BNB Chain Q1: RWAs Jump 60% to $3.6B; Stablecoins Rise

BNB Chain’s real-world asset (RWA) market expanded 60% in the first quarter of 2026 to $3.6 billion. Tokenized treasuries totaled $3.19 billion and stablecoin supply stood at $13.4 billion as the network reported faster block times, lower fees and increased developer activity while trading cooled from the prior quarter’s memecoin surge.

Tokenized treasuries were the largest contributor to RWA growth. Circle’s USYC grew 81% to $2.57 billion. Franklin Templeton’s iBENJI reached $113.5 million after launching on the chain, and BlackRock’s BUIDL held near $507 million. Tokenized equities rose 78% to $371 million, led by Ondo’s expansion to $221 million, a 440% increase that made it the largest tokenized-stock issuer on the network by quarter-end.

Stablecoins remained a major component of on-chain activity. Total stablecoin supply ended the quarter at $13.4 billion, and BNB Chain recorded about 15.1 million unique stablecoin senders in February. United Stables’ yield-bearing $U token grew 167% over the quarter to roughly $1.09 billion and was listed on Binance within weeks of its mid-December launch; the token is backed 1:1 by established stablecoins.

Core network metrics rose alongside institutional issuance. Daily active addresses reached a quarterly high of 2.71 million, up 16.2% from the prior measured quarter. Smart contract deployments increased to 4.54 million, a 46.4% rise, and the chain processed about 1.29 billion successful transactions in Q1. Spot decentralized exchange volume totaled $125.4 billion, with PancakeSwap accounting for 61.4% of DEX activity. Memecoins remained the largest trading category by volume while stablecoin swaps gained market share.

Infrastructure changes contributed to lower latency and costs. The Fermi hard fork, activated on Jan. 14, reduced average block times to 0.45 seconds from 0.75 seconds and helped bring average transaction fees down to about $0.027 from $0.055; median fees averaged roughly $0.0038. Engineering work across the BSC layer, opBNB and BNB Greenfield targeted higher throughput, sub-second finality and more predictable low-cost rails intended for AI-driven finance.

Nina Rong, Executive Director of Growth at BNB Chain, described stablecoins, RWAs and agentic finance as “core infrastructure layers” and said the network is focused on delivering technical performance to allow new applications to scale. Rong added that the next generation of finance will involve autonomous systems operating continuously.

Financial measures reflected lower fee-generating trading. Network revenue fell to $43.4 million in Q1 from $111.5 million in Q4 2025. The chain completed its 34th quarterly burn on Jan. 15, removing about 1.37 million BNB at the time of execution, equivalent to roughly $1.28 billion, and total supply declined about 1% over the quarter.

Other institutional developments during Q1 included the March launch of Tether Gold on the network and a Grayscale filing of an S-1 registration statement for a potential BNB exchange-traded fund. The quarter showed increased activity across tokenized treasuries, equities, stablecoins and AI-native applications alongside network upgrades that reduced latency and costs.