DeFi Lending Markets Reshaped by Real-World Assets

Tokenized real-world assets are emerging as a preferred form of collateral in decentralized finance, or DeFi, platforms that let investors lend, borrow, and trade without a bank or broker as a middleman. That’s happening even as broader DeFi lending shrinks, according to a recent report from CoinShares and Token Terminal.

Between the second quarter of 2025 and the second quarter of 2026, total deposits across decentralized finance platforms fell by about 15%, according to the report. Over the same stretch, deposits of tokenized real-world assets more than tripled, climbing from $2.3 billion to $7.4 billion. The gap points to demand driven by real financial use rather than swings in crypto prices.

Tokenized Treasury and multi-strategy funds accounted for the largest share of that growth. Among the leading products were the Janus Henderson Anemoy Treasury Fund (JTRSY) and BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund (BUIDL). Also among them was sUSDS, a yield-bearing version of the USDS stablecoin from Sky, the protocol formerly known as MakerDAO.

Private credit products also gained ground, the report found. That group was led by the Janus Henderson Anemoy AAA CLO Strategy (JAAA) and syrupUSDC, a yield-bearing stablecoin from lending platform Maple Finance. Investors are gravitating toward collateral that keeps generating income while still backing loans, lowering the cost of tying up capital.