JPMorgan Settles First Tokenized Treasury Transaction on Public Blockchain, Using Chainlink, Ondo Finance

JPMorgan Chase has completed its first transaction on a public blockchain—a sign of the financial powerhouse’s deepening involvement with the Web3 world.

The global bank on Wednesday settled a transaction involving tokenized U.S. Treasuries on Ondo Finance, using Chainlink to connect between private and public networks, according to a joint statement from the companies. The experiment marks the latest development in JPMorgan’s decentralized finance project called Kinexys—a platform that aims to bridge the gap between traditional finance and DeFi.

“The debut transaction…isn’t just a major milestone, it’s a statement about the future of finance,” Ondo Finance CEO Nathan Allman said Thursday in a statement shared with Decrypt.

JPMorgan and Chainlink didn’t immediately respond to Decrypt’s request for comment.

JPMorgan’s latest push into Web3 comes as real-world-asset tokenization gains traction, particularly among institutional investors.

The total-value locked of RWAs on blockchains topped $12 billion as of the time of writing, with assets spread across more than 80 decentralized finance platforms, DeFi Llama data shows. Meanwhile, BlackRock’s USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund holds nearly $3 billion in assets, up roughly 19% in the past month as institutional investors pour funds into tokenized treasuries, according to data provider rwa.xyz.

JPMorgan has experimented with distributed-ledger technology since at least 2019, when it debuteda private blockchain called JPM Coin. Later renamed Kinexys, it has processed approximately $2 billion in daily transaction volumes and amassed $1.5 trillion in underlying assets of derivatives contracts, JPMorgan said in a statement last year.

The decentralized platform is built on distributed-ledger technology, with the aim of facilitating near real-time, 24/7 cross-border transactions while paring down transaction costs for builders and traders, among other functions.

JPMorgan is one of several financial institutions that is increasing its involvement in Web3 as of late. Earlier this month, Citi unveiled a patlrtnership with SDX to tokenize private companies’ shares for wealthy investors.

Edited by James Rubin