The real-world asset market may be on track for significant expansion by 2026, with expectations that its total value could more than triple as it broadens beyond strictly cryptocurrency-native purposes. Chris Yin, co-founder and CEO of the RWA-focused layer-2 network Plume, told Cointelegraph that the sector’s growth over the past year has been substantial and he anticipates a three-to-five-fold increase as a reasonable baseline projection.

Yin noted that adoption has accelerated at an unusually fast pace. “Currently, we are tracking to over 10x the RWA holders number since the start of the year and so we expect us to keep inflecting and we think it’s not crazy to imagine another banner year with 25x+ in user growth numbers,” he said. RWA.xyz data estimates that more than $35 billion worth of tokenized real-world assets is now onchain, held by over 539,000 users.

Expanding beyond US treasuries

While most onchain RWA value today comes from tokenized U.S. Treasury bills, Yin believes this concentration will shift as markets mature and as interest rate cuts push users toward alternative yield opportunities. He pointed to growing activity in private credit and other unconventional assets, including mineral rights, oil markets, GPUs, and energy-related products.

He also noted that regulatory developments—particularly work underway in the U.S. and other countries on stablecoin and tokenization frameworks—could move RWAs out of an experimental phase and into broader real-world usage.

“Outside of pure issuance on the supply side, we expect to begin to see the demand side finally come onchain,” Yin added.

Plume’s expanding network and institutional partnerships

Plume recently announced that Securitize—backed by firms such as BlackRock and Morgan Stanley—will deploy institutional-grade tokenized assets through Plume’s Nest staking protocol. The partnership is set to connect Securitize’s tokenized funds with Plume’s ecosystem of more than 280,000 RWA holders, with Hamilton Lane funds coming first and additional issuers following in 2026.

Although Plume accounts for roughly half of all RWA holders across networks, it does not appear in RWA.xyz’s top-ten list by asset volume. Yin explained that this difference reflects user distribution: the network has a large number of holders, but each tends to manage fewer assets compared with holders on other networks.

“Plume has 280,000 users holding an aggregate $200 million of RWAs, which is a much healthier measure of usage on a network,” he said.

Sources:

https://cointelegraph.com/news/rwa-market-growth-forecast-plume-securitize-2026

https://x.com/plumenetwork/status/1991526325207855346

https://plume.org/blog/securitize-to-launch-on-plume

https://app.rwa.xyz/