Banks and asset managers have launched hundreds of blockchain pilots over the past decade, yet very few have advanced into production. A 2026 Fireblocks survey of more than 600 senior executives at global banks found that 88% had committed a budget to digital-asset infrastructure, but only 16% had reached live operations.
For the institutions that do move into production, the rewards can be substantial. Tokenized assets, excluding stablecoins, have grown from roughly $6bn in early 2025 to more than $31bn by mid-2026, according to RWA.xyz, a data platform tracking onchain asset tokenization. Stablecoins settled some $33tn in transaction volume last year, according to data compiled by Artemis Analytics. JPMorgan’s Kinexys platform, its blockchain-based payments and settlement system, now processes a company-reported $5bn a day.
Most pilots, however, never make it out of testing. The gap between a working pilot and a live product is where many institutions become trapped by slower-moving internal risk and compliance processes – a pattern that shows little sign of changing quickly.
Why pilots stall
Moving from pilot to production requires significantly more internal oversight. For large regulated banks, this process can take years, regardless of the technology involved.
"Best case, you’re looking at a year and a half before you move to production," said Nikos Andrikogiannopoulos, founder of Metrika, a risk-monitoring firm focused on digital assets.
The main blocker sits within risk and compliance functions. According to Andrikogiannopoulos, this is not because blockchain introduces entirely new risks. When Metrika helps institutions build digital-asset risk frameworks, familiar categories such as cybersecurity, operational resilience, reputational risk and IT risk map closely to existing risk structures.
The real challenge lies in pace and capability. Traditional risk operations typically run on a five-day week and quarterly review cycles. Blockchains operate 24/7, and shocks such as exploits or liquidity events can unfold in real time. This requires controls that are far more dynamic than most legacy risk systems were designed to support.
Andrikogiannopoulos compared the current state of blockchain adoption to the early days of cybersecurity. For years, cybersecurity risk was handled by existing IT risk teams and budgets, often falling short of what was required. The same pattern is now playing out with digital assets.
Talent shortages add further friction. Compliance and risk teams in traditional institutions require significant human oversight, yet specialists who understand both digital assets and institutional risk frameworks remain scarce. During the 2022 crypto winter, banks could hire such talent relatively cheaply from struggling crypto-native firms. As adoption has increased, that pool has shrunk, and Andrikogiannopoulos questioned whether institutions can recruit fast enough to build adequate controls before they are needed.
Outsourcing to third-party vendors presents its own difficulties. Few crypto-native compliance providers currently meet institutional standards. Achieving SOC 2 certification is only the first step toward passing a bank’s vendor due diligence process, leaving many institutions exposed to third-party risk when relying on untested suppliers.
Business case over technology
Getting past the pilot stage has less to do with the technology itself and more to do with building a compelling internal business case, said Ryan Louvar, chief legal officer at WisdomTree, the asset manager that has successfully taken tokenized funds from pilot into production.
An institution requires both a belief that the onchain ecosystem will continue to grow and clear evidence of customer demand before a project reaches the firm’s internal committees. "It does take that investment and kind of a continued investment to be able to have that continued oversight to build it into a product that goes from pilot to actual availability," Louvar said.
While interest in tokenization remains high – a recent EY survey found that 64% of asset managers want to tokenize assets – external regulatory developments often provide the final push. The same survey showed that 67% of asset managers still cite regulatory uncertainty as their biggest barrier.
Andrikogiannopoulos welcomed the SEC’s increased engagement over the past 18 months, including open crypto risk roundtables and the use of targeted exemptions and no-action letters where existing rules fall short. Louvar pointed to recent developments such as the GENIUS Act’s stablecoin framework and novel exemptive relief that allows certain money-market funds to trade around the clock.
He cautioned, however, that regulatory interpretations could be reversed by future administrations. Lasting progress, he said, requires legislation rather than guidance alone.
Competitors, collaborators
Once regulation becomes clearer, competitive pressure is likely to accelerate adoption, Andrikogiannopoulos said. "You don’t want to fall behind because now there is something that is compliant," he said. "DTCC has made sure through the SEC to get the no-action letter and make it do it in a compliant manner. Your competitors are doing it and suddenly you have this new capability that you want to definitely take advantage of."
Jørgen Ouaknine, Euroclear’s global head of innovation and digital assets, described the past decade as three distinct phases: ideological, technological and infrastructural. The industry, he said at the Global Blockchain Business Council’s 2026 gathering, is now entering the infrastructural phase.
In this next stage, market utilities such as Euroclear and the DTCC, alongside early movers like WisdomTree, are laying down shared infrastructure. This reduces the need for later entrants to build everything from scratch and lowers some of the barriers that previously trapped projects between pilot and production. However, many institutions may still conclude that the cost and complexity of moving into production outweigh the benefits, particularly while regulatory outcomes remain uncertain.
The remaining challenge, several executives noted, now rests largely with policymakers. Lasting scale will depend less on new pilots and more on whether regulators can create durable frameworks that give institutions the confidence to commit resources beyond testing.
