Deposits linked to tokenized real-world assets across lending platforms and decentralized exchanges rose from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026. Over the same period, total DeFi deposits declined by roughly 15% as investors withdrew capital and token prices weakened.

The figures mark a clear divergence inside on-chain finance. While overall activity in the sector retreated, assets tied to traditional instruments expanded sharply and moved beyond simple issuance into active use as collateral, yield sources and traded instruments.

Treasury Funds and Yield Products Lead Growth

Most of the increase came from tokenized Treasury and multi-strategy funds. Leading contributors included JTRSY, BlackRock’s BUIDL and Sky’s sUSDS. Private credit products such as JAAA, syrupUSDT, syrupUSDC and PRIME followed, alongside Ethena’s sUSDe, a delta-neutral strategy.

These instruments package government debt, money-market style strategies and related yields into tokens that can settle and transfer on-chain. Because they continue to generate income while serving as collateral, they lower the opportunity cost of locking capital in lending markets.

Liquidity for the assets concentrated on established venues. Aave, Morpho and Kamino held the deepest pools. Nearly 70% of the deposits sat in Ethereum-based lending markets. Plasma ranked second, while Solana’s share was driven largely by Kamino activity.

Trading Volumes Diverge Sharply

Spot trading of tokenized real-world assets climbed about 220% year over year even as aggregate decentralized exchange volume fell roughly 70%. Gold-backed tokens, including XAUt and PAXG, accounted for a substantial share of the activity as participants responded to movements in bullion prices. Ethena’s sUSDe also contributed after liquidity shifted across Uniswap versions.

The rise points to the development of secondary markets where ownership can change hands without returning to the original issuer. At the same time, perpetual futures linked to real-world assets continued to expand. TradeXYZ, an RWA-focused venue built on Hyperliquid, recorded an approximately twentyfold increase in volume since launch. Trading centered on commodities, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and technology stocks, with open interest rising steadily.

These contracts offer leveraged price exposure rather than direct ownership of the underlying asset. Their growth measures demand for continuous market access but is tracked separately from tokenized fund deposits.

Yield Range and Institutional Use

CoinShares measured yields across the products at roughly 3.2% to 5.5%. Treasury-linked funds clustered toward the lower end of the range, while private credit, lending vaults and funding-rate strategies offered higher returns alongside greater collateral, liquidity and counterparty risks.

Institutional workflows have also begun incorporating the assets. BlackRock’s BUIDL has been accepted as collateral in certain exchange arrangements, with custody held outside the trading venue. Average balances in BUIDL wallets reached the tens of millions of dollars, contrasting with smaller average holdings and faster growth among tokenized equities.

An earlier CoinShares assessment had already placed the broader on-chain market value of tokenized funds, stocks and commodities above $40 billion. The $7.4 billion figure captures only the portion actively deployed in lending and trading venues.

Structural Shift, Not Cyclical Rebound

CoinShares Chief Executive Jean-Marie Mognetti described the pattern as structural rather than cyclical. He noted that expansion during a period of broader sector contraction indicates demand driven by financial utility rather than market sentiment.

In further comments, Mognetti pointed to the composition of assets now in active use: Treasuries, gold, the S&P 500 and semiconductor stocks. “Investors are not leaving traditional finance behind. They are moving traditional assets onto infrastructure that settles in seconds and does not close at night. That is convergence, not disruption,” he said.

The scale remains limited relative to traditional markets. Only about $2.2 billion of the more than $100 trillion global equity market has been tokenized to date. Application revenue across the wider DeFi sector declined between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026, and RWA activity was still too small to reverse that trend. Hyperliquid generated higher application revenue than other venues studied, though its broader derivatives business remained the primary driver.

The report covers transferable tokenized funds, stocks and commodities that can move into the lending and trading venues examined. Over the coming 18 months, key indicators will include collateral deposits, spot volume, open interest, holder growth and the revenue retained by applications. CoinShares stated that RWA activity is likely to become a larger revenue source if it continues to outpace crypto-native markets, a forward-looking assessment rather than a confirmed outcome.