NEAR partners with Ondo to bring tokenized US stocks, ETFs with confidential execution

Near Protocol (NEAR) announced a partnership with Ondo (ONDO) to bring tokenized US stocks and ETFs into one confidential account. The launch reflects NEAR Protocol’s focus on privacy as US regulators are making room for on-chain trading and purpose-built crypto market infrastructure.

The partnership uses NEAR Protocol’s cross-chain transaction protocol, NEAR Intents, enabling users to purchase tokenized Real-World Assets (RWAs) offered by Ondo using crypto from 30 different networks, without linking their identities to their positions.

NEAR Intents enables seamless integration of crypto assets from multiple networks, funded with Bitcoin, Solana, Tron, Zcash, stablecoins, etc. It also maintains privacy by using “Confidential Intents,” providing bank-level privacy by keeping user balances, trade amounts, and overall activities hidden and settling them on a private NEAR shard.

Meanwhile, Ondo provides access to hard assets such as tokenized US equities, legal structure, compliance rails, broker-dealer infrastructure, and connections to traditional market liquidity.

In the social media announcement, NEAR emphasized that “Stocks and ETFs are only the beginning. Nearly every other kind of asset is moving on-chain.” This suggests a strong drive from the Layer-1 network to offer more RWAs.

This partnership includes tokenized US stocks like NVIDIA (NVDAon), Tesla (TSLAon), Apple (AAPLon), Alphabet (GOOGLon), Meta (METAon), Microsoft (MSFTon), Amazon (AMZNon) and tokenized Exchange Traded Funds (ETFs) like SPDR S&P 500 (SPYon), Invesco QQQ ETF (QQQon) and more. 

On the other hand, Ondo has emerged as the leading provider of tokenized Treasuries, stocks and ETFs by total value, with $3.66 billion in distributed asset value across its platforms. The Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocol offers 460 tokenized assets and has more than 486,000 RWA holders.

Token Terminal released data showing that the on-chain RWA market stands at $46.30 billion, excluding stablecoins, led by the US T-bills worth $13.90 billion, followed by yield or active strategies at $10.70 billion and credit funds at $6.50 billion.

Tokenized stocks have shown a remarkable surge in market capitalization of $591.90 million over the past 30 days, bringing the total to $2.80 billion. 

In short, the partnership paves the way for an on-chain brokerage and trading infrastructure layer from a conventional tokenization, while US regulations are beginning to accommodate financial markets moving on-chain.