Tokenized Stocks in DeFi See $247.8M Inflow... Actual Use Cases?

Total value locked (TVL) for tokenized stocks within decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has surged by 1,961% over the past year, reaching $24.78 million, according to Token Terminal's report published Thursday.

Binance Research links this growth to expanded on-chain infrastructure, noting that lending, smart contract deployment, and stock-linked markets are now enabling more than passive holding for tokenized stocks.

Three chains account for nearly all of the tokenized stocks TVL: Robinhood Chain leads with $98.2 million, Solana follows at $87.4 million, and BNB Chain comes in third with $36.3 million, representing a combined 89.5% share.

Binance Research also reported that DeFi TVL rose from $21.6 million in January to $289.1 million as of September 9. The proportion of DeFi's market capitalization it represents has grown from 2.2% to 7.2%.

Breakdown of TVL by activity shows liquidity pools at 65.4%, lending markets at 28.1%, yield tokenized assets at 5.7%, and other areas at 0.8%. Meanwhile, RWA.xyz indicates that the total market value of tokenized stocks could reach up to $2.9 billion as of mid-September.

Loan data from bStocks reveals a rise in outstanding loans against collateral, increasing from 5.5% of deposited collateral in June to 46.2% by September 10, equivalent to $3.1 million in loans against approximately $6.8 million in collateral. The pool size remains modest compared to broader markets but shows increased utilization.

Binance Research also noted that tokenized stocks are generating activity in markets beyond direct stock-token trading. On Robinhood Chain, a stock-linked meme coin market generated about $249 million in transactions from July 26 to September 9, while BNB Chain recorded $290 million in similar activity.

On-chain analytics firm SQD analyzed a sample of Robinhood Chain data, finding that 32.1% of cumulative tokenized stock trading volume up to August 30—$71.2 million—came from trades involving other tokens, mostly meme coins.