The tokenized real-world asset market has passed a new milestone, with more than $32 billion in tokenized assets across four major asset classes.

According to Dune's September 2026 RWA analysis, the market has more than doubled over the past year. The four largest categories are fixed income, credit, commodities and equities, with each developing around a different use case. Dune's dataset covers more than 2,600 products across 21 blockchain networks.

But the headline figure only tells part of the story.

The more important development is that tokenized assets are beginning to behave differently depending on what they represent, who holds them and how they are used after issuance.

Fixed income accounts for approximately $16.5 billion of the market, making it the largest category by outstanding value.

Around 88% of tokenized fixed-income assets are U.S. Treasuries, highlighting the importance of government-backed securities in the development of tokenized markets. The category grew by approximately 111% over the measured period.

Tokenized Treasury products have become one of the clearest institutional use cases for blockchain-based financial assets.

The basic structure is straightforward: an investor receives a digital representation of an interest in an underlying Treasury or Treasury-focused fund, while the blockchain provides a record of ownership and enables transfers according to the product's rules.

However, Dune's data shows that these products are primarily held rather than actively traded.

Fixed-income products had approximately 69,000 holders, a figure that remained relatively stable over the year. This differs substantially from tokenized equities, where the number of holders increased dramatically.

This suggests that tokenized Treasuries are currently being used primarily as investment and cash-management products rather than highly active secondary-market instruments.

The second-largest category is tokenized credit, with approximately $7.6 billion outstanding.

Credit has a different role in the tokenized market.

Dune found that credit represents approximately 76% of all RWA collateral used in lending markets. In other words, its importance cannot be measured simply by its outstanding value. Tokenized credit is increasingly being used as financial infrastructure inside on-chain lending.

This creates an important distinction between tokenization and simply putting an asset on a blockchain.

A tokenized credit instrument can potentially become part of another financial transaction. It can be held, transferred and, where the product and platform permit it, used as collateral.

The underlying credit products also vary considerably in yield and structure.

Dune's research found tokenized credit yields ranging from approximately 3.24% to 12.13%, reflecting differences in the underlying borrowers, collateral and credit structures.

That diversity means the credit category is not a single market. It includes multiple forms of private and institutional credit with different risk, liquidity and redemption characteristics.

Tokenized commodities represent approximately $5.5 billion of the market.

Gold is a major component of this category, and commodity tokens have developed a different market structure from tokenized Treasuries.

Approximately 30% of tokenized commodities sit at exchanges, according to Dune's analysis. The data indicates that a significant portion of tokenized gold is held as customer balances within exchange custody systems.

This highlights one of the differences between tokenized assets and traditional securities.

A tokenized commodity can exist simultaneously as an asset representing an underlying commodity and as an instrument that interacts with digital-asset trading infrastructure.

That has helped create additional markets around tokenized commodities, particularly gold.

Equities are currently the smallest of the four major categories by outstanding value, at approximately $2.5 billion.

But their growth in user participation has been substantial.

Dune reports that tokenized equity holders increased from approximately 27,700 addresses to 872,000 addresses over the year. That represents a more than 30-fold increase in the number of addresses holding tokenized equities.

The growth is particularly notable because tokenized equities have a much smaller asset base than fixed income.

This creates an interesting difference between capital deployed and number of users.

Fixed income has the largest amount of capital but a relatively small holder base, while equities have a much smaller asset base but a much larger number of holders.

That suggests different markets are forming around different tokenized products.

One of the most significant findings in Dune's research is the growth of synthetic exposure alongside directly tokenized assets.

Gold and equities now exist in two different forms:

The distinction is important.

A tokenized gold product can represent an interest in physical gold, while a gold perpetual can provide exposure to gold's price without giving the holder ownership of physical metal.

The same distinction applies to tokenized equities and equity perpetuals.

According to Dune, RWA perpetuals grew from essentially zero to approximately $2 billion in open interest. Gold and equities accounted for the major activity, and their perpetual markets represented 51% of Hyperliquid's total volume in July 2026, compared with only 0.2% a year earlier.

Dune's research also found that perpetuals represented approximately 97% of total trading volume in gold and equities during the measured period.

This creates an important distinction between tokenized asset supply and tokenized-asset-related trading activity.

The largest tokenized market is not necessarily the market with the highest trading activity.

The $32 billion figure measures the amount of tokenized assets outstanding across the four major categories.

But looking only at supply can hide how these assets are actually being used.

Dune's dataset tracks several different measurements, including:

The results show that the four major asset classes have developed around different forms of activity.

Fixed income is primarily an institutional holding market.

Credit has become an important source of on-chain lending collateral.

Commodities have significant exchange custody and trading activity.

Equities have developed a rapidly expanding holder base and significant synthetic trading activity.

This is why market size alone does not fully describe the development of tokenized finance.

Despite the growth in tokenized assets, secondary-market liquidity remains relatively limited for many products.

Dune's analysis found approximately $39 million of tokenized-equity liquidity in identified decentralized exchange pools against approximately $2.48 billion of outstanding tokenized equities.

For gold, identified decentralized exchange pools held approximately $44 million against $5.52 billion outstanding.

That means only a small portion of the outstanding supply was immediately available through those identified decentralized liquidity pools.

This is an important consideration for institutions.

Issuing an asset on a blockchain does not automatically create a deep secondary market.

Liquidity still depends on market participants, trading venues, transfer restrictions, custody arrangements, redemption mechanisms and the legal structure behind the token.

The significance of the current market is not simply that tokenized RWAs have reached another numerical milestone.

The market is becoming more differentiated.

Treasuries are being used primarily as tokenized investment and cash-management instruments.

Credit is becoming integrated with on-chain lending.

Commodities are connecting physical assets with digital trading infrastructure.

Equities are attracting a rapidly expanding number of holders while also becoming the basis for synthetic markets.

At the same time, established financial institutions are increasingly appearing among the issuers and platforms tracked by Dune, including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, J.P. Morgan, Fidelity, State Street, WisdomTree, Invesco and others.

The next stage of the market will therefore depend on more than issuance.

Questions around secondary liquidity, interoperability, custody, compliance, redemption and integration with existing financial infrastructure will become increasingly important.

The growth of tokenized RWAs shows that blockchain-based representations of traditional assets are becoming a measurable part of financial markets.

But the market is not developing as one unified category.

Different assets are producing different market structures, and the most useful measurements are increasingly moving beyond total value.

Who holds the asset?

Where does it trade?

Can it be used as collateral?

How quickly can it be redeemed?

What legal claim does the token represent?

How does it connect to traditional financial infrastructure?

These questions will help determine how tokenized markets develop from here.

For now, the $32 billion milestone provides a useful snapshot of how far the market has progressed, while the differences between fixed income, credit, commodities and equities show where the next challenges and opportunities are likely to emerge.

Tokenized Markets Weekly tracks the developments shaping security tokens, real-world assets, digital securities, institutional adoption and the infrastructure behind tokenized capital markets.

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