a16z: Tokenized Commodities Market Dominated by Gold, Reaching $5 Billion Scale

BlockBeats News, May 23rd, a16z crypto published an article stating that the current tokenized commodity market is almost entirely dominated by gold. Citing data from rwa.xyz, as of May 7, 2026, the on-chain tokenized gold market has reached a scale of approximately $5 billion, occupying the vast majority of the market share. In contrast, the tokenized silver market is only about $28.1 million, the tokenized gold ETF (iShares Gold Trust) is about $14.1 million, and the total of other commodity categories is approximately $29.5 million.

a16z pointed out that gold has features such as global circulation, standardization, and a long history of relying on paper-based certificate transactions, making it naturally suitable for tokenization. Products including Tether Gold (XAUt) and Pax Gold (PAXG) essentially map the ownership of gold stored in vaults to on-chain wallets.

It also stated that besides gold, commodity assets such as tokenized oil, agricultural products, energy, and computing power are still in a very early stage, with a relatively limited market share.