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A survey of 150 tokenization operators finds the market has moved past technology constraints: almost no respondents cite tech as a meaningful barrier. Instead, 86% say distribution, not issuance, is now the main challenge.
Regulation and liquidity remain the primary constraints, cited by 76% of respondents across regions.
Only 5% say transparency is the biggest benefit of onchain rails. One of the industry’s most repeated talking points ranks near the bottom, while programmability stands as the leading advantage today.
US-based operators are markedly more bullish: 79% project onchain AUM above $150B by 2027, compared with just 54% in Europe.
April 1, 2026, Press release – Centrifuge, the open infrastructure for onchain asset management and tokenization, today released its Tokenization Outlook 2026 report at the Real-World Asset Summit in Cannes, based on a survey of 150 operators across issuance, distribution, liquidity, DeFi, infrastructure, and data.
The report finds a market that is moving faster than many of its public narratives. 86% of operators say scaling distribution for existing products matters more than launching new ones, pointing to a clear shift: issuance may have opened the market, but it is no longer seen as the main challenge to scale.
That shift is visible in how operators assess value. Tokenized Treasuries helped establish the category, but respondents do not see passive yield as the end state. When asked about the primary long-term use case for tokenization, 66% of operators chose product building blocks and collateral, compared with 9% who chose treasury management, suggesting the next phase of growth will be shaped less by issuance itself and more by what assets can do once onchain.
The findings also challenge some of the industry’s most familiar assumptions. Only 5% of respondents identify transparency as the biggest benefit of onchain finance, despite its prominence in market messaging. Instead, programmability ranks as the leading advantage today (24%) and is expected to grow further over the next two years (31%). In other words, operators are placing greater value on utility, flexibility, and financial functionality than on features increasingly viewed as table stakes.
The same pattern appears in how operators assess constraints. Almost no respondents cite technology or smart contract risk as a meaningful barrier, while 76% say regulation or liquidity are what still hold the market back. The implication is that tokenization is no longer primarily a technology story. It is increasingly a market structure, distribution, and investor confidence story.
That investor confidence gap comes through clearly in the data. While 44% cite regulation as the biggest barrier to scale, respondents do not rank regulators as the stakeholder whose confidence matters most. That distinction goes to end investors. The survey suggests the market is converging on a harder truth: adoption will depend not only on yield, but on whether that yield is paired with clear legal rights, reliable liquidity, and credible exit paths.
The report also reveals that where firms sit in the market shapes how they see its future. US-based operators are markedly more bullish than their European peers, with 79% projecting tokenized asset AUM above $150B by 2027, compared with 54% in Europe. Smaller firms also tend to show greater conviction in the market’s trajectory, while larger institutions are more measured. The result is not a lack of belief in tokenization, but a widening gap in how quickly different parts of the market expect it to scale.
Across asset classes, conviction is broadly distributed. Money markets lead, while stocks, ETFs, and commodities follow closely behind. Real estate stands out as the notable exception, trailing other categories by a wide margin and underscoring the continued difficulty of bringing physical, illiquid, and jurisdiction-bound assets onchain.
“The findings in the report show a market that is moving beyond issuance as the headline,” said Bhaji Illuminati, CEO & Co-Founder of Centrifuge Labs. “What matters now is whether tokenized assets can be used inside products, distributed through real channels, and supported by the liquidity and clarity investors need. Centrifuge’s role is to provide the infrastructure that makes that possible.”
That shift is already visible onchain. Centrifuge infrastructure powers products across the risk curve, including JTRSY, the tokenized Janus Henderson Anemoy Treasury Fund, and JAAA, the tokenized Janus Henderson AAA CLO fund, both of which are already usable as components in DeFi. Earlier this year, JAAA began being deployed as leveraged collateral inside Aave Horizon, enabling institutional credit to be borrowed against, looped, and actively managed within a decentralized lending market.
About the survey
150 operators across issuance, distribution, DeFi, liquidity, infrastructure, and data/analytics. Organizations range from crypto-native startups to publicly listed financial institutions, headquartered across North America (38%), Europe (37%), Asia-Pacific (13%), and the Middle East (7%). Conducted February to March 2026.
About Centrifuge
Centrifuge is the open infrastructure powering onchain asset management. As one of the first and largest tokenization platforms, Centrifuge bridges traditional and onchain capital markets, tokenizing high-quality institutional assets and integrating them deeply across DeFi. The platform powers onchain strategies for Apollo, Janus Henderson, and S&P Dow Jones Indices, with tokens now live across leading DeFi protocols including Sky, Aave, and Morpho. Beyond infrastructure, Centrifuge advances the broader ecosystem through the Real-World Asset Summit, the Tokenized Vault Foundation, and the Tokenized Asset Coalition.
Supporting quotes
Merlin Egalite, Co-Founder, Morpho:
“Every tokenization platform we work with tells us the same thing: making tokenized assets productive is now their number one priority. This report confirms what we're hearing on the ground. Tokenization is step one: it opens the door. Making those assets productive onchain is step two, where the real value gets unlocked. The end state is seamless movement of tokenized assets across the onchain financial system. We're entering that second chapter now, and the infrastructure to support it needs to be ready.”
Eric Manoukian, Research Analyst, Messari:
“It is not surprising that US operators are more bullish on tokenization. Tokenization today is still largely a dollar story, and stablecoins have become a Trojan horse for global demand for US debt and dollar-based financial rails. Europe has delivered regulatory clarity through MiCA, but the framework has so far felt more restrictive and cautious than growth-oriented, which helps explain why US operators appear more bullish.”
Filippo Armani, Research Lead, Dune:
"86% saying distribution matters more than issuance makes sense when you look at onchain data. Every time a curator builds a new leverage strategy around an RWA on Morpho, or Centrifuge's JAAA gets listed as Horizon collateral, the asset becomes more useful and productive, which makes it easier to distribute. Utility accelerates distribution."
Matt Dobel, VP of Business Development. Gauntlet:
"Tokenization and RWAs are among the defining DeFi themes for 2026. Actionable use cases will be essential to unlocking RWAs' full onchain potential. To that end, we work with partners to enable RWAs to function as onchain collateral and access untapped liquidity. For example, we launch and operate vaults running levered RWA strategies in collaboration with FalconX and Apollo, and recently launched two tokenized equity markets with Ondo, whereby SPYon and QQQon holders can borrow USDC against these tokenized ETFs. This type of composability is a driving force in DeFi and will be integral to the use cases ushering the next wave of offchain capital into the onchain ecosystem."
Nuno Cortesao, Co-Founder, Zharta:
“The assets are onchain. What scales RWAs in 2026 is the layer on top: structured credit infrastructure with DeFi composability as a multiplier. One tokenized treasury position can become leveraged exposure, repo collateral, or a credit facility, settling in real time with full programmability. The other piece is secondary rails. Capital needs to flow, not just sit. When institutions can lend, borrow, and rotate across tokenized assets as fluidly as they do in traditional markets, RWAs stop being a narrative and become an asset class.”
Jonathan Han, CEO, Euler Labs:
“The bottleneck in tokenization has shifted, and it isn't issuance anymore. The harder problem is what comes next, making assets useful. Collateral, credit markets, products that institutions can actually put money into. Centrifuge's Tokenization Outlook 2026 puts a number on it: 86% of operators say scaling distribution matters more than launching new products. What institutions actually need is programmability, assets that function as active components of financial systems, not passive exposures sitting on a balance sheet. Tokenized assets don't scale without serious credit infrastructure underneath them: reliable liquidity, sound pricing, collateral frameworks that hold up under stress. That layer is largely absent today, and it's why distribution has stalled. It's what we built Euler to fix.”
Kevin Chan, Co-Founder, Grove:
"Centrifuge's data reinforces a pattern we have observed through our own operations. The distribution layer for tokenized credit remains underdeveloped relative to the supply side, which is the core problem Grove addresses by connecting institutions onchain and bridging the gap between capital and managers. Allocators require redemption certainty and composability across lending venues before tokenized products can scale as core holdings. Grove has identified these as the infrastructure priorities that will define the next phase of onchain credit adoption, and we are building accordingly."
Christian Lopez, Head of Digital Assets, Cohen & Company Capital Markets:
“One of the biggest challenges that has yet to be solved is distribution and liquidity. The US equity market cap alone is ~$60-$70 trillion with anywhere from $500 – $750 billion traded daily. Tokenized equities on the other hand have a total market cap of just over $1b and a tiny fraction of that in terms of volume traded. Only once we’re able to figure out how to bring that liquidity onchain will RWAs truly begin to scale.”
Gleb Krivosheev, Senior Research Analyst, Cointelegraph Research:
“Blockchain infrastructure is reaching a point where scalability and speed are becoming commoditized. That shifts attention to programmability as one of the key competitive advantages of digital assets platforms. As agentic AI moves from experimentation toward broader deployment across finance, automation will matter more, and programmable onchain assets should play an important role in the industry’s next stage of growth.”
