10 major public chains compete for the RWA: Ethereum is firmly ranked first, Solana is only ranked sixth

Reprinted from panewslab

04/25/2025·14D

Author: MooMs , Co-founder of Steak Studio

Compiled: Tim, PANews

DeFi development has stalled and RWA is keeping the crypto industry alive.

The RWA sector has grown by an astonishing 695% over the past year, while DeFi has basically stagnated, up just 3.4%.

According to RWA.xyz, there are currently 10 ecosystems with tokenized assets of more than $50 million, which clearly shows that institutional adoption is continuing to grow.

In this article, we will explore these ecosystems in depth, analyzing which chains the RWA field is strong and which soils are most conducive to its thriving by comparing their RWA verticals to the wider DeFi activity and liquidity.

We will sort from high to low RWA lock value for each chain.

1. Ethereum

Ranking in total tokenized assets, Ethereum L1 ranks first with a scale of US$5.98 billion, accounting for 56.8% of the total RWA market share.

Furthermore, although we won't discuss it in detail here, it is worth highlighting that 54.8% of the total stablecoin market value is held by Ethereum L1, followed by Tron, accounting for 29.9%, and Solana, accounting for 5.5% of the market share.

TVL

DeFi TVL – $46.6 billion
Bridge TVL – $349.2 billion
RWA TVL – $5.9 billion

Key ratio

RWA TVL / DeFi TVL—12.7%

With this ratio, we are analyzing how much of the DeFi activity of the chain is composed of RWA.

RWA TVL / Bridged TVL—1.69%

This ratio helps us understand the proportion of actual RWA flows into the total liquidity of the bridged on-chain.

Low rates mean there is unmet demand and idle capital that can be invested in the RWA track. On the other hand, high rates indicate that the chain can effectively capture value and direct it into RWA, thus demonstrating its value conversion efficiency in the RWA field.

You can also consider this as the capital efficiency of RWA applications.

As far as Ethereum is concerned, there is obviously a lot of money waiting to be activated.

DeFi TVL / Bridged TVL—13.3%

Using the same logical analysis framework, we can apply the above indicators to the DeFi field and observe that compared with RWA, a larger proportion of the liquidity bridged to the DeFi ecosystem is actively called by the protocol layer. This ultimately shows that compared with the RWA track, capital in the DeFi ecosystem has higher composability and better capital use efficiency, forming a more productive capital network.

Although there is still huge room for growth, the growth trend is clearly visible when we compare the development trajectory of DeFi and RWA on Ethereum since the market trough in 2022.

From November 21, 2022 to April 21, 2025:

DeFi TVL grew 100.5%
RWA TVL grew 486.2%

Institutions in the ecosystem

Currently, 8 out of the 17 institutional funds are deployed on Ethereum, 7 of which are managed by Securities and the other one is managed by Superstate.

In addition, two of the largest gold-backed tokens: PAXG and XAUT, are also issued on Ethereum.

Despite its criticism, Ethereum's technology is still the most popular among institutions, and this trend does not seem to slow down in the near term.

Advantages of asset tokenization on Ethereum

High liquidity: Make your assets have great demand potential
Composability: Relying on the vibrant DeFi ecosystem, it can increase the opportunity to launch new products and features.
Reliability and Safety: The proven L1 network always maintains zero safety accidents and operating failure records, and provides underlying guarantees with capital reserves of over US$50 billion.

2. zkSync

zkSync, which ranked second in the RWA total value ranking, achieved 10 times growth in late February, mainly thanks to the launch of the private credit protocol Tradable. The current active loan size managed by the agreement has exceeded $2 billion.

TVL

DeFi TVL: $56.3 million
Bridge TVL: $472.8 million
RWA TVL: $2.2 billion

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—3928.6%

This ratio is significantly higher, indicating that the DeFi ecosystem is relatively underdeveloped compared to the RWA scale present on-chain, although most of the assets come from a single protocol.

RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—465.3%

This ratio is also at a high level, and there may be two interpretations: either it indicates insufficient liquidity on the chain, or it indicates that the current RWA products have fully met the current market demand and there is little room for growth.

DeFi TVL / Bridged TVL—11.9%

Looking at this ratio, it can be seen that it is very similar to Ethereum.

However, it should be noted that the total value of US$2 billion from Tradable significantly inflated these indicators and may not accurately reflect the true situation of zkSync.

If the $2 billion of Tradable is excluded from the calculation, the total RWA value of zkSync is about $191 million. From this we can obtain:

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—241%
RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—40%

These adjusted ratios indicate that the RWA field is more mature than DeFi, and a considerable proportion of "active" liquidity is flowing to the real-world asset field.

Advantages of achieving asset tokenization on ZKSYNC

Able to start your own elastic ZK chain
Interoperability between ZK chains
ZKSync's technology stack is the top in the industry, and the ability of institutions to independently launch zero-knowledge proof driver chains is still seriously underestimated.

We may see a future where the two banks operate their own ZK chains while being able to share data and funds between each other and keep transaction amounts strictly confidential during this transfer.

Privacy protection achieved by ZK technology is being actively explored by institutions such as Deutsche Bank, Sygnum and UBS.

Even if more institutions join this ecosystem soon, it is not surprising.

3. Stellar

Stellar, which ranks third in the RWA TVL ranking, has established in-depth cooperative relationships with many companies, traditional financial institutions and governments due to its deep cultivation in the low-cost cross-border payment and asset issuance track.

TVL

DeFi TVL—$48.6M
RWA TVL—$476.4M

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—980.3%

This huge proportion says it all: The tokenized assets on Stellar are almost 10 times the size of its DeFi ecosystem.

The tokenized assets on the Stellar blockchain are mainly dominated by BENJI, an on-chain fund issued by Franklin Templeton that focuses on U.S. Treasury bonds. The fund accounts for 98% of RWA TVL on Star Link.

It should also be noted that WisdomTree Funds launched the gold-backed token WTGOLD on the Stellar blockchain, but the token currently has a market value of only US$1 million, and the market attention is still low.

Advantages of Tokenization of Assets on Stellar

The blockchain platform is known for supporting licensed DeFi or "semi-private" markets, a feature that is highly valued by traditional financial institutions.

At the same time, it also has rich successful stories of cooperation with well-known companies such as Money Gram, Circle, and Velo.

Overall, Stellar focuses less on the composability of DeFi, but more on building foreign exchange remittance channels and infrastructure that institutions are already familiar with.

4. Aptos

Aptos has been one of TVL’s fastest growing blockchains for the past 6 months. A large part of this growth stems from RWA, whose TVL soared by 50%.

TVL

DeFi TVL—$1.1B
Bridge TVL—$654.3M
RWA TVL—$331.8M

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—30.2%
RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—50.7%
DeFi TVL/Bridged TVL—168.1%

The fact that tokenized assets account for nearly 30% of DeFi activity on a TVL’s $1 billion blockchain shows that the RWA ecosystem is showing strong momentum.

This is even more obvious when we look at the number of traditional financial participants built on Aptos. Here is the situation with its RWA TVL:

PACT's active loan scale - US$219 million
BlackRock's BUIDL Fund - $53 million
Franklin Templeton issued BENJI - $22 million
Libre Capital’s three on-chain funds—$20 million
ACRED issued by Securitize −10 million USD
Ondo's release of USDY - $7 million

It is worth adding that Aptos is the second largest underlying chain of BUIDL funds (second only to Ethereum).

Advantages of Aptos Asset Tokenization

The programming language used by Aptos is Move, not Solididity.

This makes it extremely secure in financial applications, because such applications will never allow vulnerabilities such as reentry attack vulnerabilities or overflow errors.

Although I try not to pay too much attention to technical details, Aptos set a record of 326 million transactions per day in August 2024, and there were no system failures, transaction delays or surges in Gas fees throughout the process.

I believe these two reasons are precisely why blockchain is attractive to traditional financial engineers.

5. Algorand

TVL

DeFi TVL - $41.9M
RWA TVL - $328.7M

Key ratio

RWA TVL / DeFi TVL - 784.5%

I think Algorand's positioning is quite similar to Stellar. This blockchain did not devote too much energy to the DeFi field, but focused its strategic focus on cooperation with enterprises and government agencies, such as joining forces with FIFA, the Italian Central Bank, the United Nations and other organizations to carry out a series of cooperation projects.

Currently, 100% of its total RWA value comes from tokenized shares of the Exodus platform.

Interestingly, Securitize is once again an infrastructure partner responsible for the distribution and backend processing of the product.

Advantages of Algorand platform asset tokenization

One of the main advantages of tokenization on Algorand is its close cooperative relationship with European governments and central banks.
At the same time, Algorand adopts its native tokenization standard -Algorand Standard Assets (ASAs), a protocol that significantly simplifies the technical process for developers to issue tokenized products.

A good example is the European fintech company ZTLment, which moved from Ethereum to Algorand. At the ETHDenver conference, they explained how Algorand's built-in features such as atomic transactions and multi-signature approval mechanisms helped it significantly reduce the need for customized development.

6. Solana

Surprisingly, Solana ranked sixth in the on-chain RWA TVL rankings.

TVL

DeFi TVL—$7.4B
Bridge TVL—$26.2B
RWA TVL—$301.3M

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—4.1%
RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—1.2%
DeFi TVL/Bridged TVL—28.2%

As expected, Solana exhibits a more mature DeFi ecosystem compared to most public chains discussed so far, and this development advantage is directly reflected in the lower ratio of its first two indicators.

Considering the two already mentioned blockchains of TVL that exceed $1 billion, Solana's RWA ecosystem is not well developed compared to its network size.

To put it more deeply, the distribution of RWA TVL is as follows:

USDY issued by Ondo - $173 million
OUSG issued by Ondo - $79 million
ACRED issued by Apollo Global - $25 million
BUIDL Fund issued by BlackRock - $20 million
Libre Capital Funding Scale - About $4 million

Advantages of achieving asset tokenization on Solana

As the most dynamic DeFi ecosystem after Ethereum, Solana provides a high degree of composability for institutions seeking to explore new application scenarios for tokenized assets.
Similar to Aptos, Solana also has the advantages of high transaction speed and low cost, so it is very suitable for high-frequency trading.

In addition, Solana's developer community and ecosystem initiatives (such as Superteam covering multiple regions) are growing rapidly, and the resources and support provided to developers are also increasing.

7. Polygon

TVL

DeFi TVL—$784.5M
Bridge TVL—$4.9B
RWA TVL—$277.5M

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—35.4%
RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—5.7%
DeFi TVL/Bridged TVL—16.0%

What stands out in Polygon is that compared with its DeFi ecosystem, its RWA ecosystem has relatively mature development, but due to the existence of liquidity that has not yet been released, the ecosystem still has greater room for growth.

In Polygon's case, an important part of RWA TVL comes from Treasury bonds, and this time it is no longer US Treasury bonds.

USD 110 million (40% of the total value) comes from the European Treasury bill issued by Spiko.
Another $17 million is from Spiko's tokenized US Treasury bills.

The other half of the RWA ecosystem of this chain consists of the following parts:

$65 million is distributed evenly to BENJI and BUIDL funds
$15 million from two funds from Hamilton Lane
The remaining $67 million comes from Brazilian cryptocurrency exchange Mercado Bitcoin’s active loan business

Advantages of asset tokenization on Polygon

Polygon is the first stop for many institutions to explore real-world assets in public chains.

Polygon is one of the earliest networks built on Ethereum. While inheriting Ethereum's high security, it provides faster and more efficient infrastructure. This dual advantage makes it the preferred option for many institutions to explore tokenized RWA on public chains.

Polygon's zero-knowledge proof digital identity system.

Polygon has launched Polygon ID, a digital identity infrastructure that allows users to verify their identities without revealing their personal data.

As I discussed in my previous article on tokenized securities, building a digital identity infrastructure is crucial for traditional financial enterprises and institutions looking to achieve asset tokenization.

Polygon's CDK is used for customized zk Rollup development.

Polygon's CDK allows developers to build their own zk Rollup chains and customize the configuration according to their own needs. For traditional financial institutions, this can include enabling specific privacy features or mandatory KYC verification.

8. Arbitrum

TVL

DeFi TVL—$2.2B
Bridged TVL —$10.8B
RWA TVL—$164.8M

Key ratio

RWA TVL / DeFi TVL—7.5%
RWA TVL / Bridged TVL - 1.5%
DeFi TVL / Bridged TVL - 20.4%

Some of Spiko's products have been opened on the Arbitrum chain, with its $25 million funding investing nearly equally in European and U.S. Treasury bills.

$137 million, accounting for about 83% of RWA TVL, comes from the aforementioned U.S. short-term Treasury bonds issued by institutions, and the remaining approximately $3 million of assets are derived from tokenized shares issued by the Dinari platform.

It is worth noting that although the total amount is not high, Arbitrum is one of the few blockchains that can show the practical application value of tokenized stocks within the ecosystem.

Advantages of achieving asset tokenization on Arbitrum

1) The booming DeFi ecosystem

Arbitrum's biggest advantage lies in its mature and extensive DeFi ecosystem. For asset tokenization projects, this opens up broad space for various integrated applications and innovative use cases by leveraging the huge protocols and liquidity resources already on the network.

2) Orbit Stack

Similar to other ecosystems, Arbitrum allows developers to launch their own L3 chains and perform chain-level configuration based on their own needs.

3) Support measures focused on RWA field

One of the major advantages of Arbitrum is its public commitment to support the development of the on-chain RWA field.

In June 2024, the foundation invested $27 million in six products as part of the DAO treasury diversification strategy. Another $15.5 million was added two months ago, which have always been strategically aimed at expanding the scale of RWA within its ecosystem.

9. Avalanche

TVL

DeFi TVL—$1.3B
Bridge TVL—$5.8B
RWA TVL—$162.9M

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—12.5%
RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—2.8%
DeFi TVL/Bridged TVL—22.4%

In terms of proportion, Avalanche does not favor DeFi or focuses on RWA.

However, what is unique about Avalanche is the diversity of institutional participation in its ecosystem, which is more extensive than other blockchains mentioned so far.

We have seen again institutions such as Securityize, BlackRock Group and Franklin Templeton, and also discovered unique RWA protocols such as:

OpenTrade - US$31 million invested in U.S. and global bonds
Re-12 million US dollars are allocated to insurance products
Republic—$21 million in venture capital portfolio

Avalanche is also the third largest blockchain platform of BlackRock BUIDL Fund, second only to Ethereum and Aptos, with its market share almost the same as Aptos.

Advantages of achieving asset tokenization on Avalanche

1) Subnet

Similar to other ecosystems, in Avalanche, developers are able to create their own chains (specifically, layer 1 blockchains), which can:

Select a validator
Set compliance requirements (KYC, permission access control)
Customize virtual machine logic or adopt EVM compatibility solution

For example, the Evergreen subnet of the Avalanche Protocol is known for its purpose-built for institutions, which "remains the advantages of public network development while realizing specific features that were previously possible only in enterprise-level solutions."

2) The Avalanche agreement is often included in the R &D and pilot projects of institutions.

Several major financial institutions have selected Avalanche as part of their tokenization proof of concept. For example:

JPMorgan Chase and Apollo Global have conducted tokenization pilots through Onyx Digital Assets and Partior platforms.
Citigroup highlights the Avalanche blockchain in its programmable finance research report.

Regular participation in high-standard R&D activities can enhance the reputation of the chain and help attract more high-level institutions to join.

3) Investment funds that support measures and focus on real-world assets

Like Arbitrum, Avalanche is the only ecosystem on the list that has publicly announced the RWA-specific program.

In the fourth quarter of 2023, Avalanche launched the Avalanche Vista fund, with a scale of $50 million, aiming to accelerate RWA adoption. The fund focuses on purchasing tokenized assets minted on the Avalanche chain, driving ecological development by injecting initial liquidity into on-chain RWA.

10. Base

Finally, according to RWA TVL, Base is the network with the fastest growth in TVL and on-chain activity in the past 18 months.

TVL

DeFi TVL—$2.9B
Bridge TVL—$12.1B
RWA TVL—$51.9M

Key ratio

RWA TVL/DeFi TVL—1.8%
RWA TVL/Bridged TVL—0.43%
DeFi TVL/Bridged TVL—23.9%

Data shows that on-chain DeFi activity is highly active, while RWA growth is still in its early stages.

Base Chain's RWA TVL mainly comes from BENJI, a US Treasury Fund owned by Franklin Templeton, with a fund size of US$46 million.

The remaining approximately $6 million is managed by Centrifuge and is also held in the form of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Interestingly, Dinari's stock is also available on the Base chain, but trading activity is extremely low compared to the Arbitrum chain.

Advantages of achieving asset tokenization on Base

1) Advantages of Coinbase ecosystem

Although Base operates independently, it benefits from deep integration with the Coinbase product matrix. Developers can make full use of resources such as Coinbase Wallet wallet services, native USDC support, and Prime Custody hosting solutions to significantly improve user experience, obtain institutional-level hosting services and optimize the support of market entry strategies.

2) Good DeFi composability

As mentioned above, while the RWA field is still in its early stages of development, issuers on Base can rely on the mature DeFi ecosystem to explore use cases of their assets, including potential integration with Coinbase itself.

For example, imagine a scenario where Coinbase Wallet supports Bitcoin lending.

3) Members of the OP ecosystem

Although this is a long-term vision, Base is a core member of the OP hyperchain with the goal of developing into an interoperable second-tier network. As this vision is gradually realized, tokenized assets and users on Base will be able to interact with other OP chains, thus creating an attractive ecological prospect for institutions to build their own chains.

Conclusion

All in all, I think configurable environments like Avalanche's subnet, Arbitrum Orbit, zkSync elastic chain, and Polygon CDK are very critical.

Organizations hope to maintain control over their environment without sacrificing the advantages of public networks. The ability to "isolate" part of the on-chain ecosystem while maintaining composability with the DeFi protocol is an attractive core selling point.

Another key element is the digital identity infrastructure. Whether it is adopting Polygon's DID solution or other emerging standards, organizations need robust identity solutions to meet KYC, AML (anti-money laundering) and compliance requirements while protecting user privacy.

If you want to sort out the key factors to consider when evaluating an ecosystem and its suitability for asset tokenization, my rankings are as follows:

1. Regulatory compliance

2. Configurable environment

3. Scalability and cost

4.DeFi Composability

5. Verified security

While all of these elements are essential, for institutional participants, meeting regulatory requirements and providing a safe, customizable environment is the bottom line that must be adhered to.

It is also important to keep in mind that although other elements are not the focus of this article, they play a crucial role. for example:

Integrated oracle network
Partner Hosting Agency
Native stablecoin support
Available tokenized infrastructure
Cross-chain interoperability

Finally, I will not underestimate the role of ETFs. Public chains like Avalanche and Solana that have publicly submitted ETF applications may benefit from the increased legality and increased market attention brought by these applications, thereby attracting more institutional investors and partners to join.