Real-World Asset (RWA) tokenization platforms compared: Ondo, Centrifuge, and MakerDAO — which has institutional traction?
Three years ago, tokenizing a US Treasury bill on a public blockchain was a proof-of-concept nobody at a Wall Street desk took seriously. Today, the same exercise moves billions of dollars through settlements that institutions actively participate in. The total value of tokenized real-world assets on public blockchains crossed $25 billion in 2026, and three protocols — Ondo Finance, Centrifuge, and MakerDAO (rebranded as Sky) — have emerged as the foundational infrastructure carrying this growth. Each took a fundamentally different route to institutional adoption: Ondo built the largest tokenized equities platform, Centrifuge became the default infrastructure for private credit on-chain, and MakerDAO transformed itself from a crypto-collateral lending protocol into one whose income now depends heavily on real-world yield. Understanding where each platform excels — and where each falls short — is the key to assessing which has genuine institutional traction versus headline TVL that masks deeper weaknesses.
Ondo Finance — from treasuries to tokenized equities
Ondo Finance started as a tokenized Treasury product provider but expanded aggressively in 2025–2026 into the fastest-growing segment of the RWA market: tokenized public equities. Its Ondo Global Markets platform crossed $1 billion in TVL within eight months of launch, capturing over 70% of the tokenized equity issuer market according to RWA.xyz data. By mid-2026, the platform listed more than 430 tokenized US stocks and ETFs — from Apple and Nvidia to S&P 500 index funds — available across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain.
The core products define Ondo’s value proposition. OUSG wraps short-duration US Treasury exposure with 24/7 instant minting and redemption, backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund. USDY offers a permissionless-friendly yield token at approximately 4.65% APY, accessible to non-US investors without full KYC requirements. Ondo Global Markets extends the model to equities, using a mint-and-redeem structure where a regulated US broker-dealer (Alpaca) purchases and custodies the underlying shares, settled through the Depository Trust Company.
Ondo’s institutional credibility rests on partnerships that most crypto-native platforms cannot match. BlackRock provides the underlying Treasury exposure for OUSG. Franklin Templeton brought five of its own ETFs onto Global Markets in March 2026. JP Morgan’s Kinexys division, Mastercard, and Ripple completed the first live cross-border tokenized Treasury redemption with Ondo in May 2026. Broadridge partnered to bring proxy voting capabilities to tokenized stocks. The DTCC included Ondo in its July 2026 tokenization pilot alongside more than 50 financial firms, including Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan.
Centrifuge — the private credit infrastructure layer
While Ondo dominates tokenized public equities, Centrifuge owns a different vertical entirely: private credit. Founded in 2017, Centrifuge was the first protocol to bring RWA collateral into DeFi through its integration with MakerDAO in 2020. By 2026, its TVL reached $1.3–1.45 billion in tokenized private credit assets, and its institutional partnerships extended to some of the most recognizable names in traditional asset management.
The platform’s architecture is built around tokenized pools that represent real-world credit instruments — invoice finance, private credit funds, real estate loans — structured into senior and junior tranches identical in risk-return profile to traditional securitization products. Smart contracts automate cash distribution, interest accrual, and accounting, eliminating the need for a traditional securitization desk.
Centrifuge’s institutional breakthrough came through partnerships with Janus Henderson, one of the largest asset managers globally. Two products emerged from this collaboration: JTRSY, a tokenized US Treasury bill used as collateral across DeFi protocols, and JAAA, a tokenized AAA-rated collateralized loan obligation fund managing approximately $687 million across eight blockchain networks. In August 2026, Centrifuge and Janus Henderson partnered with SmartMedia Technologies to manage on-chain reserves for loyalty programs serving clients including Visa, FIFA, and Samsung. Apollo, New York Life Investment Management, and S&P Dow Jones Indices also use Centrifuge infrastructure, and its tokens serve as collateral in Aave Horizon and Morpho.
Centrifuge also launched a Whitelabel Platform in November 2025, enabling institutional clients to issue their own tokenized products without building proprietary infrastructure. The first client, Daylight, raised $75 million through Framework Ventures for tokenized energy infrastructure vaults.
MakerDAO / Sky — the largest DeFi consumer of real-world assets
MakerDAO — rebranded to Sky Protocol in 2024 — did not build an RWA tokenization platform in the conventional sense. Instead, it became the largest consumer of tokenized assets in DeFi, allocating over $2 billion of its reserves into US Treasuries, money market funds, and structured credit products through partnerships with Monetalis, BlockTower, and Centrifuge.
The impact of this allocation on the protocol’s economics cannot be overstated. RWA revenue now accounts for over 60% of Maker’s total income, fundamentally shifting the protocol from dependence on crypto collateral liquidation fees to dependence on real-world yield. The Enhanced DAI Savings Rate (EDSR), which offered rates above 5%, was directly funded by RWA yields. USDS (the rebranded DAI stablecoin) maintains a market capitalization of approximately $5.3–8.4 billion, with RWA-backed collateral representing roughly 14% of total reserves.
The Endgame roadmap, launched as part of the Sky rebranding, decentralized the protocol into independent units called Sky Stars. Spark Protocol, the first Sky Star, accumulated over $3 billion in TVL and set targets to attract up to $1 billion in RWA allocations. The 1:1 token exchange (1 MKR = 24,000 SKY) and the 3% annual emission rate restructured governance participation, while RWA risk frameworks were refined to accommodate the growing share of real-world assets on the balance sheet.
MakerDAO’s RWA vaults use a distinctive legal structure. Unlike crypto collateral that can be liquidated on-chain instantly, RWA liquidations may take months or years, governed by off-chain legal agreements. Stability fees for RWA vaults are often set to zero on-chain, with actual fees defined in binding legal documents and collected through an RWA Jar mechanism — a hybrid approach that bridges DeFi automation with traditional legal enforcement.
Direct comparison across key dimensions
The three platforms serve fundamentally different functions in the RWA ecosystem, and comparing them requires looking at metrics that reveal where institutional capital actually flows. The following breakdown captures the most relevant data points as of mid-2026.
| Dimension | Ondo Finance | Centrifuge | MakerDAO / Sky |
|---|---|---|---|
| Primary RWA vertical | Tokenized Treasuries + public equities | Private credit + structured credit | RWA collateral consumer (Treasuries + credit) |
| TVL (mid-2026) | ~$3.5–3.6B | ~$1.3–1.45B | ~$2B+ in RWA vaults |
| Key institutional partners | BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs | Janus Henderson, Apollo, New York Life, S&P Dow Jones | Monetalis, BlockTower, Centrifuge |
| Signature product | Ondo Global Markets ($1B+ TVL, 430+ stocks) | JAAA ($687M CLO fund) + syrupUSDC ($1.29B) | USDS stablecoin backed by RWA |
| Yield range | 4.5–5.5% (Treasuries), variable (equities) | 4.5–10% (credit products) | 5–8% (RWA vault yield) |
| Cross-chain presence | Ethereum, Solana, BNB, Mantle, Sui, Aptos, XRP | Ethereum, Solana + 6 additional networks | Ethereum primary |
| Compliance model | Blocklist (USDY) + KYC registry (OUSG) + FINRA-cleared broker-dealer | Two-tier: institutional pools (gated) + permissionless yield tokens | Legal wrappers + off-chain enforcement |
| Token performance | ONDO down ~80–88% from ATH despite TVL growth | CFG modest, correlated with RWA sector sentiment | MKR/SKY structural redesign, 1:24,000 ratio |
| Regulatory milestone | FINRA clearance July 2026; 21Shares ETF filing Feb 2026 | Whitelabel platform Nov 2025; DTCC pilot participant | Endgame roadmap; RWA risk frameworks updated Aug 2026 |
The comparison reveals that no single platform dominates across all dimensions. Ondo leads in TVL and retail-accessible product breadth, Centrifuge leads in institutional credit infrastructure depth, and MakerDAO leads in RWA revenue integration — but each carries distinct vulnerabilities that affect long-term institutional traction.
Institutional partnerships that signal real traction
TVL alone is a misleading metric — capital can flow in for speculative reasons and leave just as quickly. Genuine institutional traction is measured by the quality and depth of partnerships with traditional financial institutions, because these relationships involve legal commitments, regulatory scrutiny, and multi-year integration roadmaps that speculative capital does not.
Several partnerships across the three platforms stand out as indicators of durable institutional commitment rather than exploratory pilots.
- Ondo × BlackRock (BUIDL) — OUSG is backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, meaning Ondo’s Treasury product sits directly on top of the world’s largest asset manager’s tokenized infrastructure. This is not a marketing partnership — it is a structural dependency that gives Ondo institutional credibility by association
- Ondo × JP Morgan Kinexys, Mastercard, Ripple — in May 2026, these four entities completed the first live cross-border, cross-bank redemption of tokenized US Treasuries. This involves real settlement infrastructure, not just token issuance
- Ondo × FINRA — in July 2026, Ondo’s broker-dealer subsidiary Oasis Pro Markets received FINRA authorizations covering tokenized equities, ETFs, mutual funds, and IPO securities for US institutions and retail investors — a regulatory milestone no other RWA platform achieved
- Centrifuge × Janus Henderson — the JTRSY and JAAA products represent $1.5 billion in combined assets under management, bringing CLOs on-chain for the first time at institutional scale. The September 2026 expansion into loyalty program reserve management with SMT extends the partnership beyond tokenization into active on-chain portfolio management
- Centrifuge × Apollo, New York Life, S&P Dow Jones — these partnerships span asset management, insurance, and index provision, covering three distinct institutional use cases rather than overlapping in a single vertical
- MakerDAO × Monetalis and BlockTower — these are not tokenization partnerships but asset management mandates, where traditional finance firms deploy Maker’s reserves into off-chain Treasury and credit products. The legal structure is closer to a fund-of-funds arrangement than a technology integration
- MakerDAO × Centrifuge — the oldest RWA integration in DeFi, operational since 2020, where Centrifuge pools serve as collateral for DAI/USDS issuance. This is infrastructure-level integration, not a co-marketing arrangement
These partnerships reveal a gradient of institutional involvement. Ondo’s partners are the largest and most recognizable, which matters for credibility and regulatory access. Centrifuge’s partners are more specialized but structurally deeper — Janus Henderson is not just using Centrifuge for distribution but building products on its infrastructure. MakerDAO’s partnerships are the most operationally mature, running real assets through legal structures that have survived market stress events since 2020.
The gap between protocol growth and token value
One of the most striking dynamics across all three platforms is the divergence between protocol fundamentals and token performance. Ondo’s TVL grew from $1.9 billion in late 2025 to $3.5 billion by mid-2026, a 13% increase in Q1 alone — yet the ONDO token traded approximately 80–88% below its all-time high, producing an MC/TVL ratio of roughly 0.41. The January 2026 token unlock of 1.94 billion ONDO tokens flooded circulating supply, and the absence of a direct revenue-to-token mechanism means that protocol growth does not automatically translate into token appreciation.
A proposed fee switch vote scheduled for H2 2026 could change this dynamic, routing an estimated $48 million in annual protocol revenue to token holders or programmatic buybacks. The 21Shares spot ONDO ETF filing with the SEC in February 2026 adds another potential catalyst. But until either materializes, the disconnect between TVL and token price remains the single most discussed risk-reward question in the RWA sector.
Centrifuge’s CFG token follows a similar but less extreme pattern — its value correlates with broader RWA sector sentiment rather than tracking TVL growth linearly. The Whitelabel Platform launch and Janus Henderson product expansion create fundamental catalysts, but the token lacks a direct revenue-sharing mechanism.
MakerDAO’s MKR/SKY transition introduced a structural complexity. The 1:24,000 exchange ratio and 3% annual emission rate redesigned governance economics, but the token’s value now depends on the success of the Endgame roadmap and the performance of individual Sky Stars rather than on a single protocol’s RWA revenue. RWA income flowing into the surplus buffer supports the USDS savings rate and protocol expenses, but the path from RWA revenue to tokenholder value remains indirect.
Which platform has the most institutional traction
The answer depends on how you define traction. By total value locked, Ondo leads at $3.5 billion. By institutional partner quality and regulatory milestones, Ondo also leads — BlackRock, JP Morgan, FINRA clearance, and DTCC pilot participation represent the deepest institutional connections in the RWA space. By infrastructure depth and product complexity, Centrifuge leads — it is the only platform that has brought CLOs, private credit funds, and loyalty program reserves on-chain with institutional asset managers actively building on its technology. By revenue impact and operational maturity, MakerDAO leads — RWA revenue exceeds 60% of protocol income, and its RWA vaults have been stress-tested through multiple market cycles since 2020.
For institutional investors evaluating which platform to engage with, the decision is not which is best overall but which solves their specific problem. A fund manager seeking tokenized Treasury exposure with 24/7 liquidity goes to Ondo. An asset manager wanting to tokenize a private credit fund or structured product builds on Centrifuge. A DeFi protocol looking for RWA collateral to back a stablecoin or lending product integrates with MakerDAO’s vaults or Centrifuge’s tokens. The RWA market in 2026 is not a winner-take-all competition — it is a layered ecosystem where each platform occupies a distinct infrastructure layer, and institutional traction flows to whichever platform solves the problem at hand rather than to whichever has the highest TVL number on a dashboard.