Tokenized Real-World Assets Market Surges 380% Led by Private Credit

Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) have transitioned from a niche concept to a mainstream use case in institutional finance, with private credit leading the way as investors seek programmable yields. This insight comes from RedStone’s H1 2025 RWA Market Overview, co-authored by DeFi protocol Gauntlet and data platform RWA.xyz. Excluding stablecoins, the tokenized RWA market has expanded by as much as 380% since 2022, reaching a combined $24 billion in value. Private credit, also known as direct lending, now constitutes over half of the RWA market, reaching $14 billion. This segment offers investors yields ranging from 8% to 12%, with notable products like Apollo’s ACRED fund. Investors have long favored private credit for its yield premium over public credit markets. Tokenization is now enhancing settlement speed and liquidity, lowering barriers to entry, and enabling fractional participation—capabilities that private credit markets have historically lacked.

Ethereum remains the dominant platform for tokenized RWAs, despite the rise of faster and more scalable blockchains. By mid-2025, the Ethereum network hosted roughly $7.5 billion in tokenized value across 335 products, accounting for 59% of the total market. Ethereum’s decentralized governance has historically limited its institutional outreach, but the launch of Etherealize in January 2025 marked a strategic pivot to bring more institutional participation onchain. Ethereum has been dubbed the “institutional standard” for housing most of the RWA activity. However, Solana is emerging as a “high-performance challenger” in the tokenized Treasury market, hosting roughly $351 million of tokenized assets as of June. Aptos has also seen increased RWA deployment, hosting $349 million in tokenized assets as of June. Notably, Aptos was the first non-Ethereum Virtual Machine network for BlackRock’s BUIDL fund. Avalanche now hosts $188 million in tokenized assets, including KKR’s tokenized fund, while XRP Ledger has emerged as a “regulated newcomer” with $157 million in tokenized RWAs.