Stobox Research · Data as of July 10, 2026

The State of RWA Tokenization

2026 Mid-Year Report

The half-year the rails became regulated reality: an SEC statement settled the law, Nasdaq and FINRA opened regulated trading and custody, the first tokenization company IPO'd, and on-chain RWA value quadrupled from early 2025. Every figure below carries its source and date — including the ones the industry prefers not to quote.

$33.5B

on-chain RWA value (ex-stablecoins), rwa.xyz, July 2026

+400%

growth since early 2025

~995K

on-chain RWA holders

167

tokenization platforms across 30+ networks

Executive summary

Real-world-asset tokenization crossed from experiment to regulated market in the twelve months to July 2026. On-chain value (excluding stablecoins) reached $33.5B on the canonical tracker — roughly 4× early 2025 — led by tokenized Treasuries and private credit, with tokenized equities emerging as the fastest-growing new category after Nasdaq's approval. The regulatory story is the bigger one: the US settled the legal status of tokenized securities and licensed the first regulated custody and exchange rails; the EU completed MiCA's transition; Cayman wrote tokenized funds into statute; and the industry converged on a neutral token standard (ERC-7943). What has not arrived on schedule is liquidity — most tokenized credit and Treasuries still mint and redeem rather than trade — and the small-and-mid-market issuer segment remains the least tracked, least served part of the market. That gap is precisely where the next phase gets built.

1 · Market size — with the methodology said out loud

Trackers disagree because they count differently. rwa.xyz, the canonical dashboard, showed $33.5B of distributed on-chain RWA value (ex-stablecoins) in July 2026; Chainalysis-based analyses put it near $31B (+400% since early 2025); Canton's late-2025 report said $36B. Counting the underlying assets those tokens reference, rwa.xyz reports $369B. Claims of "$60B+" include broader definitions where, by the same analysis, 56% of assets sit idle. Stablecoins are a separate$290–321B market (USDT ~$184–190B, USDC ~$73B) and are excluded above — the standard methodology (also McKinsey's) to avoid double-counting. Trajectory: ~$2B (2022) → ~$6.4B (end-2024) → ~$18–26B (2025) → $31–36B (mid-2026).

2 · The segments

Segment	On-chain value	What's behind the number
Tokenized US Treasuries & MMFs	$13.4–15.2B	76 products, ~58,700 holders. Top funds: BlackRock BUIDL ($2.4–3.1B), Circle USYC ($2.9B), Ondo USDY ($2.1B), Franklin BENJI ($2.05B), Centrifuge JTRSY ($1.2B).
Private credit	$8–18.9B*	Tracker ranges vary with methodology; $33.7B originated all-time. Maple ($4B+ originated), Centrifuge, Goldfinch, Apollo ACRED (~$125M).
Commodities (mostly gold)	$5.5B	XAUT + PAXG hold 96%+ of tokenized gold. Q1 2026 spot volume $90.7B — more than all of 2025 ($84.6B).
Corporate bonds	$1.77B	One of six categories above $1B.
Tokenized equities	$0.5–1B	The newest category — born mid-2025, accelerating after Nasdaq's March 2026 approval; Q1 2026 spot volume already $15.1B.
Real estate	$1–3B (est.)	The hardest segment to measure — most 'tokenized real estate' is SPV interests, splitting across categories. Reference project: Dubai's Land Department, targeting $16B by 2033.

* Private-credit figures span $8B (active on-chain AUM, conservative) to $18.9B (broader counting); $33.7B has been originated all-time. Sources: rwa.xyz, Blockworks/Fensory, per-fund disclosures — full list in the sources section.

3 · The half-year the rails became regulated

December 2025 to July 2026 delivered more regulatory infrastructure than the previous five years combined. The question "is tokenization allowed?" is now settled in every major market.

Dec 2025

DTCC receives SEC no-action relief for a DTC tokenization pilot covering Russell 1000 equities, Treasuries, and major ETFs.

Jan 2026

SEC staff statement: a security's technological format does not alter its legal character — tokenized securities are securities, full stop.

Feb 2026

Dubai opens a regulated secondary market for tokenized title deeds — 7.8M property tokens tradeable, linked to the official land registry.

Mar 2026

SEC approves Nasdaq's rule change to trade tokenized forms of listed securities on its main order book. Cayman enacts the first statutory tokenized-funds regime in a major fund domicile (March 24).

May 2026

FINRA approves the first broker-dealer custody of tokenized securities with atomic settlement. ERC-7943 (uRWA) reaches Final status as Ethereum's RWA standard — backed by a coalition including Stobox — and CMTA's Swiss CMTAT standard adds support for it.

Jul 2026

Securitize lists on NYSE (SECZ) at a $1.25B valuation — the first pure-play tokenization IPO — and tokenizes its own stock on listing day. MiCA's transitional period ends across the EU. DTCC's tokenization pilot begins (launch slated October). Robinhood launches an L2 purpose-built for tokenized stocks.

Full jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction rules live in ourguides cluster — US, EU, UK, UAE, Switzerland, BVI, Cayman, Luxembourg — each dated and sourced.

4 · Where the value lives (chains)

Ethereum remains the center of gravity with 47.9% of RWA value (rwa.xyz, July 2026), followed by BNB Chain (12.1%), Solana (9.8% — whose RWA holder count overtook Ethereum's for the first time in mid-2026, powered by tokenized stocks), and Stellar (9.0%). The EVM L2s are the issuance workhorses — Robinhood launched a dedicated tokenized-stock L2 on the Arbitrum stack on July 1, and Base anchors the USDC-native settlement rails (where Stobox Compass issues). Institutional plumbing runs in parallel: JPMorgan's Kinexys settles $7B+ daily across 8 currencies.

5 · The liquidity reality check

The honest chapter most reports skip: issuing a token does not create a market.Analyses of on-chain transfer data show tokenized Treasuries and private credit — the two largest segments — trade thinly, with activity dominated by mint-and-redeem cycles rather than secondary transfers; by one mid-2026 analysis, 56% of reported RWA value sits idle. Where trading is real, it's concentrated: tokenized gold did $90.7B of spot volume in Q1 2026 (more than all of 2025), new tokenized equities did $15.1B, roughly 60% of CEX RWA volume runs through a single venue, and derivatives dwarf everything — $524.8Bof RWA perpetuals traded in Q1 2026 alone against ~$33B of spot value. Cross-chain friction is measurable too: 1–3% pricing gaps for identical assets, 2–5% cost to move capital between chains. For issuers the lesson is structural: plan distribution and secondary access as deliberately as issuance — it's why transfer rules that travel with the token (and licensed venues to route to) matter more than the mint.

6 · The projection spread — quoted responsibly

McKinsey (2024)	$2T by 2030 (base) · $4T bullish	Deliberately conservative; excludes stablecoins, CBDCs, and deposits to avoid double-counting.
BCG & ADDX (2023–24)	$16T by 2030	The most-cited figure — models ~10% of global GDP tokenized.
Ripple & BCG (Apr 2025)	$18.9T by 2033	Three-phase adoption model (money markets → credit → alternatives), ~53% CAGR.
Standard Chartered (2024)	$30.1T by 2034	The most bullish; includes trade finance at scale.

A 15× spread between serious forecasters is itself the finding: the direction is consensus, the slope is not. At mid-2026's ~$33B, even McKinsey's conservative $2T-by-2030 implies ~60× growth in four years.

7 · The missing middle — an operator's view

The data above is institutional: mega-funds tokenizing Treasuries and credit. The small-and-mid-market — private companies tokenizing their own equity, real estate, or revenue — is the least tracked segment in the industry: no tracker publishes counts of sub-$50M tokenized raises, STO market estimates disagree by 5×, and secondary data is essentially absent. What follows is therefore first-hand rather than tracker data: across 100+ client engagements in 20+ jurisdictions since 2018 ($300M+ tokenized), the binding constraint has never been token technology — it is issuer readiness. Deals stall at the canonical record: reconciled ownership, valuation, cap table, and agreements that survive a broker-dealer's or counsel's diligence. That diagnosis is why the Stobox stack starts with afree readiness score and one verified company record before any raise or mint — and why 2026's regulatory clarity moves the bottleneck to exactly this layer. The infrastructure is licensed; the question left is whether the business is ready.

8 · What to watch in H2 2026

The SEC's proposed crypto safe-harbor package (July 2026) — scope of the tokenized-securities exemption as it finalizes.
DTCC's tokenization service launch, slated October 2026 — settlement-layer tokenization at market scale.
EU DLT Pilot permanence trialogues, and CIMA's final tokenized-funds rules replacing Cayman's interim conditions.
Nasdaq's first tokenized-equity trades (expected Q3) and whether tokenized-stock liquidity follows the gold pattern.
Whether secondary-market activity in tokenized credit/Treasuries breaks out of the mint-and-redeem pattern.

About this report

Published by Stobox — the operating system for private companies: organize (Intelligence), raise (Raisable), tokenize (Compass) — building RWA infrastructure since 2018. The full annual edition arrives in January 2027. Corrections and source suggestions:info@stobox.io.

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Questions, answered

How big is the tokenized RWA market in mid-2026?

About $31–36 billion of on-chain value excluding stablecoins, depending on the tracker — rwa.xyz, the canonical dashboard, showed $33.5B in July 2026, roughly 4× early 2025. Counting the underlying assets those tokens reference, the figure is ~$369B. Stablecoins are a separate ~$290–321B market. Anyone quoting '$60B+' is using broader definitions that include idle, illiquid collateral.

What are the largest tokenized asset classes?

Tokenized US Treasuries and money-market funds lead (~$13–15B, headlined by BlackRock's BUIDL), followed by private credit (~$8–19B depending on methodology), gold and commodities (~$5.5B), corporate bonds (~$1.8B), and the newest category — tokenized equities — born mid-2025 and accelerating after Nasdaq's March 2026 approval. Real estate remains the hardest to measure because most of it is tokenized through SPV interests.

Is tokenized-asset liquidity real yet?

Partly — and honest issuers should say so. Gold and equities trade meaningfully ($90.7B and $15.1B spot in Q1 2026 respectively), and derivatives dwarf everything ($524.8B of RWA perps in Q1 2026 alone). But most tokenized Treasuries and private credit show mint-and-redeem patterns rather than secondary trading, and by one analysis over half of reported RWA value sits idle. Tokenization creates the possibility of liquidity; the market for each asset still has to be built.

What changed for issuers in 2026?

The rails became regulated reality: the SEC's January statement settled tokenized securities' legal status, Nasdaq and FINRA approvals opened regulated trading and custody, DTCC began piloting settlement-layer tokenization, MiCA's transition ended in the EU, Cayman wrote tokenized funds into statute, and ERC-7943 gave the industry a neutral token standard. The bottleneck moved decisively from 'is this allowed?' to 'is your company ready?'

Methodology & sources

Data gathered July 10, 2026. On-chain figures follow rwa.xyz methodology (distributed on-chain value, stablecoins excluded); where trackers disagree, ranges are shown with the disagreement stated. Projections are attributed with publication dates; regulatory items cite primary sources. Stobox first-hand observations in §7 are labeled as such and use only published Stobox figures.

General information, not investment advice. Figures change; the live trackers above are authoritative for current values. Third-party trademarks belong to their owners.