Are Tokenized Securities Actually Improving Liquidity, or Just Changing the Settlement Layer?

I've been looking at the growth of tokenized securities and RWAs, and I'm curious how people in PE, IB, asset management and private markets are thinking about the actual investment case.

There's a lot of discussion around tokenization creating "liquidity," but I'm not sure the distinction between making an asset digitally transferable and creating genuine secondary-market liquidity gets enough attention.

For example, tokenizing a private credit position or a real estate interest could potentially make ownership records, settlement and transfers more efficient. But that doesn't necessarily mean there will be enough buyers and sellers to create a liquid market.

From an infrastructure perspective, it seems like the bigger questions are:

• Does the token have legally enforceable rights to the underlying asset?
• Who handles custody and investor eligibility?
• How are KYC/AML and transfer restrictions enforced?
• Is the asset restricted to a permissioned investor network?
• What happens when an investor wants to exit?
• Does the platform connect to an actual secondary market?
• Does putting the asset on-chain materially reduce settlement or administrative costs?
• How important is the choice of blockchain compared with the legal and operational infrastructure around it?

I'm particularly interested in the institutional/private-market angle.

For someone evaluating a tokenization project from an investment or business perspective, would you underwrite the blockchain component as a meaningful source of value, or would you view the blockchain primarily as an infrastructure upgrade to the existing issuance, custody and settlement stack?

Also curious whether anyone here has seen tokenized securities/RWAs used in an actual transaction rather than just as a pilot or proof of concept.

What metrics would you use to determine whether tokenization is genuinely improving the economics of an asset?