Pantera Capital's State of Tokenization report for September 2026 catalogs 671 tokenized assets with a combined market capitalization of $331.8 billion and reaches a blunt conclusion: on-chain issuance has matured, while compliance and deep secondary markets remain the industry's binding constraint.

The report documents a market that grew structurally even as headline numbers stagnated. In the first half of 2026, total tokenized market cap slipped 0.8%. Stablecoin market cap fell 2.3%, from $302.4 billion to $295.5 billion. Non-stablecoin tokenized assets moved in the opposite direction, adding $4.3 billion, a 13.3% increase, driven primarily by tokenized U.S. Treasuries, private credit and equities. Tokenized Treasuries grew from $13 billion to $16.5 billion; private credit expanded from $4.1 billion to $5.1 billion. Forty-five new tokenized products launched in H1, including 28 in Q2 alone, with private credit, corporate bonds and AAA-rated securitized loan certificates accelerating their migration on-chain.

Capability lags capitalization

To measure on-chain operational maturity, Pantera introduced a Tokenization Maturity Index (TPI). The results are unflattering. Of 515 assets rated in both Q1 and Q2, 501 recorded unchanged scores, and the market's average composite TPI stood at just 2.04. Most products remain wrapper assets — on-chain mappings of off-chain certificates — while hybrid and on-chain native models account for a small fraction of the market. Market cap expansion, the report notes, is running well ahead of the development of native on-chain capabilities.

Access rights dictate liquidity

The report's liquidity analysis screened 110 non-stablecoin products with market caps of at least $10 million. The divergence is stark. Permissioned products hold 59% of the sample's market cap but generate only 0.2% of spot trading volume. Open-access products, representing 41% of market cap, account for 99.8% of spot volume. Of 48 whitelist-restricted products, 46 have monthly turnover below a 1% liquidity threshold — though Pantera cautions that low spot turnover does not mean absent exit routes, as these assets are largely disposed of through issuer redemption channels rather than public secondary markets.

Turnover diverges sharply by asset class. In June, tokenized equities turned over 204.6% monthly, against 16.7% for commodities, 9.5% for private credit, 9.4% for private funds and just 0.1% for interest rate assets — a gap of roughly 2,000x between the top and bottom categories. Pantera attributes the on-chain liquidity problem of tokenized Treasuries to AMM mechanics: automated market maker pools earn fees from turnover, so low-turnover assets fail to attract liquidity providers, producing a self-reinforcing cycle of thinning markets. A $10 million sell order limited to 15% of daily volume would clear in half a day for tokenized equities but take 126.5 days for interest rate assets.

Applying a dual screen of monthly turnover of at least 1% and distribution of at least 1,000 wallet addresses with the top 10 holders holding no more than 90%, only 29 of 110 sampled products qualify — all open-access — representing 23.5% of sample market cap. Another 57 products, holding 54.1% of sample market cap, show sluggish turnover and concentrated holdings with virtually no public spot trading.

Derivatives and retail distribution

Perpetual contracts are emerging as an alternative exposure route that bypasses spot holdings entirely. In June 2026, stock perpetual volume on Hyperliquid and Lighter reached $67.8 billion — 16 times tokenized equity spot volume — while notional outstanding stood at $2.5 billion, or 121.3% of the tokenized equity spot market cap. Pantera notes the caveat that leverage and rebalancing inflate derivatives volume relative to deployed principal. Ondo launched stock perpetuals for non-U.S. users in July and accumulated $9 billion in volume within weeks.

Robinhood Chain, which launched its mainnet on July 1 with tokenized stocks and ETFs including NVIDIA, Apple, Tesla, SPY and QQQ, saw total tokenized market cap grow roughly fivefold in its first month. RWA weekly volume on the platform rose from $5 million to $887.5 million by late August, lifting RWA's share of DEX volume from 0.1% to 12.9%. But participation remains highly concentrated: of 64,981 addresses with balances, 73.8% hold less than $10, while 669 addresses — 1% of holders — control 95.1% of platform assets. Of 202 listed RWA contracts, only 96 generated funded positions and just 32 products have more than 100 wallets holding over $1.

Collateral markets and regulation

RWA-backed lending is the other maturing use case. Tracking Morpho Vaults, the report shows RWA collateral net supplied capital started H1 at $120.4 million, dipped to $49 million in April, peaked at $208 million on June 23 and closed at $187 million, with Vault V2 — starting near zero — accounting for 92% of supply by quarter-end. Private and consumer credit contributed $120 million of supply, ahead of reinsurance at $44 million and Treasuries at $12 million. Some 44.7% of sampled private credit is locked in DeFi, versus 2.1% for Treasuries and 5.6% for tokenized equities. The core risk, Pantera argues, is not onboarding but reliable redemption and liquidation execution on default.

On the U.S. regulatory front, the CLARITY Act stalled in the Senate on September 15, leaving comprehensive token market legislation unbuilt. Two days later, on September 17, the SEC issued a five-year conditional exemption for tokenized equity trading venues, opening a compliant route to secondary markets for permissioned assets without fully unlocking transfer restrictions. The report argues turnover should not serve as a universal benchmark: yield-oriented treasury funds are best judged on performance and redemption mechanics, tradable assets on slippage and market-maker support, and collateral assets on lending caps, price feeds and liquidation processes.

Looking forward, Pantera identifies programmable markets and AI agents as the next cohort of participants — Virtuals agents already access Ondo tokenized equities, and Circle's x402 payment protocol has processed tens of millions of dollars — while privacy infrastructure and cross-chain interoperability, with efforts from Morpho, the DTCC and Oasis Pro Markets, become prerequisites for institutional adoption. The industry's next task, the report concludes, is not issuing more tokens but building the liquidation, privacy and interoperability infrastructure that lets institutions and AI agents use tokenized assets safely.