Glider and Ondo Finance have jointly launched a new platform enabling retail investors to build and automate custom portfolios of tokenized U.S. stocks. The service offers direct exposure to equities without requiring a traditional brokerage account.
The platform allows users to create personalized baskets of on-chain stocks that track real-world assets, eliminating the need for wallets, gas fees, or manual transaction management. According to Glider co-founder and CEO Brian Huang, the key differentiator from traditional exchange-traded funds (ETFs) is the ability for users to construct index-like portfolios with custom weightings that are automatically maintained, avoiding reliance on pre-bundled, pooled products.
The system automatically executes and rebalances these portfolios, allowing users to gain exposure to tokenized equities without managing individual trades. The underlying assets track the price of real shares and can be traded beyond standard market hours. Huang emphasized that this "direct indexing" model avoids the liquidity constraints that have historically limited on-chain ETF offerings, as users hold the underlying assets directly and tap into their inherent liquidity.
Tokenized stocks on Ondo's platform are designed to mirror their underlying share prices and can be transferred and traded on-chain, while Glider handles the automation of portfolio construction and rebalancing. The initial rollout will focus on tokenized U.S. equities, with plans to expand into additional asset classes like commodities and introduce features for lending positions to generate yield.
A spokesperson for Ondo noted the platform is not currently available to U.S. users but confirmed the company holds several SEC registrations, positioning it for a potential future U.S. launch.
The news coincides with a broader surge in tokenized real-world assets (RWAs). Data from RWA.xyz shows the total value of tokenized RWAs has grown sharply to around $26.5 billion, up from approximately $7.5 billion a year ago. Of this, around $908.5 million are tokenized stocks.
This growth is being driven significantly by legacy finance institutions. BlackRock's BUIDL fund, a tokenized U.S. Treasury product on Ethereum, surpassed $500 million in assets under management within weeks of its March 2024 launch. Other major players like JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, and Goldman Sachs have also launched tokenized products on public blockchains, establishing traditional Wall Street firms as the primary force behind this crypto use case.
The trend marks a shift from earlier, failed crypto-native attempts at stock tokenization, such as Mirror Protocol and Synthetix, which lacked the necessary regulatory frameworks and custody infrastructure. In contrast, legacy institutions leverage existing broker-dealer registrations and custodial relationships.
Regulatory milestones are also advancing, with the SEC recently approving Nasdaq's framework for tokenized securities trading and the New York Stock Exchange developing its own platform.
