2026: What to Expect from Real-World Asset Tokenization

Over the past year, real-world asset tokenization moved from experimentation to infrastructure. Treasury funds, private credit strategies, index products, and early equity issuance moved onto public blockchains with real capital, regulated structures, and global distribution.

What began as pilots is now reshaping capital markets, not by replacing traditional finance, but by modernizing how financial instruments are issued, settled, and owned.

Here’s what to expect from tokenization in 2026, with a set of forward-looking predictions from the Centrifuge team on where tokenized markets are heading.

Tokenization Becomes a Default Strategy for Asset Managers

By the end of 2026, tokenization will no longer sit at the edge of asset-management strategy. It will increasingly be treated as a core operating capability.

Asset managers are aligning around clear advantages: faster settlement, broader liquidity, programmable distribution, and direct access to global onchain capital. The shift is already visible in how institutional investors talk about tokenization: less as an innovation project, more as an operating decision tied to product reach, efficiency, and investor access.

On the supply side, the market is ready. Tokenized treasuries, equities, and private credit are already operating onchain with regulated structures and institutional expectations. Frameworks, fund design patterns, and technical standards have matured to a point where launching onchain products no longer requires rebuilding operating models from scratch.

Centrifuge spent the past year turning tokenization into a repeatable operating pattern: audited components, compliance tooling, and Whitelabel Platform now available so teams can launch regulated products with fewer moving parts and shorter time-to-market.

“2026 will mark the inflection point for tokenized assets: liquidity venues mature, compliance becomes programmable, and tokenized assets benefit from the full potential of DeFi. Paired with regulatory clarity, the race to come onchain will accelerate and over 50% of the top 50 asset managers will have tokenization strategies by the end of the year.”
Bhaji Illuminati, CEO, Centrifuge Labs

The strategy shift is translating into commitments at the top of the market. In 2026, the conversation moves decisively from “why tokenize” to “how fast can we deploy.”

Utility-Based Growth and AI Reshaping Capital Allocation

The next phase of tokenization growth will be driven by stability and utility.

Stablecoins proved the model first. What started as a crypto-native primitive is embedding into mainstream financial plumbing. They power cross-border payments and programmable cash flows that institutions can manage alongside traditional portfolios. Growth continues even during broader market volatility because the utility is real.

“Stablecoins will be integrated into more and more apps including banks, brokers, credit cards, online retailers etc.”
Eli Cohen, CLO, Centrifuge Labs

Real-world assets followed the same trajectory. Tokenized treasuries, fixed income, and onchain credit expanded steadily through 2025, reinforcing market confidence that tokenized assets can scale with real demand. Products that historically required traditional wrappers can now operate onchain with broader distribution.

“Driven by extended crypto volatility there will be a boom of RWA tokens driving the RWA TVL to exceed $100B USD by the end of 2026.”
Jürgen Blumberg, COO, Centrifuge Labs

As the market matures, attention naturally shifts to tokens with real utility: assets that can be held, transferred, used as collateral, and integrated into workflows across decentralized finance and institutional operations. Speculation isn't vanishing, but it's no longer the gravitational center.

“BTC interest and demand will continue to fall as the market matures and moves to other tokens that have greater composability and utility.”
Eli Cohen, CLO, Centrifuge Labs

That changes how allocation decisions get made. As better assets move onchain, they become natively accessible to AI systems in ways that traditional markets never were. Onchain infrastructure is programmable by design, with agents that can read positions, execute trades, rebalance portfolios, and optimize across risk and yield without needing human intermediaries or legacy API integrations.

“As high-quality funds and real assets move onchain, AI-driven wealth agents will emerge as the dominant interface for capital allocation. In 2026, competition shifts from protocols to agents, with AI systems competing directly for wallet share by optimizing yield, risk, and access across tokenized markets.”
Anil Sood, CSO & CGO, Centrifuge Labs

This is where Centrifuge is building: RWAs as functional financial instruments embedded into onchain and institutional environments. Not just tokenized exposure, but infrastructure that operates where capital actually lives.

Index Products Moving Onchain

Index products represent one of the largest and most conservative pools of global capital. In 2026, they will move onchain in a meaningful way.

The first licensed index fund on blockchain in 2025 marked an early inflection point: institutional benchmarks can operate natively onchain. Centrifuge's Proof-of-Index framework, built with licensed data from S&P Dow Jones Indices, demonstrates that index exposure can exist on public blockchains while preserving licensing integrity, methodology rigor, and regulatory compliance.

Each day, the index provider publishes a cryptographic fingerprint of the official composition. Funds tracking the index generate their own fingerprint and can prove alignment without disclosing underlying holdings. It's a technical unlock that creates verifiable attestation: institutions can trust index replication while fund managers preserve confidentiality and competitive positioning.

“Index providers will move onchain and 80% of the global top 10 will have committed to proof-of-index concepts onchain.”
Jürgen Blumberg, COO, Centrifuge Labs

Even incremental adoption matters at index-market scale. And it pulls tokenization closer to the core of portfolio construction, not just digital asset exposure.

Tokenized Equities Accelerate Beyond Price Exposure

Equities are the natural extension, but they require the highest bar: clear enforceability, shareholder rights, compliant transfer controls, credible market structure.

Progress accelerated in 2025 through native tokenized equity models: shares issued directly onchain, not represented through synthetics or wrappers. The unlock is a regulated ownership model with a single authoritative shareholder record that keeps onchain and book-entry holdings synchronized. Tokenized equity has to behave like real equity, not just price exposure.

That structure depends on enforceable controls: identity, allowlisting, transfer restrictions, custody options, plus a token standard that regulated participants can build around. It also means accepting operational reality: private key management remains part of the security model for holders who self-custody.

Centrifuge's regulated transfer-agent framework shows what this looks like in practice: equity that stays inside the securities perimeter while gaining blockchain settlement and programmable compliance, supporting broader participation from global investors over time.

“More crypto founders will scale like traditional institutions by tokenizing equity, not just issuing tokens. This shift marks crypto’s move from experimental governance to durable corporate structures. Caesar AI has pioneered this in 2025 with Centrifuge, and we expect many more crypto native founders to follow suit.”
Anil Sood, CSO & CGO, Centrifuge Labs

That said, "equity moving onchain" is different from "exchange-traded security tokens." The former is accelerating. The latter still depends on market structure evolution.

“There still will not be any exchange-traded securities tokens yet. Wait until 2027.”
Eli Cohen, CLO, Centrifuge Labs

Centrifuge’s stance is pragmatic: build the regulated rails now so the market can scale safely as adoption accelerates.

Distribution Matters More

As tokenization matures, success is defined less by launching assets and more by where they can move.

Issuing onchain is no longer the primary challenge. The question is whether assets can integrate with existing capital pools, operate across environments where investors already hold positions, and maintain liquidity as they scale. Cross-chain availability, composability, and credible secondary markets are becoming baseline, not differentiators.

The path is clear: bringing traditional assets into programmable markets expands reach and improves capital formation, if the rails can support compliance, transfer rules, and reliable workflows tied to underlying assets.

This is also where the tokenization stack consolidates. Institutions don't want ten competing systems for identity, compliance, smart contracts, and settlement. They want rails they can standardize around. And they increasingly prefer to buy rather than build.

“Institutions now see tokenization as a multi-trillion-dollar market, not a pilot project. In 2026, partnerships turn into acquisitions as banks, asset managers, and exchanges move to own critical DeFi-native tokenization rails rather than build them internally.”
Anil Sood, CSO & CGO, Centrifuge Labs

Centrifuge's focus remains consistent: regulated issuance frameworks, audited components, and distribution patterns that let RWAs exist where demand already lives.

Tokenization Reaches Critical Mass

During the past year, Centrifuge closed the gap between institutional requirements and onchain capabilities. 2026 and beyond, asset managers won't be asking whether to tokenize. They'll be deciding which products to launch first, which chains to deploy on, which distribution channels to prioritize. The infrastructure is ready. The regulatory clarity is improving. 

They won’t tokenize because it’s innovative. They’ll tokenize because demand is real, because their competitors already did, their investors expect it, and the rails are already there, and not using them creates friction. The next tokenization wave won’t need convincing.

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