Organized by: Deep Tide TechFlow

Introduction

On July 7, 2026, the public beta version of Ondo Perps was officially launched. As the first perpetual contract platform to support tokenized stocks and stablecoins as derivatives collateral, Ondo Perps saw its trading volume exceed $100 million within 24 hours of launch and $2 billion within 48 hours.

Under the massive attention and trading enthusiasm, how does Ondo Perps push the on-chain derivatives market into a new phase of capital efficiency?

On July 9, 2026, the Ondo team will be the first guests for the Deep Tide Chinese AMA, sharing in-depth insights into the mechanism design, significant differences, and thoughts behind Ondo Perps.

Host:

• Zolo: Co-founder of TechFlow

Guests:

• Matt Blumberg: Head of DeFi at Ondo Finance
  Star: Host of Day1Global

[Listen to the full AMA content]

Guest Introduction

Zolo:

Hello everyone, I am Zolo, co-founder of Deep Tide TechFlow, and I am the host of tonight's AMA. I am very pleased to invite Matt and Star to share with us.

I believe everyone knows that on July 7, Ondo Perps officially began public testing, achieving over $2 billion in trading volume within 48 hours of launch. Therefore, in today’s AMA, we hope to discuss the product mechanisms behind Ondo Perps and its latest developments.

First, let’s welcome the two guests to introduce themselves.

Matt:

Hello everyone, I am Matt, currently the Head of DeFi at Ondo Finance.

The mission of Ondo Finance is to enable more people worldwide to access high-quality financial products and services equally. We believe that in many regions, including Asia, there are still a large number of users who cannot easily access global financial markets. RWA is precisely an important bridge for helping these users gain more investment opportunities.

I am very happy to be here tonight to communicate with everyone.

Star:

Hello everyone, I am Star, the host of the podcast Day1Global.

Day1Global is a podcast focused on AI and crypto in the Chinese-speaking world. I have also been paying close attention to the RWA track and have done a lot of research on Ondo previously. It is an honor to be invited here today to share with you.

The Increasing Importance of the Asian Market

Zolo:

Welcome again to both guests.

Next, let’s ask Matt to introduce Ondo Perps and share the development vision and future plans of Ondo Perps in the Asia-Pacific community.

Matt:

Before introducing Ondo Perps, I want to briefly introduce the current development of Ondo.

The first product launched by Ondo is tokenized U.S. Treasuries, which has achieved good results, making us the second-largest issuer of tokenized U.S. Treasuries worldwide.

Later, we found that many users actually hoped to trade stocks through blockchain, so we launched Ondo Global Markets (On July 14, 2026, Ondo announced the rebranding of Ondo Global Markets to Ondo Stocks, hereafter referred to as Ondo Stocks). Currently, Ondo Stocks has become the tokenized securities platform with the highest TVL.

I believe that one important reason for the popularity of Ondo Stocks is our excellent liquidity, which is very important. Our model is significantly different from other tokenized securities platforms, and this model also provides Ondo Perps with some unique advantages, which we can discuss further later.

As for the Asian market, I believe it is particularly important for Ondo for two main reasons.

First, in the past, if Asian users wanted to trade U.S. stocks or participate in U.S. futures markets, the available platforms were limited, and many products could not provide leverage. On one hand, this implies that trading costs are relatively high; on the other hand, for users with smaller capital sizes, no leverage also means limited capital utilization efficiency. Of course, leverage itself also carries risks, which everyone needs to understand fully.

The second point, which I find very interesting, is that it allows users from different countries worldwide to invest in stocks from other countries more easily. For example, for U.S. users, purchasing stocks from Hong Kong, South Korea, or other countries is quite challenging. As global financial markets become more internationalized, we hope that regardless of where users are located, they can participate more easily in global stock market investments through Ondo Perps. This would be a very meaningful endeavor.

Additionally, I believe that the current Asian stock market is very interesting and contains many opportunities worth noting.

Liquidity and Product Innovation: Ondo's Two Core Advantages

Zolo:

Next, regarding the unique mechanisms designed in Ondo Perps and the problems it aims to solve, let’s invite Matt to provide a more detailed introduction.

Matt:

We decided to enter the Perps market because we identified a significant problem: liquidity.

Currently, the liquidity of many RWA Perp DEX cannot meet the needs of traders. The reason is that the liquidity of these platforms mainly relies on market makers, and what market makers value most is capital efficiency.

For market makers, they actually have many choices; they can either provide liquidity on Binance or in traditional financial markets. So why choose to come to an RWA Perp DEX? I have communicated with many professional market-making institutions, and they generally encounter one problem: when they make a market on a Perp DEX, they still need to hedge in the traditional financial market simultaneously. And the biggest pain point is the management of collateral.

For example, on a Perp DEX, they need to prepare stablecoins as collateral; meanwhile, in traditional financial markets, they need to prepare funds. Therefore, both sides need to tie up funds, making the entire process both complex and low in capital efficiency.

Suppose a market maker wants to short a stock worth $100. To complete the hedge, they need to buy $100 of the underlying asset. This means they need to utilize about $200 in total. However, in traditional financial markets, it might only require about $20.

The problem is that the underlying asset cannot be used as collateral on a Perp DEX directly, which leads to a significant amount of capital being redundantly tied up, hence drastically reducing capital efficiency.

And this is precisely the problem Ondo Perps aims to solve.

Because Ondo Stocks itself possesses very deep liquidity, we found that if we build a Perp DEX and allow RWA underlying assets from Ondo Stocks to be used as collateral, market makers could significantly improve capital efficiency and provide liquidity at a lower cost.

Ultimately, this would not only reduce market-making costs but also provide traders with better liquidity and trading experiences.

Zolo:

Apart from the types of collateral, what unique advantages does Ondo Perps have compared to platforms like Hyperliquid or DYDX?

Matt:

Ondo Perps just went live this Tuesday and is still in a very early stage, but if I were to mention our current primary focus, it would definitely be liquidity. For any trading platform, if liquidity is insufficient, users will be unwilling to use it.

Although the launch time is short, our liquidity is already almost comparable to that on Hyperliquid's Trade.xyz. Furthermore, the trading volume of Ondo Perps surpassed $2 billion shortly after its launch, which exceeded our expectations, and we are very pleased about that.

However, for me, what’s more interesting is the new products we might be able to develop based on this tech architecture and the new investment opportunities we can create.

One fascinating aspect is the Funding Rate, where many people like to buy the underlying asset and then short the perpetual contract to earn yield. On Ondo Perps, this type of strategy will be more efficient because if you do the same strategy on Trade.xyz, you would need to hold USDC there, purchase the underlying asset on the blockchain, whereas on Ondo Perps, you can directly use the tokenized stocks you hold as collateral. This means there is no need to tie up funds again, and the capital efficiency of the funding rate arbitrage strategy will be improved.

Moreover, looking to the future, we are also making many preparations around AI, including APIs, SDKs, etc. We believe that future platform users will not only be real humans but may also include AI agents. Because of this, in designing every product and feature, we constantly consider whether AI agents can smoothly access and use our platform.

Star:

I have a few relatively in-depth questions I'd like to ask Matt.

The first question is that Ondo initially focused mainly on tokenized stocks. I am curious about the current user profile for this type of product. Additionally, why do you want to further launch a Perp DEX on the basis of tokenized stocks? Besides what was mentioned earlier, that institutions can use tokenized stocks as collateral to provide liquidity, what other interconnected scenarios might occur between these two products in the future?

Matt:

Actually, none of us anticipated the popularity of Ondo Stocks when we launched it in September last year. At that time, we did not expect it to be this well-received.

I believe there are two main reasons.

The first is liquidity. Tokenized stocks are not a completely new concept; I have worked in this industry for many years. Before Ondo Stocks, there were already several similar products in the market. However, our liquidity model is entirely different from other platforms; the outstanding liquidity advantage allows us to provide a better trading experience, making it particularly attractive to whales.

The second reason is that our liquidity model is more flexible, allowing us to support a wider variety of assets. Currently, users can trade over 300 different stocks through Ondo Stocks. The world is changing rapidly. Today, everyone is focused on NVIDIA; tomorrow it may be SpaceX, and new hot assets will continuously emerge. Since we can flexibly launch new tokenized assets, we can continuously meet the changing demands of investors.

As for the future, I think no one can accurately predict which assets will be the most important. However, my judgment is that cross-border and globalized assets will become increasingly significant. This is also why Ondo is paying more attention to the Asian market now. We believe that in the future, global users will want to invest more conveniently in assets from different countries, with Asia being a significant part of that.

Moreover, I believe that the development of DeFi around tokenized assets is still in a very early stage, and many new products may emerge. Most of the products that people see today, such as Aave and Morpho, essentially provide the most basic lending services around tokenized assets. That is just the first step; I believe there will be more AI-based or professionally managed tokenized portfolios in the future.

Recently, we have also observed an increasing demand in the market for yield, but there are concerns about the security of DeFi. At the same time, there are currently not many yield options available, and many users opt for protocols like Aave or Morpho to earn returns. However, the current yields these protocols offer may not be very attractive to many investors.

We have also seen attempts, such as STRC (a perpetual priority stock issued by Strategy), gaining attention, with many users hoping for returns exceeding 4%, while unwilling to directly bear the risks of high-volatility assets like Bitcoin because they believe the market may still be in a bear cycle.

Thus, we believe that all types of Fund Managers, Institutional Managers, and various tokenized portfolios will be very interesting in the future. At the same time, AI's integration into this industry will change the landscape.

While U.S. Stock Markets are Closed, How Does Ondo Perps Stay Reliable Online?

Star:

Thank you for sharing. I have a more detailed question.

The tokenized stocks on Ondo currently align with U.S. stock trading hours, meaning there is no trading on weekends and the liquidity before and after market hours is relatively low.

So, for Ondo Perps, how is the price calculated during U.S. market closures? How will the collateral ratio be set when users use tokenized stocks as collateral?

Matt:

This question is quite detailed and a bit complex to explain.

Let me give you an example.

The U.S. stock market closes at 8 PM on Friday. During that time, you can see how each asset's price is doing, and you can also look at the buy and sell data on the Perp DEX. Although weekend liquidity is not as high, many people still trade, and this data can assist analysis. In fact, the price direction formed by the weekend Perp market has already aligned with the direction following Monday’s U.S. market opening. We can see that the Perp DEX has already formed a price signal, which is not completely reliable but usually points in the right direction.

Of course, the entire RWA Perp DEX industry is still very early; every day and every week, the market is maturing. To be frank, I initially thought it would take another year or two before the weekend market could form a relatively effective price signal. However, it now appears that the speed of price formation in the market exceeds my initial expectations, and its efficiency is increasing.

I believe that in another month or two, as liquidity further improves, this market will surprise us even more.

Star:

There’s another related question: if users use tokenized stocks as collateral, and their price remains unchanged over the weekend while the Perp market price is still fluctuating, how does Ondo Perps design and discuss this scenario?

Matt:

Regarding collateral valuation, we have had extensive internal discussions and considered many options.

One option is to directly use the price at Friday's close, but we believe that this poses significant risks for traders. For example, if you hold tokenized stock in the spot market and short the corresponding Perp, but if the Perp price rises over the weekend, the trader's position may incur losses.

So from Monday to Friday, we can use the conventional market prices, while over the weekend, we integrate various data to calculate an Internal Market Price. Simply put, this price will reference Friday's closing price and the price formed in the Perp market over the weekend, calculated through a certain weighted method.

We do not want to entirely rely on the Perp prices from our market; therefore we will set limits over the weekend, with price fluctuations controlled to around 10%, effectively preventing anyone from attempting to manipulate the market with minimal funds.

Most importantly, both the collateral value and Perp position value are calculated based on the same reference price system. Thus, if a user holds $100 worth of tokenized stocks and shorts $100 worth of Perp, even if the market fluctuates over the weekend, the collateral and position will be revalued according to the same price system, maintaining the consistency of the entire hedging strategy without introducing additional risks due to different prices in the two markets.

Of course, there are many complex implementation details, and we have spent a lot of time repeatedly simulating various extreme situations to minimize avoidable risks because if traders lose money, they certainly won't return.

The Mechanism Design and Core Barriers Behind the Liquidity Advantage

Zolo:

Thank you, Matt, for the detailed introduction.

From your sharing just now, we noted that both Ondo Stocks and Ondo Perps have strong liquidity as a prominent advantage, so we would like to ask Matt to share how this liquidity advantage is specifically formed and why it can achieve such favorable spreads or depth?

Matt:

To clarify this question, we first need to understand the mechanism design of Ondo Stocks.

On most other platforms, there is a disconnection between the primary and secondary markets. The whole process of tokenized stock issuance, minting, and trading often takes days, lacking efficiency, and this low efficiency often leads to missed opportunities, further resulting in low liquidity in the secondary market.

However, at Ondo, asset minting and redemption are almost instantaneous, allowing you to directly mint and profit from trading in the secondary market as soon as you see an opportunity in the secondary market. This makes the link between Ondo's primary and secondary markets highly efficient, resulting in a small price difference between the secondary market and the primary market.

Instant minting and redemption are the core reasons why Ondo Stocks maintain excellent liquidity, and the fact that Ondo Perps supports tokenized stocks from Ondo Stocks as collateral creates a connection between the two products, allowing Ondo Perps to inherit the liquidity advantages established by Ondo Stocks.

From a longer-term perspective, we hope Ondo can become the liquidity infrastructure for the entire on-chain tokenized stock ecosystem. In the future, any DeFi protocol that wishes to use tokenized stocks as collateral can rely on the liquidity provided by Ondo, as everyone knows Ondo will always have ample liquidity.

Zolo:

This mechanism should currently be exclusive to Ondo, and I would like to ask if there are any barriers to this mechanism itself? Could related products quickly replicate this advantage in the future?

Matt:

I believe competition is inevitable.

In fact, some competitors have already begun attempting to replicate our model, but their current development progress has not reached our maturity. So, for us, the most important thing is not to worry about competition, but to continuously innovate and understand what the market truly needs.

I think Ondo Perps is a good example. It is because we validated the effectiveness of this liquidity mechanism through Ondo Stocks that we were able to further launch Ondo Perps. We certainly welcome competition because we have established a highly efficient and liquid infrastructure, and we can continue to develop more new products based on that foundation.

Additionally, there are currently not many competitors in the track that Ondo Perps is in, and we feel we have occupied users' minds quicker in this very early stage.

Looking to the future, we will learn more from traditional finance.

We will study the most popular products in traditional financial markets, such as various Yield Funds or investment management products combined with AI Agents in the future. We believe there will be a great demand for these more complex financial products on the blockchain.

Of course, we believe it is most important to ensure that each product at every stage is done well. Only by having the best liquidity and highest quality products can we build more complex financial products on that foundation.

The crypto industry has always been highly competitive, and due to its open and open-source culture, many innovations are quickly replicated by other projects. In the face of this competition, I believe the only truly effective method is to keep progressing and continuously launching new products.

At the same time, we also place great importance on user feedback. We often receive various requests from users, such as users wanting to trade a specific stock on-chain or raising concerns about insufficient liquidity in weekend markets. We examine these feedback seriously.

We believe the direction of the product should not be dictated solely by the team's ideas but should come from genuine user demand.

Many past RWA projects focused more on the technology itself and did not truly listen to what users wanted in terms of products. But for Ondo, continually listening to users and iterating on the product based on user needs remains one of the things we emphasize the most.

Traditional Financial Strategies and AI: Ondo's Next Plans

Zolo:

From your perspective, Ondo Stocks has covered an increasing number of assets, and Ondo Perps has performed very well since its launch. So, what verticals excite you for the future? In other words, what directions does Ondo hope to further explore?

Matt:

Actually, Ondo has recently hired a lot of people. When I joined Ondo two years ago, the company had less than 40 employees; now we have over 150 employees, and there are still dozens of positions continually being recruited. This also means we are preparing to push forward on many new products and new directions.

We believe that this is a very critical stage for RWA development, so we do not want to miss any important opportunities.

For instance, Pre-IPO equity is a direction we are very focused on. Especially in the U.S., if companies like OpenAI or Anthropic go public in the future, they are likely to quickly become some of the world's most valuable companies. Therefore, we believe there will be huge market demand for Pre-IPO assets, and we are seriously studying the possibilities of related products.

In addition, I am also very interested in stock markets outside the U.S. Recently, many American investors around me have begun to pay attention to markets in South Korea and Hong Kong. This indicates that the global economy is becoming increasingly internationalized, and investors’ allocation needs are becoming more global.

I think the current U.S. market is very mature, but other countries may not be as developed as the U.S. in this regard. If you want to trade NVIDIA or Tesla on a Monday night in the U.S., traditional financial markets can provide good liquidity; however, it is rare for markets in other countries to offer a near 24-hour trading experience.

That is why I am very excited about what we are doing now, because I believe blockchain has the opportunity to help more countries improve their financial market infrastructure, enabling global assets to be traded more continuously and efficiently.

Also, we have recently hired many new colleagues to help us study more traditional financial products, such as ETFs, Portfolio Management, Yield Funds, etc., all of which are directions we focus on.

Taking Fixed Income as an example, they usually involve more complex subjects like bonds and credit assets, making their analysis more difficult than that of stocks. I have five years of experience in the stock market, so I am fairly familiar with stock analysis, but I still need professionals to help me understand such products. In the future, AI may be utilized to conduct more analytical work.

In the traditional financial system, if your capital size is not large enough, or if you lack suitable connections or are overseas, many high-quality investment opportunities are actually inaccessible. I believe that blockchain can lower these barriers and enable more users to access investment products that previously only institutional investors could reach.

Thus, I have always believed that various more complex Portfolio strategies will be very important development directions in the future.

If I were to mention what I am personally most looking forward to, it would still be AI. I believe the integration of AI and Crypto will generate new opportunities every day.

You might have seen that yesterday BNB Chain released new AI-related plans, hoping to build infrastructure more suitable for AI Agents. This has got me thinking: since more and more tasks will be delegated to AI Agents, why wouldn’t future investments follow the same trend?

Thus, Ondo is actively researching ways to combine AI with RWA; although we do not yet have any concrete plans to officially announce, our team discusses this topic several times a week. If anyone has new ideas, we warmly welcome you to message the Ondo Perps team to communicate with us.

Bringing Ondo Closer to End Users

Star:

I want to ask a question about the future.

If we extend time to the next two or three years, what does Matt think the entire tokenized assets industry will develop into?

Ondo is considered a relatively early explorer and leader in this track, but now more and more participants are entering the market, whether it be Binance, Hyperliquid, or Robinhood, all setting up related businesses.

So, I would like to ask how you view the development of this industry in the next two to three years? What will the overall market landscape look like at that time?

Matt:

Indeed, competition is growing increasingly fierce now. But I think this only demonstrates that RWA is becoming an increasingly important market.

When Ondo began to lay out this direction in 2022, many people did not view RWA favorably. They believed that this market carried significant risks and doubted whether there would be real demand in the future. Therefore, when we entered this industry, we took on considerable pressure.

Today, however, with more and more competitors entering this track, it proves that the market has recognized the value of RWA. Ondo has been able to lead the way because we believed in its importance early on. In the future, we still hope to maintain this mindset, continuously seeking those issues that others have yet to notice or have not fully addressed, and launching new products around these needs.

Of course, no one can accurately predict what RWA will look like three years from now, nor what Ondo will develop into.

But if I were to share my personal judgment, I believe that the future global financial markets will gradually move on-chain.

In the future, whether it’s RWA, Perps, or other on-chain financial products, users will be able to invest more conveniently in assets from different countries around the globe. I believe this will have a profound impact on the global financial system.

Today's financial markets are still essentially divided by country, and the vast majority of investors primarily invest in their domestic markets. Many excellent companies that are located in countries with underdeveloped capital markets struggle to secure adequate funding support. But in the future, through blockchain, RWA, and Perps, global investors will be able to invest more conveniently in assets from different countries.

This means that the efficiency of global capital allocation will be higher. Excellent entrepreneurs and companies, regardless of their country of origin, will find it easier to gain support from global investors. I believe this is one of the most significant changes for the future.

The second point I think is that in the future, many products will coexist with crypto assets and RWA. We are already seeing many changes happening. For example, Robinhood has started venturing into crypto and launched its own blockchain; Binance, initially focused on crypto assets, is now actively looking into RWA. Currently, users can even trade Ondo's tokenized stocks on Binance.

These developments would have been almost unimaginable a few years ago. So I believe that technology will eventually connect all financial markets globally.

The third point I want to discuss is Ondo's own development.

Looking back at the evolution of our products over the past few years, we can also see our strategic transformations.

The earliest product was the tokenized U.S. Treasury OUSG, primarily targeting institutional investors, requiring KYC and having a higher investment threshold. Later, we launched USDY. Many users held USDY through DeFi protocols mainly to earn yield. Then we launched Ondo Stocks, but many users did not use this product directly through Ondo; rather, they traded it via centralized exchanges or DeFi platforms.

This means that in the past, our distribution model relied more on third-party platforms. However, as our products continue to develop, we are increasingly aware that we must establish more direct connections with users in the future.

Therefore, Ondo Perps is a very important attempt. Users will come directly to Ondo's platform to use the products rather than solely rely on other platforms.

In the future, we hope that more products can adopt this model to establish a more direct relationship with users. Because only in this way can we continually deliver the best product experience, the best trading opportunities, and the quickest roll-outs of new features. If we always rely on third-party platforms for distribution, users may not be able to experience our innovations promptly and may not enjoy the best rates and services.

Consequently, one of our future goals is to transform Ondo into a financial platform genuinely oriented towards end users.

Zolo:

Okay, thank you, Matt and Star, for tonight's communication and sharing. Today's Space is nearing its end. We look forward to the surprises that RWA will bring to the industry in the future, and we welcome everyone to continue following the updates on Ondo Perps.

Disclaimer: Ondo Perps is not available in the U.S., Canada, Panama, or any other jurisdictions subject to legal restrictions. Any third-party projects, products, or services mentioned here are for illustrative or informational purposes only and do not imply any endorsement, affiliation, or approval. The content of this AMA sharing does not constitute any solicitation, recommendation, or investment advice. Anyone making any decisions should seek independent professional advice. Trading leveraged products involves significant risks.