Ondo Recasts Its Blockchain as the Ondo Network

Ondo Finance, a tokenization company, launched the Ondo Network, an execution layer it describes as the evolution of its vision for Ondo Chain, the blockchain it had planned to build for real-world assets. Ondo said the first version is live.

In its own announcement, Ondo said the network is not a blockchain today: "It isn't a blockchain today; it doesn't need to be. But as the Network evolves, we expect that distinction to get harder to make."

CEO Ian De Bode told The Block, which reported the launch in an exclusive interview, that the network is "the implementation of what we originally set out with the Ondo Chain." He added: "I'd frame it more as an evolution, but we will not be running the Ondo Network and the Ondo Chain in parallel."

Ondo said the architecture uses hardware enclaves for private, high-speed execution, decentralized attestors for verifiability, and public blockchains for asset transfer settlement, separating execution from verification and settlement rather than running all three on one ledger. De Bode said Ondo concluded, while building its Ondo Perps exchange and talking to customers, that execution rather than settlement was the main bottleneck.

Ondo Perps is the First Application

Ondo Perps, a perpetual futures platform, is the first application built on the network, though Ondo said the network is general-purpose and could also support spot markets, structured products and lending markets.

The company described several features as future directions rather than live capabilities, including further opening the attestor set, proof-of-stake security, onchain state settlement, additional cryptographic proofs and selective privacy. De Bode said asset transfers currently settle on Ethereum, with support for additional public blockchains planned, and that the settled-state record currently lives only within the enclaves.

De Bode said the launch does not change the role of the ONDO token, which remains the governance and ecosystem token for Ondo's real-world asset and markets infrastructure.

ONDO traded at about $0.41, up roughly 14% over the prior seven days, with a circulating market capitalization near $2 billion, as of 6:01 p.m. UTC on July 27.