Real-World Assets Tokenization: Which Crypto Projects Are Reshaping Finance in 2024?

The crypto market is experiencing a fundamental shift as blockchain technology bridges the gap between traditional finance and decentralized systems. Real-world assets (RWAs) tokenization—converting physical assets into digital tokens—has evolved from a niche concept into a trillion-dollar opportunity. As of March 2024, the RWA sector has already accumulated over $8.4 billion in market capitalization, signaling institutional confidence and mainstream adoption momentum.

The turning point came when BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, launched BUIDL (BlackRock USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund) on Ethereum. This institutional-grade tokenized fund generates daily dividend payouts directly to investor wallets while holding conservative assets like U.S. Treasury bills and cash equivalents. This move wasn’t just a product launch—it was a watershed moment validating RWA tokenization as a legitimate investment vehicle.

Why Real-World Assets Tokenization Matters Now

Unlike the early 2010s experiments with colored coins on Bitcoin, modern RWA tokenization offers practical solutions that address three critical pain points:

Liquidity Unlocked: Previously illiquid assets—from real estate to corporate bonds—can now be fractionally owned and traded 24/7 on blockchain networks. This democratizes access to institutional-grade investments.

Portfolio Diversification Made Simple: Tokenization opens global investment opportunities that were once gatekept by geography, minimum investment requirements, and institutional barriers. Retail investors can now hold fractionalized ownership of treasury-backed securities or private credit.

DeFi Innovation Acceleration: By bringing real-world assets onto blockchain, developers can create hybrid financial products combining the efficiency of smart contracts with the stability of traditional assets.

Leading Projects Spearheading the RWA Revolution

Ondo Finance (ONDO): Treasury Tokenization Pioneer

Ondo Finance positioned itself as the bridge between traditional fixed-income markets and DeFi. Its flagship product, OUSG—the world’s first tokenized U.S. Treasuries offering—proved that institutional-grade assets could thrive on blockchain.

What makes Ondo significant: In March 2024, Ondo moved $95 million of OUSG assets into BlackRock’s BUIDL fund for instant settlement. This marked the first instance of a crypto protocol leveraging BlackRock’s infrastructure, demonstrating how traditional finance gatekeepers are now partnering with DeFi builders.

Beyond treasuries, Ondo launched Ondo Global Markets (Ondo GM), a securities tokenization platform accepting orders through both traditional and smart contract channels. Recent partnerships with Sui and Aptos networks signal Ondo’s ambition to expand tokenized products across multiple blockchain ecosystems.

Mantra (OM): RWA Infrastructure for Emerging Markets

Current Price: $0.07 | 24h Change: -4.71% | Market Cap: $83.93M | 24h Volume: $703.37K

Mantra operates as a Layer 1 blockchain specifically engineered for RWA tokenization compliance. The $11 million funding round led by regional venture investors validated its mission to mainstream asset tokenization in Middle East and Asia markets.

What differentiates Mantra: Rather than competing in saturated Layer 1 ecosystems, Mantra carved a regulatory-first niche. Its infrastructure enables developers to build RWA-centric protocols without reinventing compliance wheels. The OM token functions as both governance and utility token, allowing stakers to earn passive yield while participating in ecosystem decisions.

Mantra’s thesis is straightforward—bring global financial infrastructure on-chain while respecting regional regulatory requirements. For emerging markets where traditional financial access remains limited, this positions Mantra as foundational infrastructure.

Polymesh (POLYX): Securities on Steroids

Current Price: $0.05 | 24h Change: -5.20% | Market Cap: $61.08M | 24h Volume: $95.19K

Polymesh is a purpose-built Layer 1 for security token infrastructure. Unlike general-purpose blockchains, Polymesh’s architecture addresses the specific compliance challenges that securities trading demands: governance, identity verification, KYC/AML compliance, confidentiality, and settlement.

Why this matters: Traditional securities markets process trillions daily but operate on infrastructure from the 1970s. Polymesh’s institutional-grade design allows financial institutions to tokenize securities while maintaining the compliance guardrails regulators demand. POLYX token holders participate in governance and pay network fees, while the token’s asymptotic supply model balances incentive structures with controlled inflation.

OriginTrail (TRAC): Trust Layer for Supply Chains

Current Price: $0.40 | 24h Change: -2.39% | Market Cap: $178.15M | 24h Volume: $18.41K | Circulating Supply: 447.27M / 500M Total

OriginTrail’s Decentralized Knowledge Graph (DKG) tackles a different RWA angle—verifying the authenticity and history of physical assets. Rather than tokenizing asset value, OriginTrail tokenizes asset provenance.

The use case: Supply chain companies, healthcare providers, and construction firms use OriginTrail to create AI-ready knowledge assets proving ownership and origin. When you buy a luxury handbag, authentic real estate, or pharmaceutical products, OriginTrail’s technology provides immutable proof of authenticity on-chain.

The TRAC token launched in 2018 with 500 million fixed supply and powers all DKG operations. Its multichain expansion ensures compatibility across Ethereum, Polygon, and other networks.

Pendle (PENDLE): Yield Separation Protocol

Current Price: $1.80 | 24h Change: +2.21% | Market Cap: $296.07M | 24h Volume: $513.34K

Pendle revolutionized how DeFi handles yield-bearing assets by separating them into Principal Tokens (PT) and Yield Tokens (YT). This decomposition enables users to trade future yields independently from principal, creating entirely new trading and hedging strategies.

Recent evolution: Pendle integrated tokenized real-world assets including MakerDAO’s Boosted Dai Savings and Flux Finance’s fUSDC. This positions Pendle as a sophisticated yield management layer for both DeFi-native and RWA-backed instruments. Institutional investors now use Pendle to hedge yield fluctuations on Treasury-backed tokens—blending RWA stability with DeFi flexibility.

TokenFi (TOKEN): No-Code RWA Launcher

Current Price: $0.00 | 24h Change: -2.03% | Market Cap: $7.63M | 24h Volume: $251.56K

TokenFi democratizes RWA tokenization by eliminating coding barriers. Its platform allows users to launch ERC20/BEP20 tokens representing real-world assets without touching a single line of code.

Key features: TokenFi Token Launcher, generative AI for NFT creation, and AI Smart Contract Auditor for instant token verification. As the RWA market projects to hit $16 trillion by 2030, TokenFi’s approach to lowering technical barriers positions it to capture first-mover advantage among non-technical asset issuers.

Additional Players Shaping the Landscape

Securitize: A digital securities management platform founded in 2017, now backed by BlackRock’s strategic investment. By 2022, just three years after launch, Securitize serviced 1.2 million investor accounts across 3,000 clients, establishing itself among top U.S. stock transfer agents.

Untangled Finance: After securing $13.5 million in October 2023, Untangled went live on Celo network, focusing on tokenizing private credit assets and expanding blockchain accessibility beyond cryptocurrency traders.

Swarm Markets (SMT): With TVL exceeding $5.4 million as of March 2024, Swarm emphasizes regulatory compliance while bridging traditional finance and DeFi through RWA tokenization. Its July 2023 partnership with Mattereum strengthened on-chain securitization capabilities.

MakerDAO (MKR): One of Ethereum’s most established protocols, MakerDAO integrated RWAs into its DeFi ecosystem through institutional borrowers. As of March 2024, RWAs comprise just under 30% of MakerDAO’s balance sheet—representing over $2.06 billion of its $6.6 billion TVL. This demonstrates how legacy DeFi protocols are pivoting toward real-world asset integration.

The Institutional Validation Inflection Point

What separates this RWA cycle from previous hype: institutional capital has arrived. BlackRock’s BUIDL entry, followed by major financial institutions incorporating RWA-backed yields into their portfolios, signals this isn’t speculative trend—it’s infrastructure buildout.

The $8.4 billion RWA market cap as of March 2024 represents early innings. As regulatory frameworks clarify, institutional adoption accelerates, and DeFi liquidity deepens, expect rapid expansion across asset classes: real estate, commodities, invoice financing, and carbon credits.

What This Means for Crypto Markets

Real-world asset tokenization addresses crypto’s fundamental credibility gap with traditional finance. Instead of debating blockchain utility in abstract terms, RWA projects prove it by solving concrete problems: increasing asset liquidity, reducing settlement friction, and democratizing access.

The projects highlighted—from Ondo’s treasury focus to Polymesh’s securities infrastructure to Pendle’s yield strategies—represent different specialization layers. Together, they’re building the plumbing that transforms how billions of dollars in traditional assets flow through blockchain networks.

As regulatory clarity improves and institutional adoption compounds, the competitive advantage shifts to platforms that prioritize compliance, security, and user experience. The race isn’t about tokenization anymore—it’s about who builds the most trustworthy and efficient infrastructure for moving real-world assets on-chain.