Deposits of tokenized real-world assets in DeFi protocols more than tripled over the past year to $7.4 billion, even as total DeFi deposits fell about 15 percent, according to a joint report from CoinShares and Token Terminal. The figures cover the period from the second quarter of 2025 to the second quarter of 2026 and point to a clear split in where capital wants to sit.
RWA deposits stood at $2.3 billion in mid-2025. A year later they reached $7.4 billion across lending protocols and decentralized exchanges. Over the same window, aggregate DeFi deposits contracted, a decline CoinShares attributed to withdrawals and lower crypto asset prices. Two markets that once moved together are now pulling in opposite directions, and the divergence is wide enough that it shows up in every section of the report.
The timing matters. The twelve months in question included a prolonged downturn in crypto asset prices, a stretch that in previous cycles emptied out DeFi lending entirely. This time the sector lost deposits but gained a new class of collateral that does not care what bitcoin does. That distinction is what makes the report worth reading closely rather than filing under routine growth numbers.
Where the collateral comes from
Tokenized Treasury funds and multi-strategy products supplied much of the new collateral. The report named JTRSY, BlackRock’s BUIDL and sUSDS among the largest contributors. Private-credit products followed, including JAAA, syrupUSDT, syrupUSDC and PRIME. These are not speculative tokens. Most of them represent claims on Treasury bills, corporate loan pools or stable yield strategies, and their value does not depend on crypto sentiment in the way that a typical DeFi deposit does.
Ethereum hosted nearly 70 percent of measured RWA deposits. The report credits the chain’s established lending liquidity and steady borrower demand. A fund that tokenizes a Treasury portfolio wants to deploy it where borrowers actually show up, and Ethereum’s lending markets have the deepest book. Plasma ranked second, helped by Aave’s expansion beyond Ethereum, while Kamino supported Solana’s share of the market.
Trading tells the same story
Spot activity diverged along the same line. Aggregate DEX trading volume, still dominated by crypto-native assets, fell roughly 70 percent year over year. RWA spot volume rose about 220 percent over the same quarter-to-quarter period, though from a much smaller base. The contrast matters less for the absolute numbers than for the direction. One side of the market is shrinking through a full cycle, the other is compounding through it.
Perpetual markets grew faster than spot. Volume on TradeXYZ, an RWA-focused venue operating through Hyperliquid, increased roughly twentyfold since launch while crypto-native perpetual activity weakened after October 2025. Earlier reporting put Q3 RWA perpetual DEX volume at $365 billion, with tokenized stocks leading the trading, and TradeXYZ’s own Q2 volume at $202 billion. Traders appear to want exposure to equity and credit instruments with crypto-style leverage and settlement, and venues that offer that combination are taking share from those that do not.
Yields and what they signal
CoinShares measured yields across selected RWA strategies between roughly 3.2 and 5.5 percent. Tokenized Treasury funds sat near the lower end. Private credit, lending markets, vaults and delta-neutral funding strategies offered higher yields, with risk profiles to match. None of these numbers look dramatic next to the double-digit returns crypto traders chased in past cycles. That is the point. The money arriving now is priced against bonds and money market funds, not against memecoins.
The pattern suggests institutional capital is not leaving onchain finance. It is rotating from volatile crypto collateral toward instruments that track Treasuries, credit and equities. That shift rewards chains and venues built for compliance-heavy flows, with identity checks, reporting and settlement guarantees that regulated funds require. It leaves pure crypto-native DeFi competing for a shrinking deposit pool, which helps explain why total deposits fell even as the sector added new products.
What it means for chains and funds
For Ethereum, the dominant share of RWA deposits reinforces its position as the default settlement layer for tokenized funds. Liquidity begets liquidity. Fund managers go where borrowers and lenders already are, and the network effects in lending markets are slow to break. For newer chains like Plasma, growth depends on lending platforms expanding their RWA markets quickly enough to hold the inflows. Aave’s multichain push gave Plasma its ranking, which shows how much distribution now depends on a handful of lending protocols rather than on chain-level marketing.
There are limits to the comparison. RWA volumes started from a small base, so triple-digit percentage gains come cheap. A 70 percent drop in crypto DEX volume still leaves that market many times larger than tokenized trading. The report itself notes the asymmetry. What makes the numbers meaningful is not the size today but the direction over a full year of falling prices and withdrawals.
The competitive question for the next year is whether RWA growth can offset the crypto-native decline, or whether the two are simply different markets wearing the same name. The report stops short of projecting totals forward, but the direction is hard to miss. Deposits in tokenized real-world assets grew threefold in twelve months while everything else shrank. If that gap holds through another quarter or two, RWA collateral becomes the core business of DeFi rather than a side market attached to it.