The Expanding Universe of Blockchain-Based Asset Tokenization: 11 Leading Companies Reshaping Finance in 2024

The global market for Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization has surged to unprecedented levels, with the combined market cap of RWA-focused coins reaching $8.4 billion as of March 2024. This explosive growth reflects a fundamental shift in how traditional finance integrates with blockchain infrastructure. The catalyst? Major institutional players like BlackRock entering the space with products like BUIDL, a tokenized USD institutional digital liquidity fund on Ethereum. What was once a niche concept has evolved into a full-fledged ecosystem where asset tokenization companies are rapidly building the infrastructure to bridge TradFi and DeFi.

Why Physical Asset Tokenization Matters Now

The digitization of physical assets on blockchain networks offers transformative potential across multiple dimensions:

Fractional ownership and liquidity access unlock investment opportunities previously reserved for institutional investors. Real estate, commodities, and securities that were illiquid can now be fractionalized, enabling retail participation in traditionally gatekept markets.

Portfolio diversification reaches new frontiers as tokenized assets create global accessibility to alternative investments, reducing geographic barriers and expanding investment horizons.

DeFi ecosystem innovation accelerates when real-world assets become programmable collateral, spawning new financial products, yield strategies, and risk management tools that were impossible in traditional finance.

Trust and transparency are hardwired into blockchain-based asset records, creating immutable and verifiable proof of ownership—a critical requirement for institutional adoption.

The Key Players Driving Asset Tokenization Companies Forward

Ondo Finance (ONDO): Pioneering Institutional Treasury Tokenization

Ondo Finance stands as the vanguard of RWA tokenization, having introduced OUSG, the world’s first tokenized US Treasury product. By March 2024, Ondo made a strategic move that underscores institutional validation: migrating $95 million in assets to BlackRock’s BUIDL for streamlined settlement. This partnership represents the first time a crypto protocol has leveraged a major asset manager’s tokenized infrastructure—a watershed moment for mainstream adoption.

Ondo’s broader infrastructure includes Flux Finance, a lending protocol that demonstrates how tokenized treasuries function as DeFi collateral. The ONDO token powers governance decisions within the Ondo DAO, while recent expansions to Sui and Aptos networks signal ambition to scale across multichain ecosystems. The introduction of Ondo Global Markets (Ondo GM) marks the next frontier: a broker-dealer accepting both traditional and smart contract-based orders, effectively creating an on-ramp for securities tokenization at institutional scale.

Mantra (OM): Bringing RWA Infrastructure to Asia and MENA

Following a $11 million Series A led by Shorooq Partners, Mantra emerged as a Layer 1 blockchain specifically architected for RWA tokenization. The platform’s thesis targets underserved markets—the Middle East, North Africa, and Asia—where investment accessibility remains a bottleneck.

With OM trading at $0.07 (down 5.93% in 24 hours), the token functions as both governance and staking utility within Mantra Chain. The platform’s value proposition centers on regulatory-compliant infrastructure and developer tooling, enabling builders to create RWA-centric protocols from day one. Mantra’s mission to “bring the world’s financial ecosystem on-chain” directly addresses scalability challenges that plague RWA platforms, positioning it as a critical infrastructure layer rather than another application.

Polymesh (POLYX): Institutional-Grade Security Token Infrastructure

Polymesh distinguishes itself through specialization: a permissioned Layer 1 blockchain obsessed with security token efficiency. Its design addresses governance, identity, compliance, and settlement—the four pillars institutional investors demand before committing capital to on-chain assets.

POLYX at $0.05 (down 5.47% in 24 hours) powers transaction fees, staking, and governance participation. The tokenomics employ an asymptotic supply cap, balancing incentive structures with controlled inflation. Polymesh’s public-permissioned hybrid model combines the trustworthiness of private networks with the transparency of public chains, creating an institutional-grade ecosystem that doesn’t sacrifice decentralization for compliance.

OriginTrail (TRAC): Supply Chain Trust Through Decentralized Knowledge

OriginTrail takes a different approach: rather than purely financial asset tokenization, it focuses on creating trusted, AI-ready Knowledge Assets across supply chains, healthcare, and construction sectors. The Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) integrates blockchain with knowledge graph technology, creating verifiable data trails.

TRAC currently sits at $0.40 (down 2.56% in 24 hours) with 447 million tokens in circulation against a 500 million total supply. As the lifeblood of the DKG, TRAC powers publishing, collateral, and delegated staking across OriginTrail nodes. The multichain deployment ensures accessibility across broader blockchain ecosystems, positioning TRAC as interoperability-first infrastructure for trusted asset data.

Pendle (PENDLE): Yield Tokenization and RWA Integration

Pendle revolutionizes yield asset management by separating Principal Tokens (PT) and Yield Tokens (YT), enabling traders to speculate on yield curves and hedge duration risk. Recent integration of tokenized RWAs—including MakerDAO’s Boosted Dai Savings and fUSDC—marks Pendle’s pivot toward bridging DeFi with traditional assets.

PENDLE at $1.80 (up 2.15% in 24 hours) reflects growing market confidence in yield infrastructure. By enabling investors to manage and hedge RWA yields efficiently, Pendle positions itself as essential middleware between institutional yield-seeking and on-chain asset markets, attracting both retail sophisticates and institutional capital.

TokenFi (TOKEN): No-Code RWA Tokenization for Mass Markets

TokenFi democratizes asset tokenization by eliminating coding requirements—a critical barrier for SMEs and emerging market participants seeking to tokenize assets. The platform’s ERC20/BEP20 token launcher, AI-powered NFT generation, and direct institutional connections create an accessible entry point into DeFi.

TOKEN trades at $0.00 (down 3.15% in 24 hours) with a $7.65M market cap—still early stage, but positioned to capture market share from the anticipated $16 trillion RWA market by 2030. TOKEN powers audit functions, token launches, and platform operations, creating utility demand as the RWA tokenization trend matures.

Securitize: Compliance Infrastructure and Investor Relations at Scale

Securitize has achieved what few platforms accomplish: bridging compliance and scale. By 2022, merely three years post-launch, Securitize Markets ranked among the top 10 US transfer agents, servicing 1.2 million investor accounts across 3,000 clients. BlackRock’s strategic investment and board appointment of Joseph Chalom amplify its institutional credibility.

Blockchain-agnostic by design, Securitize primarily operates on Ethereum but maintains flexibility across chains, ensuring regulatory frameworks can evolve without technical lock-in.

Untangled Finance: Private Credit Tokenization on Celo

Established in 2020, Untangled Finance recently went live on the Celo network and raised $13.5 million in October 2023. Its focus: tokenizing private credit assets, a historically illiquid segment where information asymmetry and maturity mismatches plague traditional investors.

By bringing private credit on-chain, Untangled increases liquidity access and enables smaller investors to participate in institutional-grade credit markets—a critical gap in DeFi infrastructure.

Swarm Markets (SMT): Regulated Tokenization for Traditional Assets

Swarm specializes in compliance-forward RWA tokenization, supporting real-world assets, securities, and crypto on a unified platform. With $5.4 million TVL (as of March 2024) and a July 2023 partnership with Mattereum, Swarm provides comprehensive on-chain securitization solutions.

SMT functions as the platform’s payment and reward token, offering transaction discounts while maintaining regulatory alignment—essential for TradFi players cautiously entering blockchain.

MakerDAO (MKR): Institutional RWA Adoption in DeFi’s Oldest Protocol

MakerDAO has quietly become one of crypto’s largest RWA holders. As of March 2024, real-world assets comprise just under 30% of its balance sheet, totaling over $2.06 billion of its $6.6 billion TVL. Institutional borrowers tokenize US Treasury bills (T-bills) through MakerDAO, using DAI stablecoin and collateralizing T-bills on-chain.

This demonstrates RWA tokenization’s maturation: major DeFi protocols now treat tokenized treasuries as core infrastructure, not experimental features.

The Convergence: Mainstream RWA Adoption Accelerating

The emergence of these asset tokenization companies signals a fundamental market restructuring. BlackRock’s BUIDL, Ondo’s treasury partnerships, and Mantra’s institutional infrastructure collectively validate that RWA tokenization isn’t speculative—it’s inevitable. By 2030, if projections hold, the global tokenized asset market could reach $16 trillion, dwarfing crypto’s current market cap and reshaping institutional capital allocation.

The next chapter belongs to platforms that can scale compliance, institutional partnerships, and multichain interoperability in tandem. The winners among asset tokenization companies won’t be those offering the most innovative tokenomics—they’ll be the ones solving regulatory complexity while maintaining technical flexibility.