Centrifuge reports only 12% of tokenized assets meet DeFi standards

The tokenized asset market has nearly doubled in 2026. Most of those assets, however, are about as useful inside DeFi as a gift card at the wrong store.

Centrifuge’s “Tokenization Snapshot 2026,” released on September 2, reveals that only 12% of tokenized assets scored high enough on Pantera Capital’s Tokenization Progress Index to qualify as meaningfully integrated into decentralized finance ecosystems. The finding is drawn from Pantera’s Q1 2026 analysis, which evaluated 542 tokenized assets and found that the vast majority function more like digital wrappers around traditional financial products than truly composable on-chain instruments.

A $37 billion market with a composability gap

Tokenized asset market value climbed from roughly $25 billion to $37 billion in the first seven months of 2026, a roughly 48% jump that occurred while broader crypto markets actually contracted.

Pantera scored those 542 assets on a five-point scale across multiple dimensions, and the average score landed at just 2.04 out of 5. The weakest dimension was issued redemption, which scored a dismal 1.82 out of 5.

Pantera’s taxonomy breaks the landscape into three categories. A full 77.6% of scored assets qualified as “wrappers,” meaning they scored 2.5 or below on the TPI. Another 11.1% landed in the “hybrid” category. And only 2.7% earned the designation of “native,” meaning they were built from the ground up to function within DeFi protocols for activities like lending, borrowing, and providing liquidity.

Growth despite the gap

RWA deposits in lending markets and decentralized exchanges have tripled over the past year, reaching $7.4 billion.

Centrifuge’s total value locked stood between $1.6 billion and $1.8 billion in late August 2026, driven by institutional-grade products including Janus Henderson’s JTRSY and JAAA treasury funds.

What to watch from here

While Bitcoin, Ethereum, and most altcoins experienced contraction during the same period, RWA tokenization grew nearly 50%. The tripling of RWA deposits in DeFi lending markets to $7.4 billion shows demand exists for tokenized assets that actually integrate, yet only 12% of assets currently meet that bar.

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