The tokenized equities market crossed $4.4 billion in on-chain assets under management by mid-September 2026, a 390% increase from approximately $900 million at the start of the year. Within that expansion, a structural power shift has occurred: BNB Chain surpassed Ethereum and Solana to become t...
"Tokenization is getting closer to a major turning point. The next 12–18 months could be defining." — Richard Teng, CEO, Binance
The tokenized equities market crossed $4.4 billion in on-chain assets under management by mid-September 2026, a 390% increase from approximately $900 million at the start of the year. Within that expansion, a structural power shift has occurred: BNB Chain surpassed Ethereum and Solana to become the first blockchain to host more than $1 billion in tokenized stocks and exchange-traded funds, capturing roughly 30% of the $3.7 billion market as of early October 2026. In January, BNB Chain held 13% of the market. Ethereum held 48%. Nine months later, those positions are reversed.
The shift was driven primarily by two products — Binance bStocks and Ondo Stocks — and by the DeFi composability layer that turns tokenized equities from static representations of shares into yield-generating, collateral-eligible instruments. The data shows that the competition is no longer about which chain can list the most stock tickers. It is about which chain can build the deepest financial infrastructure around those tokens once they exist.
This report examines market share data across five competing chains, analyzes the structural drivers behind BNB Chain's ascent, and assesses the regulatory frameworks — particularly the SEC's September 2026 Innovation Exemption and Nasdaq's tokenized trading approval — that are shaping where capital flows.
The redistribution of tokenized equity market share across chains during 2026 represents one of the fastest structural rotations in on-chain finance. The following table summarizes the shift:
| Chain | Jan 2026 Share | Oct 2026 Share | Oct 2026 AUM | |---|---|---|---| | BNB Chain | ~13% | ~30% | $1.1B | | Ethereum | ~48% | ~22% | $828M | | Solana | ~31% | ~20% | $738M | | Robinhood Chain (Arbitrum L2) | 0% | ~8% | est. $296M | | Others (Base, Gnosis, Arbitrum, etc.) | ~8% | ~20% | est. $738M |
Total market: approximately $3.7 billion in tokenized stocks and ETFs as of early October 2026, according to Binance Research. The broader on-chain balance stood at $4.43 billion as of September 15, per the same source. These figures represent 0.0029% of the $151.9 trillion global listed stock market.
BNB Chain also leads by user base: 1.8 million addresses hold tokenized stocks on the network, representing 45% of all addresses holding such assets globally, per Binance Research data.
BNB Chain's dominance rests on two products. Binance bStocks, launched in mid-2026 by BTECH Holdings Limited (a Binance group affiliate), are 1:1 backed tokenized securities representing U.S. equities. Shares are custodied by a special-purpose vehicle, and users can convert between underlying equities and bStock BEP-20 tokens at a 1:1 ratio with zero conversion fees. Initial listings included Circle, Micron, Nvidia, SanDisk, and Tesla. Binance Research estimates bStocks alone represent approximately $800 million after less than four months of existence.
Ondo Stocks (formerly Ondo Global Markets) provides the second pillar, offering 430+ tokenized assets across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain. Ondo powers approximately $5.12 billion in BNB Chain volume, according to trading data.
Ethereum retains the deepest institutional RWA liquidity by issuance volume. BlackRock's BUIDL, Ondo's USDY, Franklin Templeton's BENJI, and Backed Finance's bToken wrappers all settle primarily on Ethereum. Backed Finance, regulated under Liechtenstein's TVTG framework, issues tokenized wrappers for equities including NVDA, MSTR, and TSLA with monthly attestations.
Despite holding the most institutional-grade issuances, Ethereum's market share fell from 48% to 22% during 2026. The chain's higher gas costs and slower composability with retail-facing applications contributed to capital migration toward lower-cost networks.
Solana was the early leader in tokenized equity trading volume, recording $4.9 billion in H1 2026 — a sixfold increase from $775 million in H2 2025. At its peak, Solana handled roughly 95% of global tokenized equity trading volume by value. That dominance has since eroded as BNB Chain and Robinhood Chain absorbed market share in Q3 2026. Spot DEX volume for tokenized equities on Solana reached approximately $5.8 billion in Q2 2026, a 114% jump from Q1.
The newest entrant, Robinhood Chain launched its public mainnet on July 1, 2026, built on the Arbitrum stack as an Ethereum Layer 2. The chain reached $775 million in total value locked at its August 6 peak and processed over 100 million cumulative transactions. Stock token trades rose to 78% of RWA volume on the chain in August. The chain expanded stock token availability to more than 120 countries through Robinhood Wallet.
Coinbase's Base L2 became notable in September when Aave V4 launched an Equities Hub accepting seven Coinbase-issued tokenized stocks as collateral for USDC loans — the first time tokenized public equities functioned as borrowing collateral inside a major DeFi lending protocol. Backed Finance's bX tokens also deploy on Arbitrum, Gnosis, and Base.
The data indicates that the real competition among chains is not listing coverage but composability — whether tokenized stocks can be used as productive assets within DeFi.
Tokenized stock total value locked in DeFi applications jumped 1,961% to $247.8 million during 2026, according to market data. The critical metric is utilization: outstanding borrowing against bStocks on Venus Protocol rose from 5.5% of deposited collateral at the end of June to 46.2% by September 10. This indicates growing demand for tokenized equities not as passive holdings but as active financial instruments.
Key composability milestones in 2026:
Standard Chartered research has noted that composability allows tokenized assets to "bypass siloed, traditional intermediary ledgers, enabling a single asset to earn yield and serve as collateral simultaneously across different applications."
Three U.S. regulatory actions in 2026 shaped the competitive landscape:
1. Nasdaq Tokenized Trading Approval (March 18, 2026): The SEC approved a rule change allowing Nasdaq to trade certain securities in tokenized form. Conventional and tokenized stocks carry the same rights and trade on the same order books with the same tickers. Settlement occurs through the existing DTC infrastructure.
2. SEC Innovation Exemption (September 17, 2026): A five-year conditional framework permitting Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs) to facilitate secondary trading of tokenized NMS stocks through permissioned automated market makers on public blockchains. The exemption runs until September 17, 2031, and includes volume caps, symbol limits, and recordkeeping obligations. Liquidity providers can deposit tokenized stock into AMM pools without registering as dealers.
3. DTCC Tokenization Service (October 2026 commercial launch): Following July 2026 production trades involving 30+ firms — including BlackRock, JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citi, and Morgan Stanley — the DTC Tokenization Service, built on Hyperledger Besu and the Canton Network, is launching commercially in October 2026. The DTC custodies more than $114 trillion in assets.
These frameworks created a two-track system: regulated venues (Nasdaq, DTCC) for institutional participants operating within traditional market structure, and permissioned on-chain venues (TSVs) for DeFi-native tokenized equity trading. Both tracks accelerated capital formation on competing chains.
Monthly on-chain transfer volume for tokenized stocks reached $9.22 billion in June 2026, up from $53 million a year earlier — a 170x increase. Weekly spot volume hit approximately $3 billion in August 2026.
Volume leadership shifted through the year:
| Period | Volume Leader | Notable Volume | |---|---|---| | H1 2026 | Solana | $4.9B (sixfold increase from H2 2025) | | Q2 2026 | Solana | $5.8B on spot DEXs (114% QoQ increase) | | Q3 2026 | BNB Chain | $5.2B+ (overtaking Solana) | | August 2026 | Robinhood Chain / BNB Chain | ~$3B weekly across top chains |
Solana's early dominance in volume reflected its low-cost execution environment and the concentration of retail-facing tokenized stock products. BNB Chain's overtaking of Solana in Q3 coincided with bStocks reaching scale and Binance's distribution advantage funneling users to on-chain products.
The composition of tokenized equities shifted markedly during 2026. According to market data:
The declining share of crypto-linked stocks and rising share of traditional megacaps and ETFs signals a normalization of the tokenized equity market. Early adopters tokenized what they knew — crypto-adjacent stocks. As the market matured, demand shifted toward conventional equity exposure: NVDA, TSLA, and broad market ETFs.
Ondo Stocks now offers 430+ tokenized assets across three chains, up from 100 U.S. stocks and ETFs at its September 2025 launch on Ethereum. Crypto.com launched tokenized stocks with access to over 1,500 underlying assets for users in the European Economic Area and approved jurisdictions.
Binance Research's September 2026 report, "The RWA Activation Era," models three scenarios for tokenized equities by 2030:
| Scenario | 2030 Projected AUM | |---|---| | Conservative | $61 billion | | Base case | $349 billion | | Bull case | $987 billion |
Even the conservative case implies a 14x expansion from the current $4.4 billion. The base case would represent approximately 0.23% of the global listed stock market, assuming flat equity market growth.
The report argues that measuring success by assets tokenized is insufficient. The relevant metric is utilization — whether tokens are actively used in DeFi composability layers (lending, collateral, liquidity provision). By that measure, the market is still in early stages: $247.8 million in DeFi TVL against $4.4 billion in tokenized equity AUM implies a utilization rate of approximately 5.6%.
The tokenized equity market in 2026 has shifted from a question of whether stocks can be represented on-chain to a competition over where they generate the most economic utility. BNB Chain's ascent to market leader was not driven by technological superiority but by distribution — Binance's existing user base of millions provided immediate demand for bStocks — and by DeFi integration that gave those tokens a function beyond passive price exposure.
Ethereum retains institutional credibility and the deepest issuance infrastructure. Solana retains speed and retail volume. Robinhood Chain introduced the brokerage-native model. The DTCC's commercial launch brings traditional settlement infrastructure into the picture.
The five-way competition among these networks is producing measurable economic value in the form of lending yield, collateral efficiency, and trading fee capture. The chain that can sustain the deepest composability layer — where a tokenized share of NVDA simultaneously earns lending yield, serves as loan collateral, and provides AMM liquidity — will likely capture the largest share of the projected $349 billion base-case market. At $4.4 billion today, the race is less than 1.3% of the way there.