$4 Billion Tokenized Assets in DeFi, But Only 11.5% Are Active

Tokenized assets in decentralized finance (DeFi) have hit $4 billion, but only 11.5% of them are actively being used as collateral or liquidity on-chain.

According to DefiLlama, the total value locked (TVL) in DeFi lending pools, vaults, and DEX liquidity reached $3.98 billion as of August 18th. This is a sixfold increase from last year's figure of $650.88 million and a significant jump from the $12 million reported three years ago.

However, the total tokenized issuance across the sector stands at $34.64 billion, highlighting a substantial gap between issued tokens and actual usage. BlackRock's BUIDL fund holds $2.74 billion in tokenized issuance but only $18 million of that is actively being used in DeFi.

Franklin Templeton's BENJI product has zero DeFi utilization, and the combined total of these two products represents more than $3 billion of tokenized money-market exposure that never touches a lending pool. The designers' intent was to provide faster settlement times for institutional cash management, but not to create collateral or liquidity in permissionless protocols.