Tokenised real-world assets have grown more than 140% in a year to about $34 billion, but the way investors use them onchain bears little resemblance to how the same assets behave in traditional markets, according to a new report from blockchain analytics firm Dune.
The report, titled After Issuance: Reading the Onchain RWA Market, uses data through August 31 covering 21 chains, more than 250 issuers and over 2,600 products.
Cash equivalents remain the largest category at $17.8 billion, roughly half the market, and more than 95% of tokenised Treasury exposure sits in T-bills and money market funds. Very little of it moves. Only 0.006% of cash-equivalent supply traded in August, and just 0.4% sits in lending protocols. Dune found tokenised money funds yielding 3.2% to 3.6%, below the 3.91% on three-month Treasury bills.
Equities sit at the opposite end. They are the smallest asset class by value but grew roughly 25 times over the year and accounted for 93% of onchain spot trading in August, according to the report. Derivatives dwarf spot activity, with Dune's accompanying release putting August equity perpetual volume at $72.4 billion against $12.6 billion in spot. Investors favour single names over funds, and Asian stocks made up 24% of equity open interest.
Memory chipmakers accounted for 47% of August equity perpetual volume. An SK Hynix perpetual peaked at $343 million in open interest in July, giving traders a way to position on the stock while Korea's exchange was closed.
"When people trade on blockchain, it's to express themselves more, as opposed to passive investing," Dune CEO Fredrik Haga told Fortune .
Credit plays a third role. Between 19% and 21% of tokenised credit sits in lending protocols, which makes it the real-world asset most widely used as collateral onchain. Yields across tokenised credit products range from 3% to 13%, according to the release.
Tokenised gold, which makes up most of the $5.5 billion commodities category, is growing through accumulation. Ounces held rose 73% over the year while the gold price rose 29%, though tokenised gold still equals only 0.86% of the gold held in traditional ETFs.
The findings complicate the industry's standard pitch for tokenisation as a more efficient wrapper for existing assets. The largest category, tokenised Treasuries, is mostly bought and held, while the fastest-growing activity is leveraged, round-the-clock trading of individual stocks through perpetual contracts. Dune's report tracks how the assets are used and does not measure how closely onchain prices follow the underlying securities, which remains the next question for a market that increasingly trades while the reference exchanges are shut.