Ondo Finance and the traditional financial giants behind it

Early before the token unlocking proposal was announced, Ondo Finance announced a community loyalty points program and would work with Mantle and Solana to introduce USDY to its blockchain. Just after announcing the token unlocking, Ondo Finance announced again on the 23rd that it would expand its business to the Asia-Pacific region and open its first office in Hong Kong. After that, it also published an ecosystem directory on its official website, disclosing its partners in liquidity, custody and other key areas, among which asset management trust companies include traditional financial giants such as Morgan Stanley, BlackRock, Ankura Trust, Clear Street and NAV Consulting.

Ondo Finance was supported by institutions such as BlackRock and Morgan Stanley as early as its inception, and also received investment from top venture capital institutions including Founders Fund, Pantera Capital and Coinbase Ventures.

Crypto analyst McKenna publicly stated on social media that he is more optimistic about Ondo Finance as a "blue-chip RWA asset of the future" and said that "Ondo Finance has tokenized BlackRock iShares ETFs as a short-term U.S. Treasury bond fund and has innovated in stablecoin-backed cash equivalents."

In March last year, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink said in his annual letter to BlackRock shareholders that "BlackRock will continue to explore the digital asset ecosystem, especially in areas that are most relevant to our clients, such as permissioned blockchains and tokenization of stocks and bonds", and BlackRock's bet on Ondo undoubtedly provides an opportunity for it to enter the RWA field.

Currently, Ondo's Short-Term U.S. Treasury Bond Fund (OUSG) has a market value of US$111.5 million, second only to Franklin Templeton's Franklin OnChain U.S. Treasury Bond Fund and Mountain Protocol's Mountain Protocol USD (USDM), which are US$325.5 million and US$151.1 million, respectively.