Solana, Arbitrum and Base lead RWAs adoption

Real-world assets are spreading beyond Ethereum and TRON. Three chains are becoming hosts for new liquidity pools of real-world assets—Solana, Base, and Arbitrum. 

RWA tokenization is expanding and testing the best chains for utility. Based on recent data, 2025 was a strong year for three chains that drove RWA adoption—Solana, Base, and Arbitrum. 

Those chains expanded their assets by over 800% in the year to date, based on Token Terminal data. Solana, Base and Arbitrum emerged as leaders both in terms of absolute asset value under management, and for the past few months of rapid growth. Solana reported a total of 81 projects, while Arbitrum expanded to 101 tokenized asset types, based on RWA XYZ data. BlackRock, Securitize, and Wormhole are the leading issuers as of September 2025. 

🚨🆙 The AUM of tokenized investment funds is at an all-time high of $7.7 billion.

Asset managers are increasingly interested in tokenizing their fund products and bringing them onchain.

The biggest tokenized fund by AUM: @BlackRock BUIDL, powered by @Securitize & @wormhole. pic.twitter.com/jkJQt6N1nc

— Token Terminal 📊 (@tokenterminal) September 15, 2025

Solana is also carrying more diverse RWAs, including Pokemon cards with a physical and digital component, as well as a market for Steam items. Solana’s tokenization has benefitted from the experience of NFTs to evolve into new markets, as Cryptopolitan reported.

The tokenized assets are a mix of stablecoins and funds, and for now stablecoins are the lead driver of growth. However, there are also successful experiments for tokenized shares and other assets, especially on Solana. At the moment, there is no standard for on-chain tokenization, but the growth of new RWA projects show the space is promising.

Is Ethereum the only chain for tokenization?  

Alternative chains for RWA trading also include the BNB Chain, TON, Aptos, and others. Those chains offer good integration with Web3 projects, and can offer smaller experimental mints for more diverse assets. 

Currently, many chains are claiming to be the central venue for RWAs. Ethereum is still seen as indispensable, potentially becoming the chain for Wall Street tokenization. While other chains offer cheaper access and good integration with wallets, Ethereum still claims leadership. 

A recent report warned Ethereum was still ideal for institutional tokenization, as the chain has not faced outages in block production, unlike Solana and some L2s. The setback for Ethereum is the risk of hacker attacks and flawed smart contracts, though this may affect other chains. 

For now, RWAs are still not fully used in DeFi projects, especially the tokens issued by leading Wall Street firms. 

RWAs expand across asset classes

Based on recent data, on-chain tokenized assets broke above $30B in value. A total of 211 issuers have offered various types of tokens, with some sectors showing significant success. 

Private credit makes the bulk of tokenization at barely $17B. US Treasury bills make up over $7.8B in assets, and are one of the main sources of security and income for stablecoin issuers. 

Stocks are still lagging, with a little over $500M. Commodities are among the success stories of tokenization, with over $2B in assets under management. 

The RWAs narrative remains independent, mostly based on infrastructure tokens. Ondo still competes to become the main institutional network for tokenization, while retaining its token growth. Overall, RWA infrastructure tokens are valued at over $66B, led by ONDO and Chainlink (LINK).

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