Interest in real-world asset (RWA) blockchains is intensifying, and the clearest evidence of that trend is emerging from the development trenches rather than price charts.
New insights from analytics platform Santiment show that while market sentiment has recently cooled, builders are quietly concentrating their efforts on a select group of protocols.
Key Takeaways
Santiment data shows sustained developer concentration in the real-world asset (RWA) sector despite weak price action.
Chainlink leads the field with the highest development score and nearly $10 billion in market value.
Hedera, Avalanche, Stellar, and IOTA form the next tier, though none have altered their positions from last month.
At the heart of the data sits Chainlink, which continues to outclass competing RWA-linked assets. Santiment’s scoring model places LINK far ahead of the pack with a developer activity rating above 280, reaffirming its place as the sector’s reference point. With almost $10 billion in market value, Chainlink remains the largest infrastructure player in tokenized data and asset connectivity — making its developer leadership unsurprising.
Close Contenders, But a Stable Ranking
Hedera follows as the nearest challenger, scoring above 190, with Avalanche occupying the next slot at roughly 165. Rather than dramatic reshuffling, the rankings reveal stability — no project managed to dethrone another over the past month, hinting at long-term commitment rather than short-term experimentation.
Further down the list, Stellar, IOTA, Axelar, Chia Network, VeChain, Injective, and Centrifuge round out the top ten. Their scores range between the low 140s to high 80s, forming a secondary layer of networks that remain actively worked on despite weaker price action.
Development Strength vs Market Weakness
What makes Santiment’s findings particularly interesting is the disconnect between developer enthusiasm and token performance. Most RWA-aligned assets have posted negative price movement recently. VeChain stands out for its sharper decline, contrasting sharply with its still-visible engineering activity. This divergence suggests that teams are prioritizing infrastructure building over short-term price pressure — a common pattern seen in maturing sectors.
Why the Activity Matters
The RWA sector is one of the most closely watched arenas in crypto today, as tokenized assets are increasingly linked to enterprise blockchain adoption, payments, and capital markets. Developer commitment not only highlights where innovation pipelines are being directed but may also foreshadow which networks are positioning themselves for larger institutional demand when sentiment returns.
Santiment’s report doesn’t show flashiness or sudden trend rotation but rather a disciplined competition between established frameworks, an indication that the next wave of tokenization growth may be determined by utility rather than hype.
