Pantera Capital published its State of Tokenization report for Q1 2026, covering 593 tokenized assets with a combined market capitalization of $320.6B.
Tokenized Private Credit Took a Distinct Position in the Report
The category was not the largest by total volume, but it outpaced every other real-world asset class in DeFi integration: 64.3% of the sector’s market value is already deployed in onchain strategies. In a market where most tokenized assets still function primarily as digital wrappers for traditional financial instruments, this makes private credit a rare exception.
According to the research, private credit recorded the highest share of assets used in DeFi across all categories. By comparison, tokenized U.S. Treasury bonds deploy just 3.2% of their category value in DeFi, commodities account for 2.5%, while real estate and corporate bonds remain at 0.0%.
Why Private Credit Pulled Ahead
The main reason comes down to product structure. Unlike most tokenized assets, private credit products are more often built from the ground up as yield-generating instruments, making them naturally suited for collateralization, lending protocols, and leveraged strategies.
Pantera notes that these instruments integrate into DeFi more organically: they accept stablecoins as collateral and allow capital to move into layered yield strategies.
At the same time, the market remains narrow. A significant share of DeFi activity in private credit is concentrated in a limited number of products. The report notes that Maple’s syrupUSDT and syrupUSDC account for roughly two-thirds of the category’s active DeFi volume.
This creates a mixed picture: the segment’s architecture has proven significantly closer to crypto-native markets than most tokenized RWAs, but broad adoption is still limited — the category continues to grow largely through a handful of successful models.
Growth in New Products Is Outpacing the Development of Onchain Mechanics
The report recorded a historic number of tokenized asset launches in 2025 — 168, double the previous year’s total. The market’s total value grew from $200.6B to $320.6B.
At the same time, the average score on Pantera’s tokenization maturity index reached just 2.04 out of 5, while 77.6% of all assets still remain simple wrappers — tokens backed by assets that continue to rely on offline infrastructure.
Meanwhile, 91% of evaluated assets still maintain closed control over issuance and redemption: administrators mint the tokens, while exiting a position requires custodian involvement.
Pantera describes the market’s current state as the newspaper-on-a-website phase — an old product transferred onto new infrastructure without fundamentally changing what it is.