Ondo and XStocks, who's on the definition chain

By Hu Hu, ChainCatcher

 

In recent years, in the RWA boom, the monetization of United States shares is becoming the forefront of experiments linking traditional financial and block chains. It has achieved a physical anchoring of 1:1 through block chains, allowing non-United States investors to trade 24/7, settle instantaneously, and seamlessly integrate these assets into DeFi lending, DEX trading and cross-chain liquidity pools。

Ondo and xStocks (issued by Backed Finance and subsequently integrated by Kraken’s deep acquisition) represent an absolute twin of this track, representing two complementary yet distinct paths, but together driving monetized stocks from the experimental phase to the multibillion dollar mainstream narrative。

With recent restrictions in the area of United States equity dealers in several countries, the market demand for monetized shares has picked up a new wave, and Ondo and xStocks are expected to be the two biggest winners in this track. So, what are the differences between their technical routes and their compliance? Who is ahead of the data dimensions of the number of stocks supported, transactions, etc.? What are recent product developments? These issues will be analysed one by one。

 

Main background

Founded in 2022, Ondo was initially positioned as DeFi, which introduced structured yield products and received over $50 million in financing within two years, with investments from renowned institutions such as Pantera Capital, Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, DCG, CoinFund and Wintermute。

However, with the continuing decline in DeFi's primary market, Ondo released a V2 product in 2023, focusing on the field of United States Treasury monetization, and United BlackRock and others provide high-yield US Treasury investment opportunities for users. The product attracted more than $1 billion in total warehouse value in the encrypted bear market and pushed the ONDO token FDV into a $10 billion breakthrough。

In September 2025, Ondo, for the first time, launched a monetized stock product on the Internet, further consolidating its leading position on the RWA track, with a total lockout currently exceeding $3.7 billion。

Ondo's founder and CEO Nathan Allman, who worked for many years in Goldman Sachs' digital asset sector, also created a quantitative hedge fund with a traditional financial and encryption background, but this month Ondo announced the unexpected death of Nathan Allman and his former CEO Ian De Bode took over his position as CEO. Overall leadership of strategy, products and day-to-day operations。

xStocks moved earlier in the field of US stock monetization. The product development firm Backed Finance, which has been targeting stock and equity asset bridges to block chains since 2021, has been grinding bottom structures and compliance for many years, culminating in the roll-out of xStocks in May 2025, over 60 tokenized stocks/ETF on the Solana network and landing fast。

the total financing of xStocks parent company Backed was $9.5 million, and investors included Gnosis VC, cyber Fund, Blockchain Founders Fund, whose team was relatively common to the financing context。

With the outbreak of the monetized stock market, Kraken, a well-known compliance and encrypted currency exchange, announced in December 2025 the acquisition of Backed Finance, integrating xStocks deep into its ecology。

 

II. Bottom structure and compliance

Whether Ondo or xStocks, the tokens correspond to real United States listed shares or ETFs. The issuer acquires and holds the corresponding assets through the supervised custodian, and then forges the tokens on the chain at the 1:1 ratio. Thus, from an asset support point of view, they are closer to a chained securities certificate rather than a price map asset that was introduced by previous agreements such as Mirror and Syndix。

Similarly, they differ significantly from the United States Equivalent Contract products introduced by Binance, OKX, which are essentially derivatives (like CFC or futures) and do not represent actual equity ownership, with the base usually being synthetic prices。

Although the “1:1 anchor real stock” model is also used, there are significant differences between Ondo and xStocks in the legal structure, asset trust and strategic objectives。

the main issuer of xStocks, Backed Finance, is based in Switzerland and its products are mainly based on European and Liechtenstein securities legislation. Each xStocks token corresponds essentially to a negotiable security (transferable security), with the underlying stock held by a third-party custodian and managed in isolation through a special purpose carrier (SPV)。

The greatest advantages of this model are standardization and scalability. After the release, xStocks has quick access to the Exchange, DEX, loan agreements and wallet ecology, thus covering a large number of traffic entry points such as Kraken, Bybit and Solana DeFi in a relatively short time。

If xStocks tries to achieve global expansion under the existing regulatory framework, Ondo aims to enter the United States securities system itself。

Ondo completed the acquisition of Oasis Pro in 2025 became an important turning point for the entire industry. Oasis Pro is one of the few digital securities platforms in the United States that both have SEC-registered Broker-Dealer (broker-dealer), Alternative Trading System (ATS alternative trading system) and Transfer Agent (transfer agent)。

These plates have long been regarded as the central entry threshold for the United States chain securities market. Upon completion of the acquisition, Ondo was no longer a distributor of assets but acquired the capacity to build a complete system for issuing, registering, trading and clearing securities。

As a result, Ondo is in a clear position of endorsement and compliance, which is one of the important reasons why traditional management agencies, such as Belet and Franklin Templeton, have often cooperated with Ondo in recent years。

III. DEVELOPMENTS AND DEVELOPMENTS

Although Ondo is three to four months late in introducing a monetization facility, it is leading the way in terms of speed of expansion, with cumulative support for more than 260 monetized assets, while xStocks currently supports more than 170。

However, in terms of the dimensions of transactions, the number of currency holding addresses, etc., the competitive trend in dollarization shares is dominated by the distribution channels rather than the number of shares。

At present, on-line transactions such as Binance Alpha, Gate, Bitget, MEXC, BingX, and XStocks-issued dollar dollar assets such as Kraken, Bybit, OKX DEX, Gate, MEXC are on-line。

In other words, only Kraken currently holds dollarization assets on the main online line, and Binance, OKX still maintains its permanent contract at the main site, with only the dollarization shares on its sub-board, with little impact on the overall pattern。

As a result, the volume of transactions in dollarized shares issued by Kraken, which are fully held by xStocks, tends to be significantly higher than Ondo, which, in the case of Tesla and Nvidia, has approximately $24.45 million and $1.644 million respectively in assets issued by xStocks, and ondo has nearly $5.83 million and $8.3 million in assets traded 24 hours, all of which are more than two times different。

In March this year, xStocks announced the launch of a credit scheme to encourage users to earn points by trading in United States shares, providing liquidity or participating in DeFi applications. As the project has not yet issued a token, and Ondo ' s total diluted market value has already exceeded $4 billion, this currency and airdrop is expected to stimulate xStocks ' market activity to a large extent。

xStocks actually carries Kraken ' s strategic objective of creating a platform for full-assets transactions to attract incremental users. Upon the acquisition of the product, Kraken quickly advanced the monetization of stocks as a core growth business. In addition to spot transactions, a long-term contract for monetization of shares, a guarantee product and a DeFi integration scheme have been launched, with the aim of transforming US stock trading into a new growth curve for an encrypted exchange。

Ondo, by contrast, aims at the asset layer, which has been actively promoting synergies between monetized stocks and their original national debt products, trying to create a chain-based asset management platform covering cash, bonds and equities. For institutional users, the model is closer to the “link-up Beled”。

In terms of ecological outreach, Ondo invested more in the traditional financial system this year. In March this year, the capitalist Franklin Templeton announced that he would work with Ondo Finance to introduce a token ETF that could be traded directly in an encrypted wallet, with a 24/7 deal. In April, Ondo also indicated that it was working with Broadridge to establish a shareholder governance and voting function for the monetized shares under the flag。

 

IV. Commencement of monetization trends

xStocks represents a typical Internet thinking: through lower thresholds, richer trading scenes and wider ecological distribution, global investors can trade in American shares like encrypted currencies, thereby reshaping the distribution system of traditional issuers. Its core competitiveness derives from flows, liquidity and network effects。

Ondo is pursuing another path. Whether it be the monetization of national debt, the securitization of earnings, Ondo Global Markets, or the acquisition of Oasis Pro to obtain key licence plates for the United States securities market, the ultimate goal is not only to issue stock in the chain, but to build a chain-based capital market infrastructure covering issuance, registration, settlement and trading. Their competitive advantages come more from regulatory capacity, institutional cooperation networks and barriers to financial infrastructure。

In a way, two companies are playing Robinwood and Nasdaq in the encryption industry. The former addressed the question of “who will trade”, while the latter addressed the question of “how the market works”. The two appear to compete for the same market, but are actually driving the development of different ecological levels of monetized securities。

More importantly, the industry trends behind this competition have become clearer. Over the past few years, monetization has become more concentrated in low-risk asset areas such as the United States Treasury and IMF, while equities are becoming the core asset of the next category of large-scale migration to the block chain, as the regulatory framework matures, chain liquidity continues to grow and traditional voucher access thresholds continue to rise。

For global investors, the greatest significance of dollarization is perhaps not so much the ability to trade apples or engwaydas 24 hours a day, but, for the first time, to give securities assets the original attributes of the Internet – instant settlement, global circulation, programming, and seamless integration with DeFi. Equities are no longer just a string of figures in the voucher accounts, but are beginning to become financial assets in a chain that can be freely assembled and freely flowing。

Looking back at the development history of the Internet, e-mail did not change the information itself, but reshaped the way it was transmitted; online payments did not change the currency itself, but rather the way it was circulating. Similarly, monetization does not necessarily change the value of the stocks themselves, but it is redefining the manner in which stocks are issued, held, traded and traded。

And the competition between Ondo and xStocks is probably just the beginning of a wave of re-engineering of capital markets. When more and more stocks, bonds, funds, and even private equity assets are moved into the chain, one turns back to today’s monetization, and perhaps finds that it is not a new encrypted narrative, but the first core puzzle of the global capital market’s movement toward the chain。