RWA Deposits Triple to $7.4B as DeFi Activity Slows

Headline: Tokenized RWAs surge to $7.4B as DeFi activity cools — CoinShares & Token Terminal report Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) are moving rapidly on-chain even as broader DeFi activity cools, according to The Growth of Hybrid Finance, a joint report from asset manager CoinShares and on‑chain data provider Token Terminal covering Q2 2025–Q2 2026. Key findings - Deposits of tokenized RWAs into decentralized lending platforms and exchanges more than tripled over the past year, rising from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion. - By contrast, total deposits across DeFi fell roughly 15% over the same period. - Spot trading on decentralized exchanges declined ~70%, while spot volumes for tokenized RWAs jumped about 220%. - On perpetual futures venues, both trading volumes and open interest in RWAs continued to climb despite a wider slowdown that began in October 2025; RWA positions now account for over a quarter of on‑chain perpetuals open interest. What’s driving the flow - Treasury and multi‑strategy tokenized funds (examples cited include JTRSY, BUIDL and sUSDS) make up the largest share of RWA activity, followed by private‑credit products (JAAA, syrupUSDC, PRIME) and delta‑neutral strategies (sUSDe). - Tokenized gold leads spot trading volume, while perpetuals activity is concentrated in oil and precious metals, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq‑100, and tech/semiconductor stocks. Platform dynamics - Nearly 70% of RWA deposits are on lending venues built on Ethereum. Plasma (boosted by Aave’s expansion off Ethereum) is the second largest chain for RWA deposits, while Solana’s growth is largely attributed to native RWA lender Kamino. - Deposits remain concentrated on a handful of venues—Aave, Morpho and Kamino. Revenue lag and the Hyperliquid outlier - Despite rising RWA flows, application revenues for both lending and trading platforms fell over the year, a sign the market is still in an early adoption stage. - Hyperliquid stands out: it generated substantially more application revenue than other trading or lending venues and briefly overtook Solana and Ethereum as the top revenue‑generating chain. Decrypt earlier reported that RWAs outpaced crypto on Hyperliquid for a week, with SK Hynix the most‑traded stock that week. Context and scale - The RWA trend isn’t entirely new: in February the RWA pool expanded to $24.8 billion as overall DeFi TVL dipped, a rotation some attribute to compressed DeFi yields versus roughly 4% on tokenized Treasuries. - Despite rapid growth, tokenization remains small relative to traditional markets—about $2.2 billion of a global equity market worth more than $100 trillion has been tokenized. The report likens the current RWA market to stablecoins in 2019: early, concentrated and poised for further development. Institutional product launches - BlackRock, whose BUIDL fund is named in the report, recently launched two additional tokenized money market funds and rolled out tokenized share classes for European money market funds with combined assets of $311 billion—moves that underscore growing institutional interest. Methodology note - The analysis focuses only on “distributed” assets—tokens that can be moved to wallets outside the issuing platform—so closed or permissioned networks such as Canton and Provenance were excluded. CoinShares CEO Jean‑Marie Mognetti framed the shift as investors using traditional financial exposures on‑chain rather than swapping into native crypto: “Look at what is actually being used on‑chain—Treasuries, gold, the S&P 500, semiconductor stocks. Not one of them is a crypto asset.” Bottom line: RWAs are carving out significant on‑chain market share and attracting institutional product launches, but revenue and tokenization scale remain early‑stage. How quickly venue economics and broader adoption follow these flows will shape the next phase of hybrid finance.