The real-world asset (RWA) market value could more than triple by 2026, as it expands beyond crypto-native use cases and utility, according to Chris Yin, co-founder and CEO of RWA-focused layer-2 blockchain Plume.
Speaking to Cointelegraph, Yin said that RWA value has taken off in the last year and he expects it to increase by three to five times in 2026, as a base case.
“Currently, we are tracking to over 10x the RWA holders number since the start of the year and so we expect us to keep inflecting and we think it’s not crazy to imagine another banner year with 25x+ in user growth numbers,” he said.
Over $35 billion in RWA is estimated to be onchain, according to RWA.xyz, across more than 539,000 holders.
RWA market will grow exponentially
Yin said the market of tokenized RWAs is entirely serving crypto natives but predicts it will grow exponentially across total value, users, asset classes and utility.
“Whereas today the vast majority of RWA value is in US treasury bills, the market maturing and the combination of rate cuts is pushing onchain users to seek higher yields in new places,” he said.
“We’re already seeing a pickup in private credit as well as other alternative assets such as mineral rights, oil, GPUs, energy, and more.”
Regulations could also play a factor. Many countries, such as the US, are working on legislation governing stablecoins and other tokenized assets. Yin said this will help move them out of the sandbox and into real-life usage soon.
“Outside of pure issuance on the supply side, we expect to begin to see the demand side finally come onchain,” Yin added.
Plume inks deal with Securitize
Plume announced on Wednesday that Securitize, a tokenization platform backed by BlackRock and Morgan Stanley, plans to deploy institutional-grade assets on Plume’s Nest staking protocol.
Related: Plume Network gains SEC transfer agent status to bring TradFi onchain
The Nest staking protocol allows investors to trade and earn yield on tokenized assets. The partnership will connect Securitize’s tokenized funds to Plume’s network of over 280,000 RWA holders, according to Plume.
Hamilton Lane funds will be the first, and then other issuers and asset classes from Securitize’s platform will follow in 2026.
Plume has 279,692 RWA holders, which makes up around 50% of the total number of holders across all RWA networks. Plume, however, isn’t in the top ten networks according to RWA.xyz.
However, Yin explains that Plume has a huge share of users, but each holder may have fewer RWA assets than on other networks.
“Plume has 280,000 users holding an aggregate $200 million of RWAs, which is a much healthier measure of usage on a network,” he added.
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