The report points to an explosion in yield-bearing stablecoins, up roughly 300% year-over-year, and brisk growth in liquid staking for Ethereum and Solana.
Crypto News
Only 8% to 11% of crypto assets are currently yield-generating, versus 55% to 65% in traditional finance, creating a 5x to 6x gap that is narrowing as yield-bearing stablecoins, blue-chip staking products, and real-world assets move on-chain at speed, according to a new report from modular blockchain oracle network RedStone. The research was co-authored by RedStone Oracles, Gauntlet, Stablewatch and the Tokenized Asset Coalition.
The report points to an explosion in yield-bearing stablecoins, up roughly 300% year-over-year, and brisk growth in liquid staking for Ethereum and Solana. It also flags emerging Bitcoin yield primitives as another catalyst for investors seeking returns on inactive cash.
Today's stablecoin market exceeds $290B, led by Tether's USDT and Circle's USDC. But a new class of yield-bearing stablecoins is emerging that generates ongoing returns rather than sitting idle, serving as productive capital in on-chain finance.
RedStone's data shows that liquid staking tokens on Ethereum have added $34B in notional value since early 2023. Similarly, total value locked in liquid restaking protocols like Eigenlayer has skyrocketed, rising from around $1B in early 2024 to over $22B as of Nov. 12.
Solana's liquid staked supply has roughly doubled over the past year, and early Bitcoin yield designs are beginning to surface as institutions seek hurdle-rate returns without leaving their custody frameworks. That demand is increasingly institutional and infrastructure-led according to the report, which cites data from RWA.xyz.
RWAs have expanded from low single digits in 2022 to over $36B by November 2025, aided by programmable settlement, round-the-clock liquidity, and composability across lending and rate markets. Differences in methodology have created discrepancies in total RWA figures, with The Block's data dashboard showing nearly $15B in RWA TVL by protocol while DefiLlama reports about $19B.
Analysts tout the U.S. GENIUS Act as the industry's biggest regulatory unlock since Bitcoin's white paper, arguing the law is catalyzing a migration of cash-like instruments and fixed-income yields onto blockchain rails. The framework's introduction indicates that policy momentum is catching up, and regulatory clarity now appears to be a swing factor, according to RedStone analysts.
Macro consultancies and banks have floated multi-trillion-dollar tokenization forecasts this decade. Deloitte projects that tokenized markets could reach over $4T by 2035, while Ripple sees a $19T RWA ecosystem around the same time. RedStone analysts expect that yield-bearing stablecoins could capture a significant portion of this expansion as institutions flock to DeFi.
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