How Real-World Asset Tokenization Is Reshaping DeFi: A Look at Leading Tokenized Assets Examples in 2024

When BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, quietly launched BUIDL—its tokenized fund offering blockchain-based institutional liquidity—it sent a powerful signal to the crypto market: tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) is no longer experimental. It’s institutional.

The numbers back this up. As of March 2024, the RWA sector has ballooned to over $8.4 billion in market cap, up from relative obscurity just a few years ago. What started with Bitcoin’s colored coins in the early 2010s has evolved into a sophisticated ecosystem where everything from Treasury bonds to credit assets can now live on-chain.

But here’s what most people miss: the real opportunity isn’t just in tokenization itself—it’s in understanding which projects are actually building the infrastructure that will power this shift.

Why Tokenization Matters (And It’s Bigger Than You Think)

Tokenization isn’t just repackaging old assets in digital clothing. It’s fundamentally changing how capital moves.

When you tokenize an asset, several things happen at once:

Illiquid becomes liquid. A real estate fund that once took months to settle can now trade in minutes. Treasury bills that traditionally sat in institutional vaults can now serve as DeFi collateral. This unlocks trillions in trapped capital.

Barriers to entry collapse. Fractional ownership means someone with $100 can now own a piece of an asset that previously required a $100,000 minimum. This democratizes wealth-building.

Settlement becomes instant. Blockchain eliminates intermediaries. No more T+2 settlement delays—transactions settle in seconds with transparent, tamper-proof records.

New financial products emerge. When you separate yield from principal, stack assets as collateral, or hedge against interest rate risk, entire categories of investment strategies become possible that were previously locked behind institutional walls.

This is exactly why major ecosystem players—Anchorage Digital Bank NA, BitGo, Coinbase, and Fireblocks—are all-in on RWA infrastructure. They know this is where finance is headed.

The Tokenized Assets Reshaping the Ecosystem Right Now

Ondo Finance (ONDO): Bridging Treasury Markets and DeFi

If you want to understand what institutional-grade RWA integration looks like, Ondo Finance is the textbook example.

Ondo built OUSG, the world’s first tokenized U.S. Treasuries product. It sounds simple until you realize the implications: American treasury bonds—the backbone of global finance—are now liquid DeFi assets.

But here’s where it gets interesting: in March 2024, Ondo announced it’s moving $95 million of OUSG assets into BlackRock’s BUIDL fund. This isn’t just a partnership—it’s the first time a crypto protocol has leveraged a traditional asset manager’s tokenized offering for on-chain settlements. The message is clear: legacy finance and DeFi are converging.

Ondo’s second product, Flux Finance, lets you use tokenized Treasuries as collateral to borrow or lend. It’s boring-sounding until you realize you can now earn DeFi yields while maintaining Treasury-level safety.

The ONDO token handles governance. Holders vote on protocol updates and resource allocation. Ondo’s recent expansion into Sui and Aptos networks shows the project isn’t stopping at Ethereum—it’s building a multi-chain tokenized asset future.

Mantra (OM): Bringing RWA Tokenization to Emerging Markets

While Ondo focuses on U.S. Treasuries, Mantra is solving a different problem: how do you bring tokenized assets to markets where institutional finance is still developing?

After raising $11 million from Shorooq Partners (a major MENA venture firm), Mantra built a Layer 1 blockchain explicitly designed for RWA tokenization. The project is betting that emerging markets—particularly the Middle East and Asia—are hungry for both the efficiency and accessibility that tokenized assets provide.

Current metrics (as of December 2024):

• Price: $0.07
• 24h change: -5.75%
• Market cap: $84.22M
• Daily volume: $780.19K

The OM token functions as both governance and utility—staking it generates passive yield while giving holders voting power on protocol direction.

Mantra’s differentiation is infrastructure-focused. They’re building developer tools specifically for RWA protocols, providing compliance frameworks that work across emerging markets, and creating market infrastructure that’s missing in many regions. It’s less sexy than “Treasury bonds on-chain,” but potentially more impactful for long-term tokenization adoption.

Polymesh (POLYX): The Institutional-Grade Foundation

Polymesh took a different architectural approach: instead of building on Ethereum and adapting, they built from the ground up as a permissioned Layer 1 specifically for security tokenization.

The differentiation matters. Polymesh explicitly addresses compliance, governance, identity verification, and confidentiality—the things institutions actually care about. It’s blockchain without the Wild West aesthetic.

Current metrics (as of December 2024):

• Price: $0.05
• 24h change: -3.87%
• Market cap: $61.33M
• Daily volume: $89.81K

POLYX holders pay transaction fees with the token, stake for network security, and participate in governance. The tokenomics approach an asymptotic limit, balancing incentive distribution with controlled inflation—technically sophisticated but boring to most traders.

What makes Polymesh compelling is the regulatory angle. For institutions worried about SEC enforcement or compliance issues, Polymesh’s deliberate design choices provide structural security.

OriginTrail (TRAC): Trust Infrastructure for Supply Chain Assets

OriginTrail approaches RWA from a different angle: instead of finance, it’s building the trust layer for supply chains, healthcare records, and tangible goods tracking.

Using a Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG), OriginTrail creates “Knowledge Assets”—verified, AI-ready data packages that prove provenance, authenticity, and ownership. Imagine a diamond that carries an immutable certificate proving it came from a certified source, or medical records that patients can control and share.

Current metrics (as of December 2024):

• Price: $0.40
• 24h change: -2.30%
• Market cap: $178.78M
• Daily volume: $18.80K
• Circulating supply: 447.3M / 500M total

TRAC is the operational currency—you pay it to publish assets, use it as collateral on nodes, and stake it for delegation. Its fixed 500M supply makes it deflationary as usage grows.

OriginTrail’s thesis: real-world asset tokenization fails without trust. Their multi-chain approach ensures knowledge assets live where the data exists.

Pendle (PENDLE): Yield Tokenization as an Asset Class

Pendle’s innovation is subtle but powerful: it separates yield from principal.

Instead of holding a Treasury-backed token and getting locked into its yield, Pendle lets you trade the Principal Token (PT) and Yield Token (YT) separately. Want to speculate on rising yields? Buy the YT. Want principal safety? Buy the PT. It’s financial engineering that creates entirely new investment categories.

Current metrics (as of December 2024):

• Price: $1.81
• 24h change: +2.79%
• Market cap: $297.39M
• Daily volume: $507.10K

Recently, Pendle integrated Real-World Assets directly—MakerDAO’s Boosted Dai Savings and Flux Finance’s fUSDC now have tradeable yield components. This is tokenized assets examples done right: taking institutional-grade instruments and making them composable with DeFi primitives.

PENDLE token holders govern protocol changes and capture fees. The price action shows institutional interest is real—despite market-wide weakness, PENDLE has been outperforming.

TokenFi (TOKEN): No-Code RWA Creation

While others build infrastructure, TokenFi democratizes creation. Its platform lets anyone tokenize RWAs without coding—just point, click, deploy.

The market opportunity is staggering. Estimates suggest the total addressable market for RWAs could reach $16 trillion by 2030. TokenFi is betting that the friction point isn’t technology—it’s usability. Remove the coding requirement, and adoption accelerates.

The TOKEN utility token powers the platform: it discounts fees, powers the AI smart contract auditor, and connects creators with institutional liquidity providers.

MakerDAO (MKR): Where Traditional Finance Actually Integrates DeFi

MakerDAO isn’t a pure-play RWA project, but by March 2024, it had become one anyway. Real-world assets comprise nearly 30% of its balance sheet—$2.06 billion of a $6.6 billion TVL.

How did this happen? Institutional borrowers (hedge funds, asset managers) realized they could borrow DAI stablecoin and use it to tokenize Treasury bills on-chain. The cycle: borrow DAI → use it to buy T-bills → tokenize those holdings → use tokenized assets in DeFi. It’s elegant capital efficiency.

MKR holders govern Maker Protocol, controlling stability fees and risk parameters—essentially deciding how much RWA exposure the system takes.

The Bigger Picture: What This Actually Means

The crypto projects driving RWA tokenization aren’t fighting legacy finance—they’re integrating with it. BlackRock’s BUIDL adoption by Ondo. Securitize’s board seat given to a BlackRock executive. Swarm’s partnership with Mattereum for on-chain securitization. These aren’t exceptions; they’re the pattern.

What’s emerging isn’t a replacement financial system—it’s a parallel one, starting with Treasury bonds and private credit, expanding into real estate, commodities, and eventually everything else with value.

The winners won’t be the projects making the biggest promises about “disruption.” They’ll be the ones solving boring infrastructure problems: compliance at scale, institutional-grade custody, cross-chain settlement, and regulatory clarity.

By 2024, that infrastructure is finally catching up to the vision. Tokenized assets examples are no longer theoretical—they’re live, they’re being used by institutions, and they’re generating real yield.

The question isn’t whether tokenization will happen. It’s which projects will own the rails that power it.