A sharp increase in holders isn't always credible. First, check the data scope—does it come from on-chain verifiable addresses, or from "internal bookkeeping" data self-reported by the project? Then look at the actual balance distribution—whether the top few addresses monopolize the overwhelming majority of holdings.
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1. First, Clarify the Source of the "Holder Surge" Data
RWA holder data has a fundamental problem: "asset value represented" and "asset value distributed" are two different things.
At the end of 2025, a revamp of the data site RWA.XYZ exposed this issue. Before the revision, the total RWA industry asset scale was about $30 billion; after the revision, it suddenly ballooned to $410 billion. The roughly $380 billion added was categorized as "Reported Asset Value"—assets that only have digital records issued on private chains or closed systems, without actual on-chain transfers or distribution.
Conflux's co-founder pointed out that among this $410 billion, approximately 91% came from assets on the Canton private chain, and roughly $14 billion came from products issued by Figure on its proprietary private chain Provenance. These assets have almost no direct relationship with the crypto market; they are merely "private-chain bookkeeping tokens." The "Distributed Asset Value" that better reflects real industry demand is only about $18 billion.
When you see "RWA holder numbers exploding," first confirm which scope is being counted—verifiable addresses on public chains, or internal data self-reported by the project.
Prerequisite: You have already seen a certain RWA project's "holder growth" data and are about to base a judgment on it.
2. Real Case: The Dispute Between Figure and DeFiLlama
In September 2025, RWA platform Figure claimed it had issued $12 billion in RWA on-chain and accused data platform DeFiLlama of refusing to display its TVL. DeFiLlama publicly responded and disclosed its due diligence findings:
On-chain verifiable assets seriously mismatched the claimed scale: Actually verifiable on-chain assets were only about $5 million in BTC and $4 million in ETH, with BTC's 24-hour trading volume reaching only $2,000.
Insufficient stablecoin supply: The total supply of Figure's stablecoin YLDS was just $20 million, insufficient to support a $12 billion trading scale.
Suspicious transfer patterns: Most RWA asset transfers were not initiated by actual holders but by other accounts, and many addresses had almost no on-chain interaction history.
Figure's assets may genuinely exist, but its business logic relies on traditional financial systems, and the on-chain part more closely resembles a "mirror echo" of an internal database rather than asset circulation with real user participation.
3. Practical: Two Steps to Verify Holder Data Yourself
Step 1: Check the Number of "Active Addresses," Not "Historical Cumulative"
What to do: Confirm whether the figure counts "addresses currently holding a balance" or "total addresses that have ever held."
How to do it: In Dune's rwa_multichain.balances table, rows with balance=0 are retained—even if an address has cleared its holdings, it will still appear in the snapshot. If you don't actively filter, COUNT(address) will include all addresses that ever held the asset, seriously overstating the current active holder count. The correct approach is to use WHERE balance > 0 before counting.
What counts as done: You have confirmed whether the "holder count" excludes zero-balance addresses.
Step 2: Check the Top 10 Holdings Share (Concentration)
What to do: Use on-chain data to see the share of total supply held by top addresses.
How to do it: Query Dune's rwa_multichain.balances_enriched, take the top 10 addresses by descending balance, and calculate their combined holdings percentage. If the top 10 addresses hold more than 80% of the supply, it indicates high concentration and the growth data has limited reference value. Also check the address_category field—if a large share of supply falls under categories like cex, custodian, or treasury, the "holder count" may just be a few institutional accounts propping up the numbers.
What counts as done: You have obtained the specific top-10 concentration percentage and judged whether it is abnormally high.
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4. Where Is the Real Growth? Stablecoins vs. Other RWAs
Data from RWA.xyz shows stablecoin holding addresses total 14.4 million, while all other non-stablecoin RWA categories (public equities, commodities, private credit, U.S. Treasuries, real estate) combined have only about 39,000 active addresses. Stablecoins outnumber all other RWA categories by more than 360 times.
This gap illustrates: most "holder surge" narratives center on asset classes like Treasuries, equities, and real estate, but the actual user base for these categories remains extremely limited. Tokenized U.S. Treasuries, the most discussed category among institutions, have only 1,363 active addresses; real estate has only 524.
Risk Warning: If an RWA project's holder growth data comes from self-reporting by the project rather than on-chain verification, and the top-10 address concentration is excessively high, such data likely contains substantial inflation. After the Figure incident, DeFiLlama explicitly stated its stance: "We only count TVL that can be verified on-chain and reject asset data that fails to meet transparency requirements."
After completing these checks, how do you confirm you have understood?
Once you have holder data for a certain RWA project, go to Dune or RWA.xyz to check two things: first, the difference between the "effective holder count" (number of addresses with balance > 0) and the "historical cumulative address count"; second, the combined holding share of the top 10 addresses. If the gap is huge or the top concentration exceeds 80%, the holder growth figure is likely inflated, and you need to dig into the raw data for confirmation.
