Tokenized RWA Collateral in DeFi Triples to $7.4B

Tokenized real-world assets more than tripled their collateral base in DeFi protocols over the past year, while the rest of decentralized finance lost nearly 15% of deposits. That's according to a joint report from CoinShares and Token Terminal published on August 6. The shift hits hardest for large lending players on Ethereum and Solana, plus derivatives traders on Hyperliquid.

What the CoinShares and Token Terminal report found

The figures come from The Growth of Hybrid Finance, the second joint report from CoinShares, a major asset manager, and Token Terminal, an onchain data provider. It covers the period from Q2 2025 through Q2 2026 and relies entirely on data supplied by Token Terminal. Since the entire sample draws on one source, quarter-over-quarter figures line up directly, without gaps in counting methodology.

The headline number is simple. Collateral from tokenized real-world assets in DeFi lending and on decentralized exchanges grew from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion. Total DeFi deposits fell by roughly 15% over the same period. RWA spot trading volumes jumped by around 220%, while aggregate spot volumes on decentralized exchanges dropped nearly 70%. RWA positions now make up more than a quarter of onchain perpetuals open interest, a share that keeps climbing despite a broader derivatives slowdown that began in October 2025.

A similar rotation already showed up earlier this year. In February, total tokenized RWA market value grew 8.7% in a month to $24.8 billion, while DeFi's total value locked fell 25% to $94.8 billion. 1inch co-founder Sergej Kunz attributed that move to investors turning cautious in a risk-off market. The new CoinShares report suggests the rotation hasn't stopped since then, it has picked up speed.

Why capital is leaving speculative DeFi

Tokenized Treasury and multi-strategy funds such as JTRSY, BUIDL and sUSDS hold the largest share among these assets. Private credit products like JAAA, syrupUSDC and PRIME come next, followed by delta-neutral strategies built on sUSDe. What ties these products together is a shared trait: exposure to real yield rather than the price swings of a speculative token.

Tokenized gold leads by spot trading volume. On perpetuals venues, the busiest trading happens in oil, precious metals, the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 indexes, plus tech and semiconductor stocks. The mix looks more like a traditional brokerage book than a typical early-2020s DeFi protocol. It's also reshaping competition among platforms. Lending protocols that once drew users with high rates on volatile tokens now compete for clients who want predictable yield and a clear collateral structure. For DeFi, that means slower but steadier growth than the speculative waves of past years.

Ethereum holds the bulk of the collateral

About 70% of tokenized RWA collateral sits on lending venues built on Ethereum. Plasma ranks second, boosted by Aave's expansion beyond Ethereum. Growth on Solana is largely credited to Kamino, the network's native RWA lending platform.

Deposits stay concentrated on just three protocols. This isn't a broad, diversified market with dozens of comparable players. Most of the inflow runs through a narrow set of venues, namely Aave, Morpho and Kamino. For large asset managers, that concentration means a limited pool of counterparties if they want to scale their onchain presence.

How capital splits across chains largely comes down to which lending protocols are already live there. Aave was first to launch dedicated pools for tokenized assets on Ethereum, and that early-mover edge now carries over to Aave's newer deployments on Plasma. Chains without similarly proven protocols are still sitting outside the main collateral inflow.

Hyperliquid is rewriting the rules among trading venues

Protocol revenue still hasn't caught up with the growth in collateral. Both lending and trading venues saw revenue decline over the year, which the report's authors attribute to an early stage of adoption. That doesn't necessarily mean the model is unprofitable. It more likely signals that the market is still building durable ways to monetize institutional capital. One venue breaks the pattern, though. Hyperliquid generates substantially more application revenue than any other trading or lending venue, overtaking Solana and Ethereum as the top revenue-generating chain.

In July, real-world assets outpaced crypto trading volume on Hyperliquid for the first time in a single week. The most-traded stock that week was SK Hynix, the South Korean chipmaker behind key AI hardware.

"Investors are not leaving traditional finance behind. 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."

- Jean-Marie Mognetti, co-founder and CEO of CoinShares, from the company's press release, August 6, 2026

What it means for RWA investors

Growth in collateral hasn't yet turned into profit for the platforms themselves, and that's the report's key nuance. Capital is flowing into DeFi protocols, but it mostly sits in stable instruments rather than generating the fee revenue that speculative tokens once did.

For traditional asset managers, $7.4 billion is still a small slice of the broader tokenized RWA market, which runs into the tens of billions of dollars. DeFi lending currently handles only a fraction of that volume, leaving plenty of room for further collateral growth if protocols can hold up the necessary security and regulatory compliance standards.

• Lending and trading venue revenue fell over the year despite a threefold rise in collateral
• Deposits stay concentrated on just three protocols: Aave, Morpho and Kamino
• Tokenized Treasury funds outpace private credit and delta-neutral strategies by volume
• RWA's share of onchain perpetuals open interest already tops a quarter of the market

The trend marks DeFi's shift from purely speculative trading toward infrastructure for traditional assets. For now, that shift is generating more collateral than actual profit, with a narrow group of venues led by Ethereum and Hyperliquid holding the lead. The next joint report from CoinShares and Token Terminal, covering Q3 2026, will show whether the trend holds.