In June 2026, the on-chain tokenized real-world asset (RWA) market delivered an impressive performance. Excluding stablecoins, the total market capitalization of RWAs surged from approximately $12 billion in June 2025 to between $32 and $34 billion, marking a year-over-year increase of more than 167%. The number of actively traded tokenized RWAs grew by 589% compared to the beginning of 2025. Among all segments, tokenized equities led the way with a staggering 422% annual growth rate, making it the fastest-growing category.
Behind this market expansion stands the rapid rise of infrastructure providers. Ondo Finance, xStocks, and Backed Finance currently represent the three most influential forces in the tokenized equities and RWA space. Each company embodies a distinct technological path, compliance framework, and market strategy, collectively shaping the contemporary answer to the question: "How do we bring traditional assets onto the blockchain?"
Ondo Finance: Building an On-Chain Financial Asset Platform from RWA Products
Ondo Finance is currently the largest issuer in the tokenized equities market. As of May 2026, Ondo Global Markets holds over 70% market share in the tokenized equities and ETF sector, with cumulative on-chain trading volume exceeding $18 billion across supported networks. The platform operates on Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain, offering on-chain access to more than 260 tokenized equities and ETFs spanning multiple sectors.
Ondo’s core model can be described as "instant execution"—enabling rapid asset onboarding and trading through efficient liquidity engineering. In September 2025, Ondo launched its first tokenized equity product on Ethereum mainnet, and the platform’s total value locked (TVL) has since surpassed $3.7 billion.
June 2026 marked a milestone product launch for Ondo. On June 12, SpaceX completed the largest IPO in history, and Ondo simultaneously introduced its tokenized asset, SPCXon, on the first day of listing, supporting Solana, Ethereum, and BNB Chain. SpaceX shares surged about 19% during the initial trading session, pushing the company’s market cap above $2 trillion. Within the first hour of SPCXon’s launch, trading volume for the tokenized equity exceeded $1 million. Gate listed SPCXON/USDT spot trading for the first time on June 13 at 06:00 UTC.
Currently, Ondo offers more than 200 assets, including "Mag 7" stocks like Nvidia and Microsoft. Its platform architecture emphasizes institutional-grade standards and capital efficiency, maintaining deep liquidity and tight spreads through liquidity aggregation and a market maker network.
xStocks: Enabling On-Chain Equity Exposure from the Trading Gateway
xStocks is a tokenized equity platform deeply integrated with Kraken, with its underlying assets structured and issued by the Swiss-regulated entity Backed Finance. Officially launched in May 2025, xStocks initially offered over 60 tokenized equities and ETFs, covering major names like Amazon, Meta, Nvidia, and Tesla.
xStocks has demonstrated remarkable market performance. In less than eight months since launch, the platform’s cumulative trading volume has surpassed $25 billion, including trading, minting, and redemption activities across both centralized and decentralized exchanges. This figure represents a 150% increase from $10 billion in November 2025. On-chain, xStocks has accumulated over $3.5 billion in decentralized trading volume and boasts more than 80,000 unique on-chain holders. xStocks products account for approximately 24% of the tokenized equities market.
xStocks operates on an "inventory model"—tokenized issuance is achieved through a debt structure under Swiss law, with each xStocks token fully collateralized 1:1 by the corresponding underlying equity. In June 2026, xStocks integrated the 1inch Swap API to address liquidity fragmentation, enhancing distribution efficiency and slippage control for RWA trading.
However, xStocks faced a major setback in mid-June 2026. According to Coin Bureau, xStocks failed to secure any allocation in the SpaceX IPO, resulting in the cancellation and refund of approximately $1 billion in tokenized orders. This incident exposed a key limitation of the "inventory model" under extreme conditions—when underlying assets are in excessive demand in traditional markets, tokenized issuers may not be able to acquire sufficient exposure in real time.
Backed Finance: The Compliance Infrastructure Builder
Founded in 2021 by Adam Levi, Backed Finance is a Swiss-regulated asset issuance institution. Unlike Ondo and xStocks, which serve as frontend trading platforms, Backed’s role is closer to the "infrastructure backbone"—it acts as the actual issuer and mechanism operator for xStocks tokens.
Backed’s core strength lies in its compliance framework. Its products are issued under a MiFID II-compliant Liechtenstein prospectus, covering tokenized equities and bond ETFs. As of 2026, Backed remains the largest on-chain regulated issuer of tokenized listed equities and bond ETFs, with assets under management in the hundreds of millions of dollars.
Backed’s product line has evolved from bTokens to xStocks. bTokens, the original product series, are being gradually upgraded to the xStocks system, with a full transition expected by the end of 2026. Both product lines share the same issuer, prospectus, collateral structure, and investor protection mechanisms, with all tokens fully backed 1:1.
In April 2026, Backed officially launched the xStocks platform, rolling out around 60 equity and ETF token products with 24/7 trading support. Bybit and Kraken were the first exchanges to support trading. Shortly after, xStocks was quickly integrated into DeFi applications like Kamino Swap, Raydium, and Jupiter.
Recently, Backed expanded its tokenized equity offerings to include Microsoft, GameStop, MicroStrategy, Tesla, and Alphabet. The ongoing expansion of its asset portfolio reflects the accelerating supply capabilities of institutional-grade, compliant issuers.
Comparing the Three Approaches
From a product architecture perspective, Ondo follows an "instant execution" route—focusing on capital efficiency and deep liquidity, ensuring real-time tradability through a market maker network and liquidity aggregation. xStocks/Backed, on the other hand, adopts the "inventory model"—issuing fully collateralized assets via a debt structure under Swiss law, offering inherent advantages in DeFi composability.
In terms of compliance, Ondo leverages licenses across multiple jurisdictions and regulatory developments such as the CLARITY Act to advance its compliance efforts. Backed relies on the Swiss regulatory framework and MiFID II-compliant Liechtenstein prospectus as its core moat. These differing compliance strategies directly shape their target markets and user profiles—Ondo leans toward institutional and high-net-worth clients, while xStocks focuses more on retail accessibility and DeFi integration.
On-chain, Solana has emerged as the primary battleground for tokenized equity trading. In May 2026, Solana’s RWA ecosystem hit a record high of $2.8 billion, with over 230,000 on-chain RWA holders. Solana accounts for 97% of cumulative on-chain spot trading volume for tokenized equities. Since xStocks launched on June 30, 2024, Solana has quickly captured over 95% of on-chain tokenized equity trading volume. This data indicates that xStocks’ success on Solana is nearly synonymous with Solana’s dominance in the entire tokenized equities sector.
From a market concentration standpoint, the tokenized equities sector has clearly formed a dual-oligopoly. Ondo and xStocks together command roughly 89.5% of the market. According to research from Foresight Ventures, regulatory barriers, liquidity advantages, and differentiated tokenization models are the primary drivers of this market structure.
Conclusion: Intensifying Competition in a Dual-Oligopoly Landscape
The RWA tokenization market is at a pivotal stage, transitioning from "proof of concept" to "scalable operations." Ondo Finance, xStocks, and Backed Finance, as the most influential infrastructure providers in the current landscape, each represent a distinct value proposition: "liquidity engineering," "trading gateway aggregation," and "compliance infrastructure."
Ondo excels in market share and asset breadth, xStocks leads in trading volume and user growth, while Backed is anchored by compliance depth and institutional trust. Rather than simple substitutes, these three players form an interconnected ecosystem—Backed provides the compliant issuance infrastructure for xStocks, xStocks offers tokenized equity trading access for users within the Kraken ecosystem, and Ondo aims to build a full-stack platform from asset onboarding to DeFi integration.
Key risks are also clear. xStocks’ allocation failure in the SpaceX IPO highlights the execution risks of the "inventory model" under extreme supply shocks. Whether Ondo can maintain strategic continuity after the unexpected passing of its founder remains a critical variable for the market. On the regulatory front, the SEC has made it clear that most RWAs with profit expectations qualify as securities and must comply with registration and disclosure requirements—making compliance costs an unavoidable long-term challenge for all participants.
Standard Chartered forecasts that by 2028, the global on-chain tokenized asset market could reach $4 trillion. In a June 2026 report, Citi projected that the RWA tokenization market could reach $5.5 trillion under a base-case scenario. Regardless of the final outcome, the current $34 billion market is still in the early stages of its growth curve. As the market continues to expand rapidly, the infrastructure competition among Ondo, xStocks, and Backed is just entering deeper waters.
