The infrastructure for RWA tokenization is rapidly evolving, enabling global markets to digitize Real-World Assets (RWA) like real estate, private equity, bonds, and commodities into programmable, tradable tokens. In 2025, this transformation is accelerating, driven by institutional adoption, regulatory clarity, and a new wave of privacy-first solutions. At the forefront of these innovations is zkDatabase, a next-generation infrastructure designed to meet growing demands for compliance, efficiency, and data privacy. By combining Zero-Knowledge Proof technology with WEF-defined best practices, zkDatabase is positioning itself as a leading enabler of secure, scalable, and interoperable RWA ecosystems. According to WEF, highlights tokenization’s potential to transform finance by improving transparency, enhancing efficiency, and expanding accessibility through programmability and fractional ownership.
Understanding RWA Tokenization & Market Outlook
Democratized access – Fractionalized ownership makes high-value assets like private equity, fine art, and real estate available to a wider pool of investors, tradable 24/7.
Operational efficiency – Smart contracts and on-chain settlement reduce intermediaries, lower transaction costs, and speed up trade cycles.
Composability & interoperability – Tokenized assets can integrate into DeFi protocols, lending markets, and cross-chain environments.
The WEF underscores that successful tokenization infrastructure is defined by a shared system of record, flexible custody arrangements, and composability, features that underpin future-ready financial markets.
Core Benefits of Asset Tokenization
Tokenizing real-world assets delivers transformative advantages for both investors and institutions. By enabling fractional ownership of traditionally illiquid, high-value assets, it expands global market access and enhances liquidity.
Smart contract automation streamlines settlement, reduces operational costs, and accelerates transactions, while institutional-grade infrastructure, built on shared records, flexible custody, and composable standards, ensures compliance, interoperability, and scalability in a rapidly evolving financial ecosystem.
Democratizes access to previously inaccessible assets, private equity, real estate, bonds, art, via fractionalized ownership and 24/7 tradability.
Enhances operational efficiency by automating settlement and reducing intermediaries.
WEF underscores features like a shared system of record, flexible custody, and composability as hallmarks of successful tokenization infrastructure.
Growth Trajectory & Market Size
The RWA tokenization market is entering a steep growth curve:
$24 billion market size in 2025, up 308% in just three years.
Projected to reach $30 trillion by 2034, according to Katten.
Tokenized U.S. Treasuries doubled from $1B to $2B in five months in 2024, with bullish scenarios reaching $28B (10% of the stablecoin market).
WEF estimates that tokenized value could represent 10% of global GDP by 2027.
Boston Consulting Group sees $16 trillion in tokenized assets by 2030.
These figures signal a structural shift, one in which infrastructure choices will determine market leadership.
Key Infrastructure Components for RWA Tokenization
Blockchain Native Infrastructure
Leading networks like Ethereum, Avalanche, Algorand, and XDC Network provide the core smart contract frameworks and consensus mechanisms for asset issuance and settlement. While each varies in throughput, fees, and security, they share a foundational role in enabling trustless ownership records.
Shared Systems & Composability
The WEF’s research emphasizes shared ledgers, flexible custody, and programmable token standards. This approach ensures assets can be securely held across multiple custodians while remaining composable with various financial products and platforms.
Interoperability
Oracles and cross-chain bridges, play a critical role in ensuring consistent asset data across networks, essential for scaling tokenized markets globally.
Blockchain Native Infrastructure
Commodity chains Ethereum, Avalanche, Algorand, XDC, provide the smart contract and ledger foundation (not detailed in WEF but still relevant).
Shared Systems & Composability
WEF emphasizes shared ledgers, flexible custody, programmable tokens as core infrastructure features for efficient tokenized systems
Interoperability
Reliable oracles and cross-chain systems are necessary for data consistency, asset tracking, and composability across platforms
2025 Market Leaders & Use Cases
In 2025, institutional adoption of Real World Asset tokenization has accelerated, with several large-scale pilots demonstrating both feasibility and efficiency gains.
Euroclear, DTCC, and the World Bank have executed tokenized issuances of gold, gilts, and Eurobonds, aiming to reduce market fragmentation and enhance liquidity through programmable settlement layers.
HSBC Orion and Goldman Sachs Digital Assets Platform have developed end-to-end tokenization infrastructure for capital markets.
The European Investment Bank (EIB) issued a fully digital bond, while Hong Kong’s Project Evergreen successfully piloted tokenized green and multi-currency bonds, showing how sustainability objectives and cross-border finance can align within a tokenized framework.
These pilots underscore the WEF’s vision of shared, programmable, and composable infrastructure as the backbone of the next-generation financial system.
Tokenized Collateral & Securities Financing
Unlocking billions in collateral usage: $255T in securities with only $28.6T actively used; tokenization could free up liquidity and reduce risk. Tokenization is emerging as a liquidity unlock mechanism for collateral markets.
Of the $255 trillion in global securities, only $28.6 trillion is actively deployed as collateral at any given time.
By enabling real-time settlement, composability, and fractionalized ownership, tokenization could liberate idle assets, increasing available collateral pools and reducing systemic risks in securities financing.
Such advancements could transform repo markets, derivatives margining, and cross-border settlement, especially as programmable collateral management becomes a market standard.
Trading Platforms & Tokenized Securities
Retail and institutional trading platforms are now positioning themselves as gateways for tokenized assets:
Coinbase, Robinhood (Europe), and Kraken (via xStocks) are piloting or launching tokenized stock offerings, bridging the gap between traditional equities and blockchain-native trading.
Asset managers like BlackRock and Franklin Templeton are offering tokenized funds, expanding investor access and integrating on-chain settlement for improved efficiency.
These moves reflect a broader market shift: tokenized securities are no longer experimental, they’re becoming investable products in mainstream portfolios.
Positioning zkDatabase as Next-Gen Infrastructure for RWA Tokenization
zkDatabase stands at the intersection of cutting-edge cryptography and institutional-grade scalability, providing a purpose-built Infrastructure for RWA Tokenization that addresses privacy, compliance, and efficiency challenges head-on.
Core Features of zkDatabase
zkDatabase combines modern noSQL architecture with Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP) to verify data integrity and privacy without exposing the data. It uses a Zero-Knowledge Prover supporting zkSNARKs for efficient, cryptographically secure verification. The first version is built on the o1js framework, and its modular design allows future integration of advanced proof systems like Plonky3 for better speed and scalability.
Modern noSQL: The database is built on a noSQL framework, ensuring flexibility, scalability, and high performance. It supports a wide range of data models, including key-value, document, and graph-based structures.
Cryptographic Modules: zkDatabase includes specialized cryptographic modules that handle the generation and verification of ZKPs. These modules are optimized for performance, ensuring minimal overhead in proof generation and verification processes.
zkDatabase is the infrastructure layer for RWA tokenization, guaranteeing audit-grade data integrity at every step. Assets such as real estate, carbon credits, or trade finance documents can be digitized and verified with cryptographic proofs, ensuring immutability without exposing sensitive details. With zkDatabase, tokenized RWAs are not just digital representations, they are cryptographically trustworthy assets. Conclusion
The global shift toward Real World Asset Tokenization is reshaping how value is stored, traded, and accessed. As the market surges toward multi-trillion-dollar volumes, infrastructure selection becomes the competitive edge for institutions entering this space. zkDatabase, The infrastructure for RWA is uniquely positioned to lead this transformation. Its Zero-Knowledge architecture, compliance-ready design, and composability make it the optimal infrastructure for RWA tokenization in the era of regulated, global digital markets. With WEF’s principles as its foundation and next-gen cryptographic capabilities at its core, zkDatabase is not just following the market’s trajectory, it’s setting it.
