Something is happening onchain that I donβt think enough people are paying attention to yet. A few years ago, tokenization was mostly a thesis. Now almost every week another familiar asset shows up onchain. In just the last few weeks, tokenized versions of Pfizer, Oklo, and a Vanguard bond ETF went live. Excluding stablecoins, tokenized real world assets are now around $31.5 billion, more than double a year ago, with roughly $300 million to $500 million of new value coming onchain every week at this yearβs pace.
US Treasuries lead the market at around $15 billion, with BlackRockβs BUIDL alone nearing $2.8 billion. But tokenized stocks are the category that really stands out. They grew from roughly $61 million to $2.47 billion in twelve months, about a 40x jump. Robinhood started with roughly 200 tokenized stocks for European users in mid 2025 and now has more than 2,000 stocks and ETFs. In July, they went even further by launching their own chain and bringing tokenized US stock trading to more than 120 countries.
But putting assets onchain is only half of the equation. The bigger question is what happens after they get there. If you include permissioned rails, the tokenized market is already around $60 billion, yet most of those assets barely trade. Tokenized Treasuries have roughly $16.5 billion outstanding but only around $2.7 million in onchain spot volume, and only about 10% of tokenized assets interact with DeFi. Even more telling, roughly 97% of trading volume around tokenized stocks and gold happens through synthetic perpetuals instead of the actual tokens. We have become very good at issuing assets onchain. We are still not very good at making markets for them.
That is largely a market making infrastructure problem. Today, liquidity providers are usually forced into a bad tradeoff. Chase the price and stay active, and you keep selling the winning asset, accumulating the losing one, and potentially compounding impermanent loss. Pull the liquidity back to protect the inventory, and the capital stops earning. The infrastructure to sustainably stay in the market while protecting the book still has a long way to go.
That is the boundary we are pushing at
@Balcore_AI : market making infrastructure that manages liquidity placement, inventory, reserves, rebalancing, and restraint as one system, with one simple objective: keep capital working while making sure the fees earned stay ahead of what it costs to keep the book whole. Tokenization creates the assets. It does not automatically create the markets around them. Someone still has to make that market.
Be the Market Maker. There is no escape. πΊ