Real-world asset tokenization has become crypto's most durable growth story, with Centrifuge's on-chain assets climbing from $12 million to nearly $4 billion while most of DeFi contracted.
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Centrifuge tokenized assets jump 300% to near $4 billion
Centrifuge's tokenized assets grew roughly 300% to nearly $4 billion from $12 million, outpacing a DeFi market that spent three years shrinking.
DefiLlama data shows RWA deposits actively deployed in DeFi reached $3.98 billion as of Aug. 18, up from $650.88 million a year earlier and about $12 million three years ago.
Centrifuge's own total value locked exceeds $1.8 billion across 1,768 tokenized assets, making it one of the largest venues for real-world asset tokenization. Janus Henderson accounted for roughly $1.3 billion in tokenized assets on the platform during 2025, led by its JAAA fund. On June 30, New York Life Investment Management partnered with Centrifuge to launch a tokenized high-yield corporate bond fund.
The divergence between tokenized RWAs and the rest of DeFi shows what generates durable value in crypto. A tokenized bond fund derives its value from underlying bonds, not speculative token incentives, which is why the category kept growing even as DeFi TVL contracted. The question now is whether the next wave of issuance behaves like BlackRock's BUIDL, which has just 0.66% of its $2.74 billion deployed in DeFi, or like Janus Henderson's Anemoy AAA CLO fund, which runs at 97.53% utilization.
Why tokenization grew while DeFi shrank
Much of DeFi's TVL during the 2021-2022 era was circular: tokens deposited to earn more tokens, which were deposited to earn even more tokens. When token prices fell, the whole stack collapsed. Tokenized real-world assets work differently. A tokenized bond fund derives its value from the underlying bonds, and the yield comes from corporate borrowers making interest payments, not from a governance token that someone hopes will go up.
Centrifuge positioned itself early in this shift, building the infrastructure institutions needed to bring traditional assets on-chain. That meant solving unglamorous problems: legal structures for tokenized securities, compliance frameworks, and integration with existing custody solutions.
Utilization is the number to watch
Total tokenized issuance across the sector stands at $34.55 billion, of which about 11.5% is put to work on-chain, DefiLlama data shows. Private credit accounts for $2.13 billion of the $3.98 billion active total, more than half on its own. Bonds contribute $799.88 million and reinsurance another $406.45 million.
The design of these funds explains the low on-chain utilization percentages. BlackRock's BUIDL and Franklin Templeton's BENJI, which together hold well over $3 billion in tokenized money market exposure, were built for institutional cash management with whitelisted transfers. Tokenization gave them faster settlement but did not turn them into collateral. Assets that DeFi lenders will price and accept are different: a CLO fund with a defined credit rating and a reinsurance token with a yield stream both fit into existing collateral frameworks in a way that a whitelisted treasury fund does not.
If issuance doubles while utilization holds near 11.5%, tokenization mostly delivered better custody rails for institutions that were already buying treasuries. If utilization climbs alongside issuance, RWAs turn into working collateral inside crypto credit markets, and the $4 billion mark stops being the ceiling it currently looks like.
This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
