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Ondo Finance has dropped plans to build Ondo Chain, a public layer-1 blockchain for tokenized assets. The company has instead launched Ondo Network, a private trading system. It is designed to process trades at speeds close to a centralized exchange while completing final asset transfers on public blockchains.
Ondo said the change followed work on its new perpetual futures platform, Ondo Perps. The company decided that a traditional blockchain was not fast or private enough for institutional traders. Publishing orders and positions onchain could also expose sensitive trading information.
Ondo Separates Trading From Settlement
Ondo Network handles trade matching, margin checks and liquidations inside secure hardware systems known as trusted execution environments. These private systems can process orders quickly without publishing every action to a public ledger.
Independent attestors check that the approved software is running and control access to the system’s keys. Final asset transfers still take place on public blockchains. This creates a permanent record of each completed trade. Ondo CEO Ian de Bode said:
“The Ondo Network is the continuation of what we set out to build with the Ondo Chain.”
Ondo Perps Becomes the First Network App
Ondo Perps is the first product running on the network. The platform offers perpetual futures trading and is expected to let users use tokenized real-world assets as collateral.
Ondo says the system can process trades almost as quickly as a centralized exchange. Users can still keep control of their assets. Private execution also prevents individual positions, order flow and trading strategies from being openly displayed on a blockchain.
The network could later support spot trading, lending markets, structured products and settlement services. Ondo said other applications could also use the infrastructure for fast and private trading.
Ondo Expands Beyond Tokenized Asset Issuance
Ondo manages about $2.6 billion across its OUSG and USDY tokenized U.S. Treasury products. It also oversees roughly $850 million in tokenized equities.
The company’s broker-dealer recently received FINRA approval to offer a wider range of regulated tokenized securities and related services in the United States. The new network expands Ondo’s role from issuing tokenized assets to building the systems used to trade them.
