Author: Hu Tao, ChainCatcher

In recent years' RWA craze, US stock tokenization has quietly become the forefront experiment connecting traditional finance and blockchain. It enables popular stocks such as Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla, as well as popular ETFs like SPY and QQQ, to achieve 1:1 physical anchoring through blockchain, allowing non-US investors to trade 24/7 with instant settlements, seamlessly integrating these assets into DeFi lending, DEX trading, and cross-chain liquidity pools.

Ondo and xStocks (issued by Backed Finance, later deeply acquired and integrated by Kraken) are the absolute dual leaders in this field, representing two complementary yet distinct paths that together push tokenized stocks from experimental stages to a multi-billion dollar mainstream narrative.

With recent restrictions on US stock brokers in multiple countries, the market demand for tokenized stocks has ushered in a new wave of enthusiasm, and Ondo and xStocks are expected to become the two biggest winners in this space. So, what are the differences in their technological routes and compliance? In terms of the number of supported stocks and trading volume, who is ahead? What recent product dynamics have emerged? This article will analyze these questions one by one.

1. Major Background

Ondo was founded in 2022, initially positioned to introduce structured yield products to DeFi. Within two years, it raised over $50 million in funding, with investors including Pantera Capital, Tiger Global, Founders Fund, Coinbase Ventures, DCG, CoinFund, Wintermute, and other well-known institutions.

However, with the continued decline of the native DeFi market, Ondo launched its V2 product in 2023, focusing on the tokenization of US Treasuries, partnering with firms like BlackRock to offer users high-yield US Treasury investment opportunities. This product attracted over $1 billion in total locked value during the crypto bear market, leading ONDO token's FDV to temporarily exceed $10 billion.

In September 2025, Ondo launched its tokenized stock product on the Ethereum mainnet for the first time, further solidifying its leading position in the RWA space, with total locked value exceeding $3.7 billion.

Nathan Allman, founder and CEO of Ondo, had worked for many years in Goldman Sachs' digital assets division and had also founded a quantitative crypto hedge fund, possessing both traditional finance and crypto technology backgrounds. However, this month, Ondo announced the unexpected passing of Nathan Allman, with former president Ian De Bode succeeding him as CEO, leading overall strategy, product, and daily operations.

xStocks, on the other hand, acted earlier in the field of US stock tokenization. The company that developed the product, Backed Finance, confirmed its goal to bridge stocks and equity assets to blockchain in 2021, spending years refining the underlying architecture and compliance before launching xStocks in May 2025. It launched over 60 tokenized stocks/ETFs on the Solana network and quickly got listed on Kraken and Bybit.

The parent company of xStocks, Backed, has raised a total of $9.5 million, with investors that include Gnosis VC, cyber Fund, Blockchain Founders Fund, with its team and funding background being relatively ordinary.

With the explosion of the tokenized stock market, renowned compliant cryptocurrency exchange Kraken announced in December 2025 its acquisition of Backed Finance, deeply integrating xStocks into its ecosystem.

2. Underlying Architecture and Compliance

Whether it is Ondo or xStocks, the tokens correspond to real US-listed stocks or ETFs. The issuing organization purchases and holds the corresponding assets through a regulated custodial institution, then mints the tokens on-chain at a 1:1 ratio. Therefore, from the perspective of asset backing, they are closer to on-chain security certificates rather than the price-mapping assets promoted by protocols like Mirror and Synthetix.

Similarly, they also differ significantly from the US perpetual contract products offered by Binance and OKX, which are essentially derivatives (similar to CFDs or futures) and do not represent actual stock ownership, with the underlying usually being synthetic prices.

Although both adopt the "1:1 anchored to actual stocks" model, Ondo and xStocks exhibit clear differences in legal structure, asset custody, and strategic objectives.

The issuing entity of xStocks, Backed Finance, is headquartered in Switzerland, and its products primarily operate under relevant securities regulations in Europe and Liechtenstein. Each xStocks token essentially corresponds to a transferable security, with the underlying stocks held by third-party custodial institutions and managed through special purpose vehicles (SPVs).

The biggest advantage of this model lies in standardization and scalability. After issuance, xStocks can quickly connect to exchanges, DEXs, lending protocols, and wallet ecosystems, thereby covering a large number of traffic entrances like Kraken, Bybit, and Solana DeFi in a short time.

If xStocks attempts to achieve global expansion under the existing regulatory framework, Ondo's goal is to penetrate the US securities system itself.

In 2025, Ondo's acquisition of Oasis Pro became an important turning point for the entire industry. Oasis Pro is one of the few digital securities platforms in the US that simultaneously holds SEC-registered Broker-Dealer, Alternative Trading System (ATS), and Transfer Agent qualifications.

These licenses have long been regarded as the core entry barriers to the US on-chain securities market. After the acquisition, Ondo is no longer just an asset issuer, but has obtained the ability to build a complete system for securities issuance, registration, trading, and settlement.

Therefore, Ondo is in a clearly advantageous position in licensing endorsement and compliance, which is also one of the important reasons why traditional asset management institutions such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have frequently collaborated with Ondo in recent years.

3. Development Status and Dynamics

Although Ondo launched its tokenized US stock feature 3-4 months later, it has been quite leading in terms of expansion speed, currently supporting over 260 tokenized assets, while xStocks only supports over 170 tokenized assets.

However, from dimensions like trading volume and number of holding addresses, the competitive landscape of tokenized US stocks is mainly driven by sales channels rather than the number of stocks.

Currently, the tokenized US assets issued by Ondo have been listed on exchanges such as Binance Alpha, Gate, Bitget, MEXC, and BingX, while the tokenized US stock assets issued by xStocks have been listed on Kraken, Bybit, OKX DEX, Gate, and MEXC.

In other words, currently, among the mainstream cryptocurrency exchanges, only Kraken has launched tokenized US stock assets on the mainnet, while Binance and OKX are still primarily focused on perpetual contracts for US stocks on their main sites, only launching tokenized US stocks in their sub-segments, which does not significantly impact the overall landscape.

Therefore, the trading volume of tokenized US stocks issued by xStocks, which has the full backing of Kraken, often significantly exceeds that of Ondo. For example, for Tesla and Nvidia, the trading volumes of assets issued by xStocks in nearly 24 hours are $24.45 million and $16.44 million respectively, while the trading volumes of assets issued by Ondo in nearly 24 hours are $5.83 million and $8.30 million, with differences above 2 times.

In March of this year, xStocks announced the launch of a points program encouraging users to earn points through trading tokenized US stocks, providing liquidity or participating in DeFi applications. Since this project has not yet issued tokens, while Ondo's total diluted market value has exceeded $4 billion, the anticipation around token issuance and airdrops has greatly further stimulated xStocks' market activity.

xStocks actually embodies Kraken’s strategic goal of building an all-asset trading platform and attracting incremental users. After Kraken's acquisition of this product, it has quickly promoted tokenized stocks as a core growth business. In addition to spot trading, it has successively launched tokenized stock perpetual contracts, margin products, and DeFi integration plans, hoping to make US stock trading a new growth curve for crypto exchanges.

In contrast, Ondo's goal is asset-oriented, consistently pushing the synergy between tokenized stocks and its original treasury products, attempting to build an on-chain asset management platform covering cash, bonds, and stocks. For institutional users, this model is closer to a "on-chain version of BlackRock."

In terms of ecosystem expansion, Ondo has invested more effort in the traditional financial system this year. In March, the asset management giant Franklin Templeton announced a partnership with Ondo Finance to launch a tokenized ETF that can be traded directly in crypto wallets for around-the-clock trading. In April, Ondo also stated that it had reached a partnership with Broadridge, and its tokenized stocks would soon have shareholder governance and voting functionalities.

4. The Beginning of Tokenization Trends

xStocks represents a typical internet mindset: allowing global investors to trade US stocks like cryptocurrencies through lower thresholds, richer trading scenarios, and broader ecological distribution, thereby reshaping the distribution system of traditional brokers. Its core competitiveness lies in traffic, liquidity, and network effects.

Conversely, Ondo pursues a different path. Whether it is treasury tokenization, yield stablecoins, Ondo Global Markets, or the acquisition of Oasis Pro to obtain key licenses in the US securities market, its ultimate goal is not only to issue on-chain stocks but to construct a capital market infrastructure that encompasses issuance, registration, settlement, and trading on-chain. Its competitive advantage comes more from regulatory capabilities, institutional cooperation networks, and barriers of financial infrastructure.

To some extent, the two companies are playing the roles of Robinhood and Nasdaq in the crypto industry, respectively. The former solves the problem of “who trades,” while the latter addresses the “how the market operates” issue. Although they seem to compete in the same market, they are actually promoting the development of tokenized securities ecology at different levels.

More importantly, the industry trend behind this competition has become increasingly clear. Over the past few years, tokenization has been more concentrated in low-risk assets such as US Treasuries and money market funds. As the regulatory framework matures, on-chain liquidity continues to grow, and the entry barriers for traditional brokers keep rising, stocks are becoming the next core assets to migrate en masse to the blockchain.

For global investors, the biggest significance of tokenized US stocks may not be the ability to trade Apple or Nvidia 24/7, but rather the first time securities assets possess Internet-native attributes—instant settlement, global circulation, programmability, and seamless integration with DeFi. Stocks are no longer just a string of numbers in broker accounts but have begun to emerge as on-chain financial assets that can be freely combined and circulated.

Looking back at the history of the Internet's development, email did not change the information itself but restructured how information is delivered; online payment did not change the currency itself but transformed the way currency circulates. Similarly, tokenization may not change the intrinsic value of stocks, but it is redefining the issuance, holding, trading, and circulation methods of stocks.

The competition between Ondo and xStocks may just be the beginning of this wave of capital market reconstruction. As more stocks, bonds, funds, and even private equity assets are moved to the chain, people looking back at today's tokenized US stocks may find it not a new crypto narrative but rather the first core puzzle piece as the global capital market moves onto the chain.

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