Tokenizing an asset is not the hard part anymore. Getting it into the hands of the people who actually want to use it is.
That is the premise behind the newly announced partnership between Centrifuge and Pharos, two projects approaching the same problem from different ends. Centrifuge brings institutional-grade tokenization infrastructure, including products like tokenized U.S. Treasuries (JTRSY) and AAA-rated structured credit (JAAA). Pharos brings a high-throughput Layer 1 blockchain designed specifically for real-world financial workflows. Together, they are building a shared infrastructure framework meant to solve what has quietly become one of the biggest bottlenecks in onchain finance: distribution.
The Distribution Gap
The tokenized real-world asset market has grown fast. On-chain RWAs now exceed $36 billion, up from roughly $5.5 billion at the start of 2025, representing a growth rate that has caught the attention of institutional capital across the board. BCG and Ripple project that tokenized assets could reach $18.9 trillion by 2033. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries alone now account for over $8.7 billion. The issuance side of the equation is working.
But issuance and distribution are not the same thing. A tokenized Treasury product that sits idle on one chain, accessible only through one platform, with no secondary market depth and no composability with other onchain financial tools, is not meaningfully different from a PDF of a bond certificate. The value of putting an asset onchain is supposed to come from what you can do with it after issuance: pool it, allocate it, use it as collateral, move it across ecosystems, and make it accessible to participants who were previously excluded by geography, onboarding requirements, or custody constraints.
That is where the gap is. And it is particularly pronounced outside the U.S. and Western Europe, where access to dollar-denominated credit and treasury products faces regulatory, operational, and custody barriers even when those products have been tokenized.
"Tokenization alone does not solve the access and usability problem,"
explains Bhaji Illuminati, CEO of Centrifuge Labs.
"This partnership focuses on building the distribution and infrastructure layer that allows institutional assets to function within real onchain financial environments."
What Each Side Brings
Centrifuge is not new to this space. The platform's TVL surpassed $1 billion in 2025, driven by products built with institutional partners. JTRSY, the tokenized U.S. Treasury fund managed in partnership with Janus Henderson, received $400 million in allocations after winning Spark's Tokenization Grand Prix and currently carries an AA+ rating. JAAA, the AAA-rated CLO product, exceeded $1 billion in TVL and stands as the largest institutional alternative fund onchain by asset value. Centrifuge has also expanded distribution through deRWA tokens (deJTRSY and deJAAA), which now operate across six networks including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Solana, and Stellar.
Pharos, on the other hand, is a newer entrant built by former leadership and engineers from Ant Group. The network is designed as a Layer 1 specifically for what it calls "RealFi," combining modular architecture, deep-parallel execution capable of sub-second finality and 30,000 TPS, and built-in compliance modules including ZK-KYC and AML. Pharos has processed nearly 3 billion transactions on its testnet and is backed by Hack VC, Faction VC, and other institutional investors. The network plans to launch its mainnet in early 2026.
Under this partnership, Pharos serves as a strategic liquidity and distribution layer for assets issued through Centrifuge. The integrated environment spans wallet access, enterprise channels, platform connectivity, and execution capacity. The idea is that assets can be accessed, pooled, allocated, and reused rather than sitting static after issuance.
Why This Matters Structurally
The RWA sector has a fragmentation problem that market size numbers alone do not capture. A report from RWA.io found that identical tokenized assets trading on different chains can show pricing gaps of 1 to 3 percent, with 2 to 5 percent friction costs when moving capital cross-chain. That is not a rounding error. For institutional participants accustomed to basis-point precision, those numbers represent a structural deterrent.
The Centrifuge-Pharos partnership is one attempt to address this from the infrastructure layer rather than the application layer. Instead of building another marketplace or another bridge, the approach is to create a shared execution and distribution environment where institutional assets are natively accessible and composable from the point of issuance.
This matters especially for the growing MSP and enterprise channel that sits between asset issuers and end participants. Smaller institutions, family offices, and participants in emerging markets often cannot access tokenized products directly. They need intermediary infrastructure that handles compliance, custody, and liquidity in a consolidated way. That is the layer Centrifuge and Pharos are building toward.
Final Thoughts
The tokenized RWA market has proven that issuance works. The question for 2026 is whether distribution can keep up. With on-chain RWAs projected to surpass $100 billion by the end of this year and institutional allocations accelerating, the constraint is no longer "can we put this asset on a blockchain." It is "can we make it useful once it is there."
Centrifuge and Pharos are betting that the answer requires purpose-built infrastructure, not just more tokens. If the distribution gap does not close, the sector risks becoming a collection of impressive-sounding products that few people can actually use. That would be a waste of a $36 billion market that is supposed to be heading toward $19 trillion.
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