Robinhood Chain draws within $16 million of Solana in tokenized stocks deployed in DeFi

Take out Robinhood Chain, whose $79.9 million arrived almost entirely in September ^[8]. The rest of the market still grew from $14.66 million in January to about $182.5 million, roughly 12 times ^[2]. So one launch does not explain the growth. BNB Chain holds $35.3 million, Ethereum $34.7 million and Base $16 million ^[9].

For most of the year, Kamino and the Solana exchanges carried the market, and Uniswap V4 was a thin sliver. Then V4's share jumped through September ^[10]. The new money looks to have gone mostly into trading pools, or rather into Uniswap V4, where tokenized equities trade around the clock ^[3]. V4 and V3 together hold $86.2 million, about a third of everything deployed ^[9].

Anush Jafer, the Cryptopolitan analyst who wrote up the Token Terminal data, puts the weight on lending. "The lending share actually says a lot more than its size suggests. An asset only becomes useful as collateral when there is confidence and trust in its pricing, liquidation and redemption systems," he wrote ^[6]. Kamino Lend and Fluid Jupiter Lend hold $68.3 million of tokenized stock between them ^[4]. That is more than four and a half times what the whole category held in January ^[10]. Kamino's $54.1 million is about 79% of it ^[5][4].

The asset list leans toward crypto. STRCx, FWDI and MSTRx, the three crypto treasury tokens, add up to $69.3 million, or 26.4% of the total ^[11][5]. S&P 500 trackers, Nvidia tokens from two issuers and Tesla's TSLAx come to $51.9 million combined ^[13][6]. The published figures do not break the collateral down by asset ^[5]. Jafer's explanation for the crypto tilt is that people holding Strategy exposure onchain already use DeFi, so borrowing against a preferred share on Kamino is a small step for them ^[12].

Outside the top ten, the other 1,485 tokens hold about $128.3 million, roughly $86,000 each on average ^[7].

I think the lending figure is the one to follow. A pool deposit can leave with the launch that brought it. A loan needs a lender that has priced liquidation on the asset. The counter-thesis is that much of the $68.3 million is Strategy exposure that holders already had, now borrowed against in token form ^[12]. On that view, equities in the usual sense are the $51.9 million of index, Nvidia and Tesla tokens, about a fifth of the total ^[6]. If lending balances stall while pool balances keep climbing, the category is mostly trading inventory for a market that never closes. At $262.4 million ^[1], a desk can track it for months before it needs a position.