Chainalysis has recently indicated that traditional finance is rapidly shifting toward tokenization, turning real-world assets like bonds, money market funds, and private credit into digital tokens on public blockchains. Yet as major institutions move beyond pilot programs to live deployments, a key challenge emerges: no single blockchain fits every tokenized asset.
According to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis, the optimal network depends entirely on the asset’s specific requirements—a low-margin money market fund demands different infrastructure than a high-frequency trading platform.
Success hinges on balancing trade-offs across five critical dimensions: transaction speed, cost predictability, contagion risk from centralized exchanges, exposure to illicit activity, and governance structures.
Chainalysis evaluates nine leading networks using on-chain metrics and groups them into three architectural archetypes.
At one end stand the “institutional anchors”—Bitcoin and Ethereum.
These older networks excel in security, liquidity, and proven resilience, making them ideal as ultimate settlement layers.
However, they lag in speed and affordability for high-volume operations. Ethereum-based solutions, such as JPMorgan’s Onyx platform (a private fork), leverage this familiarity for institutional repo and intraday settlements while retaining controlled access.
In the middle lies the balanced “Goldilocks” group: Ethereum Layer-2 networks including Arbitrum, Base, Polygon, and Optimism.
These chains deliver strong performance on cost efficiency, throughput, and compliance with relatively low illicit flows, positioning them as a practical sweet spot for general-purpose TradFi applications.
At the opposite extreme are the “high-frequency engines”—Solana, BNB Chain, XRP Ledger, and TRON.
These networks dominate in raw transaction volume and near-zero fees, suiting bursty, high-speed use cases.
Solana, for instance, handles more than double the transactions per second of its nearest competitor and has steadily gained market share.
Recent on-chain data underscores these differences.
Post-Dencun upgrade, Ethereum mainnet fees have stabilized dramatically, while TRON shows near-perfect predictability (zero kurtosis in fee distribution). Bitcoin, by contrast, exhibits extreme volatility with spikes tied to network congestion.
Arbitrum leads in time-to-finality, crucial for high-value assets needing quick, irreversible settlement.
Contagion risk—measured by large CEX-to-CEX transfers—remains volatile on Solana but stable and lower on Bitcoin and Ethereum.
Illicit exposure stays minimal on high-liquidity networks like Ethereum, Solana, and Base, though compliance tools remain essential everywhere.
Institutional momentum reflects this nuance. BlackRock’s BUIDL tokenized money market fund, the sector’s largest by assets, launched on Ethereum and expanded across multiple chains for flexibility.
Franklin Templeton added Solana support to its OnChain U.S. Government Money Fund in early 2025, citing superior throughput and maturing infrastructure.
Société Générale’s Forge platform issues digital bonds on Ethereum mainnet, prioritizing finality and auditability.
As stablecoin volumes are projected to surge dramatically in the coming decade, tokenization could reshape hundreds of trillions in market infrastructure.
Chainalysis advises institutions to let asset-specific needs—rather than brand recognition—guide decisions, using transparent on-chain metrics as their compass.
Multi-chain strategies are emerging as the pragmatic path forward, offering investors choice while mitigating single-network risks. Chainalysis has concluded that for TradFi players, the ones who succeed long-term will most likely be those who choose infrastructure as deliberately as they select the assets themselves.