RWA deposits triple to $7.4B even as DeFi slumps: CoinShares

Real-world asset deposits on lending platforms and decentralized exchanges hit $7.4 billion in the second quarter of 2026, more than tripling from $2.3 billion a year earlier. CoinShares published the figures in an Aug. 6 report. Total DeFi deposits fell about 15% over the same period; investors withdrew funds and crypto prices weakened. CoinShares put the onchain market value of tokenized funds and stocks at more than $40 billion, with tokenized commodities in the same total.

The $7.4 billion total is narrower than overall issuance. It counts assets actually placed into lending and trading venues, not everything a tokenizer has created. CoinShares framed the jump as tokenization moving beyond issuance into active financial use. Treasury and multistrategy funds supplied much of the increase. JTRSY and BlackRock's BUIDL led the Treasury group; Sky's sUSDS was the leading multistrategy name. Private credit products JAAA, syrupUSDT, syrupUSDC and PRIME followed. Ethena's sUSDe served as the report's example of a delta-neutral strategy.

These products can earn income while sitting as collateral, which lowers the cost of locking capital into a lending market. The report framed that dual role as the difference between the $40 billion issuance figure and the $7.4 billion in active deposits. Not every issued token is being used. Deposits were concentrated on established venues. Aave and Morpho did most of the heavy lifting; Kamino drove most of Solana's share. Ethereum-based lending markets held nearly 70% of deposits, and Plasma ranked second.

Ethereum's lead comes down to liquidity that borrowers and lenders already have there, CoinShares said. Newer networks have to assemble a pool of assets and users from scratch. Established markets compound the activity they already host, which makes migration slower even when another chain charges less.

CoinShares organized the market into a collateral side and a trading side. Treasury and multistrategy funds, plus private credit, sit on the collateral side. Tokenized gold and tokenized equities belong to the trading side. The report keeps those two accountings separate.

Spot trading tells a similar story. RWA spot volume climbed about 220% year over year while aggregate decentralized exchange volume fell roughly 70%. Traders moved into tokenized gold products XAUt and PAXG after shifts in bullion prices. Ethena's sUSDe also added volume after liquidity migrated from Uniswap v3 to v4. CoinShares read the spot growth as evidence that tokenized products are building secondary markets, where an investor can pass ownership along without going back to the issuer.

Perpetual futures went the same direction. TradeXYZ, an RWA-focused venue built on Hyperliquid, has seen volume climb about twentyfold since launch. Commodities, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq 100 and technology stocks account for most trading, and open interest kept rising. These contracts deliver leveraged price exposure, not ownership of the underlying security or commodity. CoinShares said their growth should not be added to tokenized fund deposits when calculating assets under management.

The largest collateral group in the report was tied to U.S. government debt and yield-bearing dollars. BlackRock's BUIDL has moved into institutional trading workflows. Securitize said in April that eligible OKX clients could post BUIDL as collateral, and Standard Chartered held the token outside the exchange. CoinShares described that arrangement as tokenized issuance becoming financial infrastructure. The company's related coverage placed BUIDL in a collateral framework alongside dollar assets used for institutional margin.

Sky showed 4.61 billion sUSDS in supply and a 3.52% savings rate when reviewed. Sky says the rate is set through governance, can change and is not guaranteed. Ethena says sUSDe rewards depend on income from backing assets and are distributed through a protocol mechanism. CoinShares measured yields on the products it tracks at roughly 3.2% to 5.5%. Treasury funds sat near the lower end. Private credit and lending vaults offered more return, and funding-rate strategies paid at the top, with different collateral and counterparty risk.

The same review found a split in ownership. BUIDL wallets held average balances in the tens of millions of dollars. Tokenized equities had smaller average balances and faster holder growth. CoinShares said the split showed institutional cash management developing on one side and retail distribution on the other.

Application revenue across the wider DeFi sector fell between the second quarters of 2025 and 2026, the same period that RWA lending and trading expanded. RWA activity is still too small to reverse weaker revenue from crypto-native borrowing and trading, CoinShares said. Hyperliquid generated more application revenue than the other venues studied because it captures fees at both the exchange and settlement layers. The report did not attribute most of that revenue to RWA markets. The venue's broader derivatives business remains the main driver.

Jean Marie Mognetti, CoinShares' chief executive, said growth during a DeFi downturn showed demand driven by "financial utility, not by market cycles." CoinShares offered that as its interpretation of the divergence. It did not claim RWA demand is insulated from crypto prices or interest rates.

The study covers transferable or distributed tokenized funds and stocks, with commodities in the same scope. It excludes represented assets on networks where tokens are not broadly movable into the lending and trading venues examined. CoinShares drew that boundary to keep the deposit figure focused on active use rather than market size.

Over the next 18 months, the report named collateral deposits, spot volume, open interest, holder growth and retained application revenue as the clearest measures. CoinShares called RWA activity "likely" to become a larger revenue source if it keeps growing faster than crypto-native markets.