Ondo wants the SEC to sign off on a model where tokens on Ethereum mirror existing securities entitlements at U.S. broker‑dealers.
Summary
- Ondo Finance has filed a no‑action request asking the SEC to bless a specific model for recording securities interests as tokens on Ethereum for its Ondo Global Markets platform.
- The firm argues the tokens are an operational “overlay” on top of existing broker‑dealer custody and do not change who holds securities entitlements or how investor protections work.
- The move follows the quiet closure of an earlier SEC investigation into Ondo and could set a precedent for permissionless‑chain settlement of tokenized stocks, ETFs and bond products.
Ondo Finance has asked the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission to confirm that staff will not recommend enforcement if it records certain securities interests as tokens on Ethereum as part of its Ondo Global Markets (OGM) product. In a blog post explaining its no‑action request, the firm says it is seeking clarity for “a specific model for recording and transferring securities entitlements using public blockchains,” framing the change as an operations upgrade rather than a new asset class.
OGM already offers tokenized notes and securities backed 1:1 by U.S. stocks, ETFs and Treasuries held at licensed U.S. broker‑dealers, with tokens functioning as on‑chain wrappers around traditional entitlements. The platform has expanded to Ethereum, Solana and BNB Chain, with more than 200 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs available on Solana alone and total value locked across Ondo’s tokenized products surpassing $500 million alongside roughly $9 billion in cumulative trading volume, according to the firm’s February update on X.
In its latest submission, Ondo tells the SEC that under the proposed model “investors would continue to hold securities entitlements through regulated intermediaries,” while blockchain tokens are used for “collateral monitoring, redemptions and reconciliation,” effectively turning Ethereum into a recordkeeping and settlement rail that coexists with Depository Trust Company and broker‑dealer systems. “Tokenisation does not itself create novel compliance obligations,” the company argues, insisting that what matters is adherence to existing rules on registration, custody, transfer agency and disclosures, not the underlying database technology.
The no‑action request follows a significant shift in Ondo’s regulatory posture. In December 2025, the SEC quietly closed a confidential investigation into Ondo’s tokenized U.S. Treasuries and its ONDO token “without any charges,” a decision that Yahoo Finance described as “a watershed moment for tokenized securities compliance” and that Ondo itself called a de facto validation of its approach to U.S. securities law.
A separate “roadmap for tokenized securities” submission to the SEC’s Crypto Task Force in late 2025 urged the agency to “formally recognize and permit the use of public, permissionless blockchains in tokenized securities markets” and to provide targeted relief for models where tokens represent claims on securities held in DTC or with U.S. custodial broker‑dealers. The new no‑action bid is the practical test of that roadmap: if SEC staff say yes, it will be the clearest signal yet that U.S. regulators are prepared to tolerate — and even bless — permissionless‑chain settlement for tokenized real‑world assets so long as the traditional entitlements stack remains intact.ecb.
That would align the U.S. more closely with experiments already underway in Europe and Asia, where bank‑linked stablecoins and tokenized money‑market funds are increasingly used as settlement layers for tokenized treasuries and equities, as covered in a recent crypto.news story on the rise of real‑world asset tokenization. For Ondo, which has positioned OGM as “the world’s largest tokenized stock and ETF platform by TVL,” the stakes are straightforward: a favorable response could unlock a path to fully registered, on‑chain securities distribution in the U.S. on top of Ethereum and other public networks, rather than forcing tokenization into private, permissioned silos.
