Abstract
Tokenization is no longer a thesis but a migration: with on-chain real-world assets at roughly $20–22 billion today and sell-side projections running from Citi's $5.5 trillion to as much as $30 trillion by 2030, the value whose safety depends on smart-contract logic is set to climb by about three orders of magnitude — even as the security record of the rails remains poor. This working paper surveys the formal-verification tooling landscape for tokenized finance and argues that securing it at scale requires two layers that blockchain security is still missing.
Executive summary
Tokenization has shifted from thesis to migration. The on-chain real-world-asset market sits near $20–22 billion today, and the institutions modelling its trajectory disagree only on magnitude: Citi's base case is $5.5 trillion by 2030, JPMorgan models $13 trillion, and the more bullish houses run from $11 trillion to $30 trillion. Treasuries, equities, private credit, money-market funds, and trade-finance instruments are moving onto programmable rails — and the value whose safety depends on smart-contract logic is set to climb by roughly three orders of magnitude.
Held against the security record of those rails, that growth curve is alarming. This working paper makes the case that formal verification — mathematical proof of correctness — is the discipline equal to the stakes, surveys the current tooling landscape, and argues that two layers are still missing from blockchain security before trillion-dollar tokenized finance can be trusted to run on it. The full paper is available below.