Electric Capital: On-chain yields are concentrated in a few assets; AI infrastructure may become a new catalyst.

Electric Capital analyzed 501 real-world yield assets and cross-referenced them with tokenized assets currently showing significant on-chain activity. The report reveals that only 34 yield assets have an on-chain size exceeding $50 million, primarily concentrated in US Treasury bonds, private credit, corporate bonds, and non-US sovereign bonds. The remaining 93% of yield sources are still hampered by seven types of obstacles, covering legal structures, asset-backed securities challenges, and real-world integration difficulties with commodity and computing infrastructure. The research indicates that distribution is a major bottleneck: of the 35 non-stablecoin on-chain yield assets, only two have more than 2,000 holders. This is partly due to design limitations, such as BlackRock's BUIDL requiring a minimum investment of $5 million, but the data suggests that most tokenized assets still rely on a small number of large deployers and treasury managers. The top ten holders of BUIDL control 98% of the supply, mostly from other protocols. Electric Capital believes five key factors will drive more assets onto the blockchain in the future: the growth in stablecoin size and diversification of yield preferences; product competition between protocols; the absorption of duration risk by treasury infrastructure; tiered mechanisms to expand the buyer base; and leveraged cycles to amplify demand for collateralized assets. Meanwhile, spending on AI infrastructure (Goldman Sachs projects it will exceed $500 billion by 2026) could be a catalyst, including the on-chain financing potential for GPU leasing, data center construction, and energy contracts. (TheDefiant)