Ondo Finance to Launch RWA-focused Layer 1 Blockchain

Ondo Finance, the leading real-world asset (RWA) protocol by market capitalization, unveiled several new initiatives this week, including Ondo Chain, the protocol’s own Layer 1 blockchain.

Ondo Chain will be purpose-built for institutional-level RWAs and is being advised by Ondo Ecosystem partners such as Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Google Cloud. Ondo is best known as an asset issuer and settlement provider to tokenized Treasury funds such as Blackrock’s BUIDL.

Ondo Chain aims to offer an alternative to current public blockchains that lack the necessary infrastructure and features to propel regulated assets forward. Ondo Chain will combine aspects of public and private blockchains, enabling features such as staking RWAs for network security and DeFi support for borrowing and lending, but will also run permissioned validators to prevent permissionless actions such as MEV frontrunning.

The chain will run a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism with validators run by select financial institutions and asset managers, allowing them to create and manage omnichain RWAs.

Earlier in the week, Ondo also unveiled its global markets (GM) tokenization platform. The GM platform allows issuers to “create tokens that are more freely transferable, similar to stablecoins - with permissioning built into the distribution layer” in order to meet compliance obligations.

Per Ondo’s blog post, “What stablecoins did for dollars, Ondo GM will do for securities.”

Despite the flurry of announcements, the ONDO token is down 15% over the last seven days alongside the rest of the altcoin market. The token trades at $1.37, or a $13 billion fully diluted valuation, after launching at a $1 billion valuation in January 2024. ONDO is up 480% over the last year.

Ondo Chain was unveiled during the Ondo Summit, a live event in New York City featuring the Ondo team, investors, and guest speakers including the U.S. President’s son, Donald Trump Jr.