Pantera Capital says the $321 billion tokenized real-world asset market remains in an early stage, with most products still functioning as blockchain wrappers
The $321 billion market for tokenized real-world assets is still replicating traditional financial structures rather than delivering the native on-chain functionality blockchain infrastructure was designed to provide, according to a Wednesday report from Pantera Capital. The firm described the current state as a "newspaper-on-a-website" phase, where most products function as blockchain-based wrappers around conventional systems rather than fully native instruments.
Pantera scored 542 tokenized assets across 11 asset classes using its Tokenization Progress Index, which evaluates issuance, transferability, and composability on a scale of 1 to 5. The average composite score across the market was 2.04 out of 5. Roughly 77.6% of tracked assets fall into the wrapper tier, 11.1% qualify as hybrid, and just 2.7% reach the native tier.
Among the report's findings, 91.1% of scored assets still relied on gated issuance and redemption models, while only 13 assets achieved autonomous or near-symmetric mint-and-burn functionality. Only 10.6% of assets reached the threshold for meaningful DeFi composability. Stablecoins remained the only category operating at a significant economic scale alongside measurable on-chain utility.
The market expanded considerably in 2025, with 168 new tokenized assets launching during the year, up 115% from 78 launches in 2024. Total tracked market value climbed roughly 60% to $320.6 billion from $200.6 billion in 2024. Pantera described the trend as the market "getting wider, not deeper," with most new products concentrated in the lowest maturity tier.
Stablecoins accounted for more than $293 billion, or roughly 91.6% of total tracked value, making them the dominant tokenized asset class by both scale and utility. Tokenized US Treasurys grew to around $12 billion, led by products from BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Fidelity Investments, though Pantera noted most Treasury products still relied on custodian-mediated redemption and off-chain ledger structures.
Excluding stablecoins, the top five issuance platforms accounted for about half of all scored assets. Pantera identified Securitize, Maple Finance, and Ondo Finance among the largest issuers by market presence. The report noted the market was more concentrated than headline figures suggested.
Pantera wrote that the industry has proven that assets can be represented on-chain, but has not yet demonstrated that on-chain representation fundamentally changes how those assets function. The firm said the gap between tokenization announcements and true tokenization maturity remains wide.
For the next phase of market maturation, Pantera said progress should be measured by utility metrics, including settlement speed, transfer costs relative to value moved, trading and transfer activity, and capital actively deployed in DeFi, rather than by whether an asset has simply been placed on a blockchain.
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