More than $38 billion of real-world assets are now tokenized on-chain, but the next test is whether that capital can become liquid, usable financial infrastructure.
Castle Labs estimates that U.S. Treasuries account for more than $15.9 billion of tokenized assets, followed by $4.9 billion in commodities, $3.6 billion in active strategies, $2.56 billion in asset-backed credit, and $2.52 billion in equities.
Meanwhile, the concentration in yield-generating assets shows where most of that capital is going, with investors favoring assets that can generate a return while remaining within blockchain financial systems.
Yield Is Pulling Capital On-chain
Tokenized Treasuries remain the largest segment, giving investors access to an asset class traditionally used for cash management and fixed income. At the same time, products that package yield into transferable on-chain instruments are becoming a larger part of the RWA landscape.
A previous study the firm did in June also found that only around $3 billion of a $28.2 billion tokenized RWA universe was actively deployed in DeFi. Most tokenized assets therefore remained investment products rather than working parts of on-chain financial infrastructure.
Mantle’s ecosystem, for example, has a lot of income-generating assets, with 96% of its tokenized RWA-structured value sitting in yield-bearing instruments. The Ethereum Layer 2 hosts more than $225 million in RWA assets, with more than 60% concentrated in Mantle Index Four, 21% in syrupUSDT, 15% in Ondo USDY, and 2% in xStocks.
That gap between holding an asset and putting it to work also makes liquidity critical, as its utility depends on whether investors can trade it, use it as collateral, or move it across protocols without losing access.
Mantle Shows Where RWA Liquidity Gets Tested
syrupUSDT, for example, is designed to carry yield from Maple’s institutional lending activity while remaining usable across DeFi. Mantle says the token is the ecosystem’s second-largest RWA product by TVL and can be deposited into Aave, where it can also be used for lending and as collateral.
What this means in practice is that an investor can hold syrupUSDT for its yield, then use the asset inside a lending protocol without having to exit the position and move back into another asset.
Meanwhile, xStocks, a tokenized equity product which has grown to more than $4.4 million since launching in March, brings traditional equity exposure onchain through a blockchain-based trading product.
The two products show different ways in which tokenized assets can circulate through DeFi, while Mantle’s RWA ecosystem covers issuance, trading, liquidity, lending, and redemption.
If tokenized assets remain isolated wrappers, liquidity can stay fragmented across issuers, chains, and venues. But if they become collateral and trading instruments that interact across protocols, the same pool of capital can support more financial activity without requiring an equivalent increase in underlying assets.
Castle Labs argues that the next challenge for tokenization is making assets useful as on-chain capital through deep liquidity, collateral utility, and composability.
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