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Dune report finds tokenized credit dominates RWA collateral in DeFi lending
Credit products account for 76% of real-world asset lending deposits onchain, while tokenized cash mostly sits idle
Tokenized Treasuries got the headlines. Tokenized credit is doing the actual work.
A new Dune report finds that credit products make up 76% of all real-world asset deposits in DeFi lending protocols. That equals around $1.61 billion, which makes credit the leading form of RWA collateral onchain by a wide margin.
The report is titled “After Issuance: Reading the Onchain RWA Market ā Q3 2026.” It measures the market as of August 31, 2026, and focuses on what happens to these assets after they are minted.
A $34.5 billion market with a split personality
The broader tokenized RWA market has reached approximately $34.5 billion, according to Dune. That represents growth of over 140% year-over-year.
Cash equivalents account for about $17.8 billion, roughly half the market, yet most of that money barely moves. Dune describes this segment as largely inactive, with limited trading or lending.
Tokenized credit tells a different story. The segment is valued at $7.8 billion, up 111% year-over-year, and it shows far more composability across DeFi.
The $1.61 billion of credit sitting in lending protocols represents roughly 19ā21% of all tokenized credit supply.
Why credit gets put to work and cash doesn’t
Dune puts returns on tokenized credit between 3.32% and 13.84%, with some products standing out at the top of that range.
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Higher yields make room for strategies like carry trades. A trader deposits a credit token earning one rate, borrows against it at a lower rate, and pockets the spread. Cash equivalents generally lack enough yield cushion to make that math compelling.
The lending activity itself is highly concentrated. Morpho alone holds roughly $1 billion in RWA deposits, according to the report. Morpho, Kamino, and Aave together account for 83% of RWA lending activity.
Only about 6.1% of total tokenized RWA supply, or $2.11 billion, is currently deployed in lending protocols.
Who is behind the credit boom
Private credit is the engine. It makes up 75% of the tokenized credit market, per Dune. Issuers such as Maple and Centrifuge are among the names highlighted for driving growth in the segment.
About 32% of tokenized credit involves crypto counterparty transactions, meaning the borrowers on the other side are often crypto-native firms rather than traditional businesses. Credit exposure to crypto firms tends to move with crypto markets, which partly undercuts the pitch of RWAs as uncorrelated real-world exposure.
Many offerings also remain permissioned. Only approved, often verified, participants can hold or trade them, which limits secondary market liquidity.
Dune’s dataset covers 21 chains, 8 asset classes, more than 2,600 products, and over 250 issuers.
What this means for DeFi and RWA issuers
With Morpho, Kamino, and Aave handling 83% of RWA lending activity, any stress at one of those venues would hit a large share of the market at once.
The 32% crypto counterparty share carries additional risk. In a crypto downturn, the borrowers behind some of these credit tokens could face pressure at the same moment collateral values are being tested.
Only 6.1% of tokenized RWA supply sits in lending protocols. Permissioned structures are the obvious bottleneck limiting further deployment of that idle supply.