Investment firm Pantera Capital claims that the real world asset (RWA) tokenization market is still in its early stages of development.
In its latest report published on May 6, 2026, Pantera notes that much of the RWA industry continues to replicate traditional financial structures rather than building truly native vehicles for decentralized networks.
To support his thesis, Experts compared the current moment of tokenization to the early days of the internet. Regarding this they say:
The first phase of Internet media consisted of newspapers copying and pasting articles onto their websites. Delivery speed has been improved. Availability has been expanded. However, the format was the same.
Pantera Capital, an investment company.
The company is currently doing something similar with the majority of its tokenized assets. Although the technological channels have changed, the operational logic remains largely the same as in traditional finance.
Most assets are still in the “wrap” phase
The company analyzes 542 tokenized assets from 11 different categories. This equates to approximately $320.6 billion in trailing market value. The study concluded: 77.6% of rated products still belong to the “pre-packaged” categoryThat is, a structure in which digital tokens exist, but the actual functionality of the assets remains dependent on the underlying assets held by custodians, external registries, and traditional financial intermediaries.
Examples of this model include some tokenized US government bond funds, such as BlackRock’s BUIDL. In this case, the token functions as a digital proof of a real asset, rather than as a fully autonomous instrument.
In this graph, brown represents “wrapped” assets, 460 of the 593 surveyed. Gray corresponds to hybrid assets, of which there are 66. Dark green indicates native assets (only 16). Beige indicates 51 ineligible assets that correspond to pilots or ads that have not yet been activated. The key reading is that 77.6% of the market is still concentrated in the “wrap” phase.
The report claims that in many cases, “tokens add a layer of data but do not change anything about how the asset actually works.”
Pantera has also developed its own indexes, including: Tokenization Progress Index (TPI), designed to measure actual tokenization maturity.. The overall average obtained from the assets analyzed was 2.04 out of 5.
Pantera measures the maturity of each tokenized asset based on three aspects: Issuance and redemption. Transferability and Settlement. Complexity and composability, the ability of RWA to be integrated and used within other digital financial protocols. In the graph, light green represents the first dimension. Dark green, second. And the third yellow.
Stablecoins have a better overall score and appear as the most advanced category. At the other end of the spectrum, real estate (real estate) and private investment capital (private equity)two categories that still have low operational maturity.
One of the report’s core data shows that 91.1% of valued assets still rely on issuance and redemption mechanisms controlled by custodians or custodians. Only 13 assets reached a model that would be considered autonomous. This dependency explains why many products continue to function in a “wrapped” state. A token may exist on a network, but its issuance, redemption, or validation is still tied to external infrastructure.
The company clarifies that this does not mean wrapped tokens are useless. In fact, we recognize that it can improve distribution, access, and operation speed. but, We believe they are still in the early stages of the process.
For Pantera, the main problem is clear. “The market is getting wider, not deeper.”
Market is growing but remains concentrated
According to research, In 2025, 168 new tokenized assets were launched, an increase of 115% compared to 78 products registered in 2024.. However, the majority of these launches continue to replicate models with low technical complexity.
The stacked bars show the number of new tokenized assets launched each year by asset class. Golden line reflects value On-chain Market total. The most significant increase will be observed between 2024 and 2025. When the value went from $200.6 billion to $313.7 billion. As of the 2026 drawdown, the market reached $321.1 billion.
The document also shows the strong concentration of the market. Stablecoins are worth $293 billion, or 91.6% of the total value tracked by Pantera.
In this graph, the bars indicate the values On-chain The gold line shows the average TPI for each category. stable coin 293.7 billion was concentrated, and the average TPI was the highest at 2.67.. This is followed by tokenized US Treasuries with $12 billion and TPI of 2.15. This difference shows that the market is not only concentrated in one asset class, but also in the categories that achieved the highest operating profits.
According to the company, currently stablecoins are This has achieved significant economic scale, along with tangible utility within the digital financial ecosystem.
At Pantera, we believe that a truly “native” product is one that is designed to work directly on a distributed infrastructure, without relying on parallel registries or external manual processes.
Among the most advanced examples MakerDAO’s Sky Doll (USDS, formerly DAI) and Aave’s GHO are mentioned.. Unlike traditional wrapped assets, CriptoNoticias explains that these assets are created to work within a fully automated protocol, with issuance, collateralization, and operations managed through smart contracts.
The report argues that the next phase of tokenization will not be defined simply by “putting more assets on the network,” but by building instruments that cannot be replicated by traditional financial infrastructure.
For now, Pantera is talking about future products with continuous settlement, automated collateral management, programmable financial performance generation, and assets that can be traded individually in real-time with separation of cash flow, risk, and ownership.
The report also highlighted that large traditional institutions are already actively tokenizing. These include BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Fidelity, WisdomTree and JP Morgan, primarily through products linked to tokenized US government bonds.
Specifically, Franklin Templeton predicts further acceleration in market expansion, highlighting: Tokenization will ultimately unify traditional financial institutions and digital assets onto a common infrastructure. In fact, we predict it could exceed $16 trillion by 2023.
However, Pantera emphasizes that even the majority of these institutional developments continue to operate under a “wrapped” model, with core processes continuing to rely on traditional financial infrastructure and offline verification.
