A new Dune Analytics report reveals a rapidly expanding but uneven tokenized real-world asset market, where onchain usage diverges sharply from traditional finance. Tokenized RWAs grew more than 140% over the past year to about $34 billion, spanning 21 chains, more than 250 issuers, and over 2,600 products through August 31. Yet cash equivalents—the largest category at $17.8 billion—are mostly static. More than 95% of tokenized Treasury exposure sits in T-bills and money market funds, with only 0.006% of cash-equivalent supply traded in August and just 0.4% in lending protocols.
Tokenized money funds yield 3.2% to 3.6%, below the 3.91% available on three-month Treasury bills, underscoring why holders treat them as buy-and-hold instruments. Equities, by contrast, are the smallest asset class by value but grew roughly 25 times over the year and accounted for 93% of onchain spot trading in August. Derivatives dominate equity activity: August perpetual volume reached $72.4 billion versus $12.6 billion in spot. Memory chipmakers represented 47% of equity perpetual volume, with an SK Hynix perpetual peaking at $343 million in open interest in July, allowing traders to position on the stock while Korea's exchange was closed.
Dune CEO Fredrik Haga said the data shows a different behavioral pattern than traditional passive investing: 'When people trade on blockchain, it's to express themselves more, as opposed to passive investing.' Tokenized credit plays a third role, with 19% to 21% of tokenized credit supply sitting in lending protocols—the highest collateral usage among RWAs—and yields ranging from 3% to 13%. Tokenized gold, most of the $5.5 billion commodities category, grew through accumulation, with ounces held up 73% over the year versus a 29% rise in gold prices, though it remains just 0.86% of gold held in traditional ETFs.
The findings complicate the industry's standard efficiency pitch for tokenization. The largest category, tokenized Treasuries, is mostly bought and held, while the fastest-growing activity is leveraged, round-the-clock trading of individual stocks through perpetual contracts. The report tracks usage rather than price alignment with underlying securities, leaving open the next question for a market that increasingly trades while reference exchanges are shut.
Meanwhile, traditional financial institutions are being urged to combine on-chain analytics with existing controls. On-chain data can add transaction-level visibility for digital-asset risk monitoring, strengthen AML and transaction monitoring, track market and investor behavior, improve counterparty due diligence, and support oversight of tokenized assets. Before adoption, institutions should verify data coverage, entity attribution methods, cross-chain visibility, integration with existing systems, and data governance.
