Blockchain Fragmentation Is Costing Tokenized Assets Billions
Fragmentation among blockchain networks is creating significant economic inefficiencies in the tokenized asset market, causing an estimated $600 million to $1.3 billion in annual value loss. Blockchains, while innovative, have built barriers that trap liquidity and complicate capital transfers between networks. As a result, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) act like separate markets, with identical assets trading at diverging prices—typically 1% to 3% apart—across different chains. Crosschain transfers remain expensive, with total frictional costs averaging about 3.5% per transaction due to fees, slippage, and operational risks. These inefficiencies hinder arbitrage and prevent effective price discovery, which is routine in traditional financial markets. If current patterns persist, these frictions could scale proportionally as the market grows, potentially resulting in $30 billion to $75 billion in lost value annually if RWAs expand to $16 trillion–$30 trillion by 2030. Despite these challenges, tokenized assets are attracting interest from both crypto platforms and traditional finance, with new onchain stock trading launches underway.
