CoinShares' 2026 Hybrid Finance report shows RWA deposits tripled to $7.4B year-on-year as spot trading volumes rose 220%, even as broader DeFi activity declined.
Crypto News
Tokenized real-world assets are being actively used across decentralized finance platforms, not simply issued, according to a report published Aug. 6 by digital asset investment firm CoinShares in partnership with data provider Token Terminal.
The findings cover one year of on-chain activity from Q2 2025 to Q2 2026, tracking how tokenized funds, stocks, and commodities are being deployed across lending, spot trading, and perpetual futures markets.
Real-world asset (RWA) deposits across lending platforms and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) more than tripled from $2.3 billion in Q2 2025 to $7.4 billion in Q2 2026. That growth came while total DeFi deposits fell by roughly 15% over the same period. CoinShares said the divergence points to demand driven by financial utility rather than crypto market cycles, a thesis the firm calls "Hybrid Finance."
RWA Deposits and Spot Volumes Defy the DeFi Downturn
The largest contributors to the $7.4 billion in deposits are tokenized Treasury and multi-strategy funds, including products such as JTRSY and BlackRock's BUIDL, followed by private credit products and delta-neutral yield strategies. Investors favor these assets as collateral because they continue generating income while supporting borrowing, reducing the opportunity cost of locking up capital.
Ethereum hosts close to 70% of all RWA deposits, making it the primary ecosystem for on-chain collateral. Plasma has emerged as the second-largest, supported by Aave's expansion beyond Ethereum, while Solana's growth has been driven largely by Kamino, a native lending platform. CoinShares attributed Ethereum's dominance to network effects, where borrowers prefer venues with deep liquidity and lenders follow borrowing demand.
Ethereum remains the leading blockchain for tokenized funds Source: CoinShares
The pattern in spot trading mirrors the lending data. Aggregate spot DEX volumes fell by roughly 70% between Q2 2025 and Q2 2026, while RWA spot trading volumes rose approximately 220% over the same period.
Trading has concentrated in tokenized gold products, with XAUT and PAXG generating a significant share of volume as investors repositioned around gold price movements. Tokenized equities are beginning to account for a growing share of activity as well. Ethereum and Solana dominate RWA spot trading, while Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Base have yet to establish meaningful activity in this segment.
Related Article: Wall Street Is Moving Onto Ethereum — Why Isn't ETH Price Moving With It?
Hyperliquid Leads Protocol Revenue as Perp Volumes Climb
Perpetual futures represent the third major use case in the report. While broader on-chain perpetual futures markets have declined since October 2025, RWA perpetual futures have continued growing. Volumes on tradeXYZ, an RWA-focused venue built on Hyperliquid (HYPE), have increased approximately 20 times since launch. Trading has concentrated in commodities including oil and precious metals, equity indexes such as the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100, and technology and semiconductor stocks.
Open interest in RWA perpetual futures has also grown year-on-year, contrasting with the broader decline in crypto-native derivatives. CoinShares noted that sustained open interest growth is a stronger signal of durable market development than volume alone, as it reflects committed capital rather than short-term trading activity.
On protocol revenue, Hyperliquid generates more application revenue than any other lending or trading venue in the dataset. The report also noted that Hyperliquid competes at both the application and settlement layer, capturing value from the exchange and its own underlying blockchain infrastructure simultaneously. Despite that lead, RWA-related activity has not yet materially changed revenue trajectories across the broader sector, as tokenized asset volumes remain small relative to crypto-native markets.
Yield data shows tokenized assets currently offer returns ranging from roughly 3.2% to 5.5%. Tokenized Treasury funds sit at the lower end, while private credit and funding rate strategies offer higher yields with different risk profiles. CoinShares said the range shows the market is evolving beyond simple Treasury products.
Investor composition differs sharply across product types. Institutional products such as BlackRock's BUIDL carry average wallet balances in the tens of millions of dollars. Tokenized equities show much smaller average balances consistent with retail participation, and have seen the fastest growth in on-chain holder counts over the past year. CoinShares compared the current state of tokenized stocks to stablecoins in 2019, noting that only around $2.2 billion of a global equity market exceeding $100 trillion has been tokenized to date.
CoinShares co-founder and CEO Jean-Marie Mognetti wrote that the direction of travel is "measurable, auditable, and on-chain," while acknowledging the market remains at an early stage. The firm expects the next phase to be defined by how tokenized assets are used rather than how many are issued, with consolidation continuing among a small number of leading venues, investor segmentation between institutional and retail products becoming more pronounced, and product innovation pushing tokenized assets toward a broader range of risk and return profiles.
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