Core RWA Sector

The explosive growth of tokenized real-world assets has created the impression of a rapidly maturing onchain financial system.

Summary:

Stablecoins represent roughly 91% of the total RWA market.
The non-stablecoin RWA sector has grown to about $28 billion.
Most tokenized assets still rely heavily on traditional financial infrastructure.

But a new report from Pantera Capital argues the sector remains far smaller – and far less decentralized – than headline figures suggest.

According to Pantera’s May 2026 analysis, stablecoins now account for roughly 91% of the total $321 billion RWA market, leaving the “core” tokenized asset sector at just $28 billion once fiat-backed digital dollars are excluded.

Tokenized Treasuries Drive Growth

Despite the adjustment, the non-stablecoin segment continues to expand rapidly.

Pantera estimates the sector has grown from roughly $17 billion in mid-2025 to approximately $28 billion in May 2026, representing annual growth of nearly 65%.

The expansion has been driven primarily by tokenized U.S. Treasury products and money-market funds as major institutions move traditional fixed-income instruments onto blockchain infrastructure.

Products such as BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton’s BENJI token have emerged as early institutional leaders in the sector, offering yield-bearing blockchain-based exposure to government securities.

The growth underscores rising demand from both crypto-native firms and traditional financial institutions seeking programmable collateral and around-the-clock settlement capabilities.

Sector Still Relies on TradFi Infrastructure

Pantera’s report also highlighted what it described as a major decentralization gap across the tokenized asset ecosystem.

The firm analyzed 542 tokenized assets and assigned the sector a maturity score of just 2 out of 5, arguing that most products still depend heavily on offchain intermediaries and legacy financial rails.

According to the report, more than 91% of tokenized assets require a centralized intermediary for issuance or redemption, while nearly 78% function primarily as “blockchain receipts” that mirror offchain holdings rather than existing as fully native onchain financial instruments.

Only 2.7% of assets surveyed were categorized as “born onchain,” meaning their legal and economic rights are enforced primarily through smart contracts rather than traditional custodial structures.

The findings reinforce growing criticism within decentralized finance circles that much of the current RWA market represents digitized versions of existing financial products rather than truly decentralized infrastructure.

Legal Infrastructure Becomes Priority

At the same time, institutional players continue accelerating efforts to close the gap between traditional finance and blockchain-based settlement systems.

Recent industry research has increasingly framed tokenization as a legal infrastructure challenge as much as a technological one, particularly around enforceability and bankruptcy protections.

Developers and financial institutions are now building so-called “bankruptcy-remote” structures designed to ensure tokenized assets remain legally protected if an issuer or intermediary fails.

Meanwhile, major firms including JPMorgan Chase and Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation have expanded interoperability pilots linking bank payment systems directly with tokenized collateral networks.

Those efforts aim to move beyond isolated blockchain pilots toward real-time collateral management systems that integrate directly into global financial markets.

Market Moves From Experimentation Toward Infrastructure

The report arrives during a broader institutional push into tokenized finance as banks, asset managers and payment firms compete to establish the infrastructure layer for digital capital markets.

While the sector remains relatively small outside stablecoins, analysts increasingly view tokenized Treasuries, repo markets and onchain collateral management as some of the clearest near-term use cases for blockchain adoption within traditional finance.

For now, Pantera’s findings suggest the tokenization narrative remains ahead of the underlying infrastructure – but momentum toward institutional-scale adoption continues to accelerate.

The information presented in this article is intended for informational purposes only and should not be interpreted as financial, investment, or trading advice. Coinspress.com does not promote or advocate for any particular investment strategy, asset, or cryptocurrency project. Cryptocurrency markets are highly volatile and unpredictable – always perform your own research and seek guidance from a qualified financial professional before making any investment decisions.

Author

Alexander Stefanov

Reporter at CoinsPress

Alex is Editor-in-Chief of Coinspress and co-founder of Millennial Media Group, with nearly a decade of experience covering financial markets - crypto first, then everything else. It started in 2016 with Bitcoin. Like most people at the time, he didn't fully understand it - so he kept digging. Blockchain, tokenomics, the projects, the cycles. That curiosity never stopped, and eventually pulled him into traditional markets too: equities, commodities, macro. Not because he left crypto behind, but because you can't properly understand one without the other. What drives him is straightforward: he wants to know why something is happening, not just that it's happening. Most market coverage stops at the headline - price up, price down, here's a chart. Alex finds that kind of reporting actively unhelpful. If you walk away from an article without understanding the mechanism behind the move, what did you actually learn? He holds a degree in Tourism from New Bulgarian University - not the most obvious path into financial markets, but markets have a way of pulling in people who are simply too curious to stay out. He has authored over 200 in-depth analyses and more than 10,000 articles across crypto and traditional finance. He still thinks every day in markets teaches him something new. That's probably why he hasn't stopped.