Real-World Asset Race Heats Up as Hedera, Chainlink, and Avalanche Lead Developer Growth

• Santiment ranked Hedera, Chainlink, Avalanche, Stellar, and IOTA as the top five RWA projects by development activity in its latest update.
• The full top 10 RWA development rankings also include Chia, Injective, Dusk, VeChain, and Centrifuge.

The race to build real-world asset infrastructure is becoming more competitive as blockchain projects pair active development with live financial integrations. A new Santiment ranking of RWA-focused projects places Hedera (HBAR) at the top, followed by Chainlink (LINK), Avalanche (AVAX), Stellar (XLM), IOTA (IOTA), Chia (XCH), Injective (INJ), Dusk (DUSK), VeChain (VET), and Centrifuge (CFG). The latest list also tracks monthly movement, with Injective, Dusk, and Centrifuge rising, while VeChain moved lower.

The ranking arrives at a time when the leading networks are expanding their role in tokenized finance. That is especially visible among the top five names, where recent progress in money market funds, data infrastructure, digital securities, and builder activity is shaping the current RWA cycle.

Hedera’s lead in the ranking comes as its RWA profile gains support from institutional funds. This week’s reports linked Hedera to money-market fund deployments involving BlackRock and State Street through Archax, including funds denominated in major fiat currencies. The development has drawn attention because it places Hedera in a live institutional workflow tied to tokenized fund products.

Chainlink, which holds the second spot, continues to strengthen its role as a data infrastructure for tokenized markets. Its tool set recently went live on Canton Network, where applications can access low-latency price feeds, NAV and AUM data, and reserve verification. Chainlink’s planned CCIP rollout on Canton adds another layer to that effort by preparing for cross-chain transfer of tokenized assets.

Previously, CNF covered that Robinhood partnered with Chainlink as the oracle provider for Robinhood Chain, its new Arbitrum-based Ethereum Layer 2 public testnet. The integration supports market data and tokenization workflows as developers build onchain financial services.

Institutional Activity Sets the Pace in the RWA Segment

Avalanche, ranked third on the list, has also recorded a major RWA milestone in Japan. Progmat, the country’s largest security token platform, is preparing to migrate more than $2 billion in tokenized real estate and corporate bonds from Corda to a dedicated Avalanche Layer 1. We outlined that the move expands its footprint in regulated tokenized assets.

Stellar ranks fourth in Santiment’s latest RWA development list. CNF recently reported that Stellar launched an open-source private payments PoC on Soroban using Groth16 zk proofs and ASP-based compliance controls.

IOTA rounds up the top five and is sustaining developer momentum through current ecosystem activity. As we covered today, the ongoing MasterZ x IOTA Hackathon has brought in dozens of teams building products across tokenization, trade, identity, privacy, and infrastructure. 

At the time of reporting, Hedera, Chainlink, and Avalanche were all trading lower over the last 24 hours. HBAR traded at $0.1005, down 1.78%, while LINK traded at $8.84, down 4%. AVAX traded at $9.02, down 2.49%.