RWAs, and how you actually earn from them

RWAs, and How You Actually Earn From Them

Real world assets, or RWAs, is the term for putting something that already exists off-chain, a loan, a building, a treasury bond, an infrastructure fund, onto a blockchain in token form. The category has stopped being a talking point and started being a real market: tokenized RWAs crossed $22 billion by May 2026, up roughly 75% year over year, and by some counts the number is closer to $26 billion once trade finance and other instruments are included.

The bigger question for most people isn't whether this market exists. It's simpler than that: if you buy a tokenized asset, how do you actually make money from it?

The Short Answer: The Same Ways You Always Did, Just Delivered Differently

Tokenization doesn't invent new sources of return. A tokenized treasury bond still earns interest. A tokenized private loan still earns interest. A tokenized infrastructure fund still earns from the cash flows of the airports, power plants, and pipelines it owns. What changes is how and when that return gets to you, and who's allowed to receive it in the first place.

Treasuries: The Clearest Example

Tokenized U.S. Treasuries are the most mature part of this market, sitting around $13.4 billion and growing. BlackRock's BUIDL fund alone holds close to $3 billion and commands roughly 40% of that market. Franklin Templeton's BENJI fund takes it further down market, with a minimum investment of just $20 and a 0.15% annual management fee, among the lowest in the category. Ondo's USDY, built on short-term T-bills and bank deposits, currently offers one of the highest net yields in the space at around 4.8% APY.

The mechanics differ slightly by product. Some, like BUIDL and BENJI, keep a stable $1 token price and pay yield by minting you new tokens at regular intervals, similar to how a money market fund adds to your balance. Others, like USDY, keep your token count fixed and let the token's price rise daily as yield accrues. Either way, the return is coming from the same place it always has: interest on government debt. The difference is that it's visible and, in many cases, settles faster than a traditional fund statement ever would.

Private Credit: Smaller Minimums, Faster Payouts

Private credit, lending to businesses outside the traditional bank system, now makes up the largest single slice of the tokenized RWA market, by some estimates over 60% of total value. This is also where the shift in investor experience is most visible. Traditional private credit funds typically report returns quarterly and often require minimums in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Our CTO, Brian Aznar, put it plainly on Solana's The Stack: a product like Profitr took a category that used to require $50,000 to $100,000 to get into and brought the minimum down to $50, with dividends landing in your wallet the day after you invest instead of waiting on a quarterly cycle.

That's not a new asset class. It's the same asset class, private lending, with the distribution rebuilt so a token in your wallet reflects what you're actually owed in closer to real time.

Infrastructure and Real Estate: Owning the Cash Flow, Not Just the Asset

Infrastructure funds work on a similar principle but with a different underlying source of return: the toll roads, airports, and power plants the fund owns and operates. Hamilton Lane's Private Infrastructure Fund, for example, has historically carried the kind of minimum that put it out of reach for most individual investors. Fractionalizing it through tokenization brought that minimum down to $500, opening up a return stream, in Aznar's words, "in a way that was impossible prior."

Real estate tokenization, approaching $20 billion, works the same way: instead of buying a property outright or a slice of a REIT with quarterly reporting, you hold a token that represents a claim on rental income, and in some cases you can see exactly how much rent came in and went out, on-chain, rather than waiting for an annual statement.

What to Actually Watch Out For

None of this means every tokenized asset is equally liquid or equally easy to exit. Liquidity in this market is still concentrated in a handful of categories, mostly treasuries and, to a lesser extent, gold. Real estate, private credit, and more niche categories can have minimal secondary trading, meaning that even though you hold a token, selling it quickly and at a fair price isn't guaranteed. A tokenized asset is only as liquid as the market that exists to trade it, and for many of these instruments, that market is still young.

The other thing worth understanding is what you're actually earning from. A treasury token earns interest because the U.S. government pays interest on its debt. A private credit token earns interest because a borrower is paying it back. An infrastructure token earns from tolls, leases, and utility bills. Tokenization changes the wrapper and the delivery mechanism. It doesn't change the fact that the return has to come from somewhere real.

The Practical Version

If you're looking at an RWA product, three questions cut through most of the noise: What's the underlying asset actually earning from? How often and how transparently does that return reach you? And how easily could you get your money back out if you needed to? Get clear answers to those three, and you understand the investment, regardless of whether the word "tokenized" is attached to it.

Investing in any asset, tokenized or not, carries risk, including potential loss of principal. Past performance does not guarantee future results.