Leading tokenization platform Ondo Finance launches a new execution layer, “Ondo Network.” The first application, Ondo Perps, supports RWA-backed collateral.

RWA（real-world assets）tokenization-focused DeFi protocol Ondo Finance has rolled out a major technical upgrade! According to a report by The Block, Ondo officially launched its new Execution layer, Ondo Network, for public release today (27). CEO Ian De Bode said that this is an “evolved version” of the company’s original Ondo Chain plan, aiming to combine the speed of centralized exchanges with the advantages of decentralized self-custody. The network’s first application, Ondo Perps, also went live at the same time, while ONDO’s governance-centric role remains unchanged.
(Breaking: Ondo first launched tokenized stocks backed by DTC rights, and the ONDO coin surged 17% over 24 hours.)
(Background update: Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman has passed away at age 32! The incoming CEO says: his mission won’t change.)

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• Abandoning a full public chain, focusing on a high-performance “execution layer”
• Secure hardware enclave verification, with Ondo Perps as the first application
• ONDO token role unchanged, market cap approaching $2.0 billion

Ondo Finance, the DeFi protocol focused on real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, is undergoing a major technical evolution. According to the overseas media outlet The Block, on July 27 (Taipei time), Ondo officially unveiled a new Execution layer—Ondo Network—for public release.

Ondo CEO Ian De Bode explicitly pointed out that this new network is a comprehensive evolution of the company’s earlier plan “Ondo Chain.” When asked whether this means replacing the old plan, he replied: “This is the actual realization of the goals we set for Ondo Chain in the beginning. I’d be more inclined to call it an evolution, but we are not going to run Ondo Network and Ondo Chain at the same time.”

Abandoning a full public chain, focusing on a high-performance “execution layer”

The original vision of the Ondo team was to build a complete blockchain through Ondo Chain in order to bring real-world assets onto the chain. However, after developing the decentralized exchange Ondo Perps and communicating closely with customers, the team realized that the real market pain point is “execution” rather than “settlement.”

Traditional blockchains bind execution, verification, and settlement together on the same ledger. While this ensures decentralized trust and durability, it is too slow and too transparent to meet the needs of high-performance trading. To address this, Ondo Network adopts a separated architecture that decouples execution and settlement as well as verification, while still allowing users to control their own assets.

De Bode explained: “Ondo Network is a new kind of architecture that tries to find different points of configuration: privacy enabled by default, execution speed comparable to that of centralized exchanges—while preserving a self-custody design, verifiable fairness, and permissionless access. These are exactly what blockchains are strong at.”

Secure hardware enclave verification, with Ondo Perps as the first application

On the security and verification side, Ondo Network introduces a decentralized network of “Attestors,” which determines which code can run in secure hardware enclaves, thereby verifying that the approved code is actually being executed. Currently, the network’s asset transfers are settled on Ethereum, and in the future it plans to expand support for more public chains. In the long term, the network will also submit settled states to public chains to form an immutable record, although for now these records exist only inside the enclaves.

With the network’s release, the first application built on top of it—Ondo Perps—also officially launched. This is a perpetual futures market offering 24/7 trading. The underlying assets cover stocks and commodities, and it allows users to use tokenized real-world assets as collateral. Ondo emphasized that the network is general-purpose; in the future, it will also support spot markets, lending, structured products, and even non-financial applications that require fast, private, and verifiable execution.

ONDO token role unchanged, market cap approaching $2.0 billion

For the token utility question most important to the community, this release does not change ONDO’s positioning. De Bode said that ONDO is still the governance token for real-world assets and market infrastructure in the Ondo ecosystem. He added: “As Ondo Network gradually moves toward decentralization (by bringing in more attestors, observers, and economic security mechanisms), ONDO will become the core token for incentives and governance of this execution layer.”