How Wormhole Became the Backbone of Asset Tokenization

The financial world is on the brink of significant change. Institutions like BlackRock, Apollo, and KKR are no longer just talking about blockchain—they’re moving billions in real-world assets (RWAs) on-chain. But there’s a catch: these assets don’t live in isolation. They need to move seamlessly across blockchains to unlock liquidity, scale, and utility. 

Enter Wormhole: the interoperability protocol where blockchains, assets, and users easily interconnect.

This isn’t a story about bridges or generic “cross-chain” tech. It’s about how Wormhole became the go-to infrastructure for institutions tokenizing everything from Treasury bills to private equity funds - and why its role is only getting started.

The RWA Boom Isn’t a Solo Act

Tokenizing real-world assets solves clear problems: instant settlement, fractional ownership, and automated compliance. But none of this works without interoperability.

Asset issuers face a dilemma:

• Do they launch on one chain (limiting reach)?

• Do they fragment liquidity across 10+ chains (a compliance nightmare)

Wormhole solves this with a simple proposition: Issue once, access everywhere.

Take BlackRock’s BUIDL, a tokenized Treasury fund with over 1.7B in assets. Through Securitize, BUIDL uses Wormhole to operate natively on Ethereum, Solana, Avalanche, Polygon, and more. In a recent milestone, Ethereum saw daily BUIDL minting volumes exceed 500,000 tokens on multiple occasions, with some days reaching as high as 240M tokens, according to Flipside Crypto’s data. This underscores the accelerating institutional demand.

^{Source: Flipside Crypto by @chispas} 

BlackRock further expanded BUIDL's reach on March 25th with its debut on the Solana network, adding another high-performance chain to its growing multichain presence.

BUIDL's Solana debut on March 24th saw an initial mint of 20M tokens, as reflected by the peak in the chart. Subsequent mints, such as the 2,277 BUIDL minted on April 1st, highlight continued issuance activity on Solana’s high-performance network

^{Source: Flipside Crypto by @chispas} 

Investors hold the same asset across chains, with dividends paid automatically to their wallets. No custodial middlemen. Just a single asset, multichain by design.

This isn’t a niche use case. Apollo’s ACRED credit fund, Agora’s AUSD stablecoin, and M^0’s Treasury-backed $M all rely on Wormhole’s Native Token Transfers (NTT), which let assets exist natively on multiple chains simultaneously. For institutions, this means:

- No liquidity fragmentation

- Simplified compliance (one asset, one issuer)

- Instant settlement (vs. legacy systems that take hours or days)

In other words, Wormhole isn’t just a bridge - it’s a compliance-friendly rails system for institutional assets.

Why Chains Are Integrating with Wormhole

Blockchains want TVL (total value locked). Asset issuers want distribution. Wormhole sits at the intersection, acting as a neutral protocol that serves both.

Consider Solana. Known for its speed and low fees, it cemented its position as a magnet for RWAs as Wormhole enabled institutions like BlackRock and Apollo to port assets there natively. Similarly, Sui and Arbitrum have leveraged Wormhole integrations to attract stablecoin issuers like Transfero’s BRZ and Agora’s $AUSD.

This creates a flywheel:

1. Chains integrate Wormhole to attract institutional issuers.

2. Issuers deploy assets across chains, boosting TVL.

3. Developers build apps around these assets, creating ecosystems.

The result? Wormhole has become the leading interoperability choice - trusted by Ethereum L2s, Solana, Cosmos app chains, and even Sui’s monolithic chain. The market has taken notice - Wormhole's token ($W) surged 52.4% from $0.083981 on March 21st to $0.127977 on March 23rd, coinciding with a series of institutional partnership announcements and new chain integrations.

Beyond Bridging: The Institutional Toolbox

Wormhole’s institutional appeal goes deeper than simple transfers. Let’s break down part of its toolkit:

1. Wormhole settlement: A suite of protocols (Mayan Swift, Liquidity Layer) enable cross-chain swaps at institutional scale. By using Solana as a liquidity hub, it slashes costs and settlement times for billion-dollar portfolios and transactions.

2. Compliance controls: Asset issuers can embed chain-specific permissions (e.g., whitelisted addresses for institutional investors) directly into tokens via NTT.

3. Mayan-CCTP Protocol (MCTP): A specialized system for stablecoin transfers that works as follows: Users lock assets like USDC into a smart contract, specifying the destination chain. The protocol converts non-USDC assets first, then uses Wormhole to generate a cross-chain message. Solvers (off-chain agents that fulfill cross-chain transfer requests) mint equivalent tokens on the target chain, and funds are delivered to the recipient after automated fee deductions. 

The Wormhole protocol is audited by firms like Zellic and OtterSec, with over $55B in cross-chain volume since 2020, according to Wormhole - a track record that’s earned the trust of users and institutions like BlackRock.

This infrastructure explains why Wormhole is able to process over $1 billion in daily volume, as verified by DeFiLlama data showing $1.042 billion processed in a recent 24-hour period with near-zero downtime.

^{Source: DeFiLlama} 

What’s Next? Building Financial Infrastructure

Wormhole’s endgame isn’t just moving assets - it’s becoming the standard communication layer that connects financial systems. Upcoming upgrades like ZK light clients will enhance security, while its open-source SDK and tooling lets any chain (or institution) easily plug into its network.

This opens doors once considered too far away:

- Central banks can launch assets across chains via Wormhole.

- Private markets (real estate, art) gain global liquidity pools.

- Corporate treasuries automate cross-border payments.

Today, leading tokenized Treasury assets rely on Wormhole. As Robinson Burkey, Wormhole Foundation co-founder, puts it: “The end goal is: you want access to as much liquidity and as many users as possible.”

Conclusion

Wormhole’s role as the interoperability layer is what turns theoretical potential into reality when it comes to asset tokenization. Without seamless cross-chain movement, tokenized assets remain hard and challenging to access at scale. By removing this bottleneck, Wormhole ensures assets live on a global settlement layer - interconnected, efficient, and ready for both institutional and user adoption.

So, the next time you hear about a trillion-dollar fund going multichain, ask one question: “How?” Chances are, Wormhole is already under the hood.

Written by @suppvalen in collaboration with Wormhole