According to a report by Castle Labs, relayed by the Journal du Coin, the capitalisation of tokenised real-world assets on Solana has reached $4.3 billion, up from around $700 million twelve months earlier. Over the same period, Ethereum went from $15.5 billion to $16.6 billion. The ratio of Solana to Ethereum thus climbed from 4.5% to 26%. Spectacular figures, which deserve a close reading.

What tokenisation of real-world assets covers

The term is RWA, for real-world assets. The principle: representing on a blockchain an asset that exists outside it, in the form of a token. The Journal du Coin points out that the category is broad: it covers tokenised Treasury bills as well as private credit or US equities. The token does not replace the underlying asset; it is a representation of it, whose value depends on that asset and on the entity that issues and holds it.

Solana: where the surge comes from

According to Castle Labs, the jump is due first and foremost to a handful of institutional deployments. BlackRock brought its BUIDL money market fund to Solana via Securitize. Franklin Templeton runs BENJI there, and Apollo has listed its ACRED credit fund on it. Ondo Finance also distributes USDY and OUSG there.

Tokenised equities did the rest. Backed Finance's xStocks range started with some sixty US stocks and ETFs, distributed by Kraken and Bybit before arriving on Jupiter and Raydium. The Journal du Coin puts forward a technical explanation: fees below one cent and blocks produced every 400 milliseconds make this type of market workable, whereas Ethereum still charges several dollars per transaction when the network is congested.

One case should be set apart. According to the Journal du Coin, R3 announced last year that it was bringing its Corda platform together with Solana, with more than $10 billion in regulated assets managed for around a hundred financial institutions at stake. This is a partnership announcement, not assets already counted on the network: the sources do not specify what share of these amounts is included in the $4.3 billion.

What these figures really measure

First point: the 26% is not an overall market share. It compares the value tokenised on Solana with that on Ethereum. Ethereum retains the bulk of the stock, and its annual growth reaches 7%, according to the report.

Second point: relative growth is all the stronger when the starting base is small. In absolute terms, Solana added $3.6 billion in tokenised assets in one year, while Ethereum gained $1.1 billion. The gap between the two networks fell from $14.8 billion to $12.3 billion. It therefore remains clearly in Ethereum's favour.

Third point: a capitalisation measures the value of the assets represented, not their use. The sources say nothing about the number of holders or the volumes traded in these tokens. Nor do they detail Castle Labs' methodology.

Revenue of a different kind

The report addresses a second aspect: Solana applications reportedly generated $193.1 million in revenue over thirty days, ahead of Hyperliquid ($86.5 million) and Ethereum ($53.8 million). The Journal du Coin stresses that most of it comes from trading terminals such as Axiom or Photon and from memecoin launchpads. This revenue is cyclical: it rises and falls with the market's appetite for short-term tokens.

Tokenised assets operate on a different timescale, that of asset management mandates which, according to the outlet, are withdrawn as slowly as they arrive. Mixing the two indicators would be misleading: one measures a stock of assets, the other a flow of fees that is highly dependent on speculation.

The limits

These figures describe adoption by institutional issuers, not a return for those who buy tokens. A rising capitalisation says nothing about an asset's future performance, and tokenisation adds its own risks: dependence on the issuer, the custodian and the network. The Journal du Coin believes the top three could change in the coming months; this is a hypothesis, not an observation. Finally, the whole picture rests on a single study, that of Castle Labs, relayed by a single outlet.

Sources

  • Journal du Coin: "Tokenisation on Solana: RWAs go from $700 million to $4.3 billion in one year"