Ondo Finance has launched a pre-alpha version of Ondo Perps, a perpetual futures platform that lets eligible traders post tokenized stocks as collateral instead of treating them only as onchain representations of public equities. Users can use those assets to access perpetuals tied to commodities such as oil and gold, along with widely followed stocks including Apple and Tesla.
The service is available 24/7 to traders outside the U.S., Panama, and other restricted jurisdictions. Ondo is also attaching an early incentive program to the rollout, with 150,000 USDC linked to first-week trading activity.
Collateral utility changes the function of tokenized equities
Tokenized stocks have usually been presented as a way to bring familiar market exposure onchain. Ondo’s new product shifts that use case. Instead of stopping at price tracking, the company is placing those assets inside a margin framework where they can support leveraged trading across other markets.
That distinction matters. A tokenized stock that only mirrors an underlying share price has narrow utility, while one that can sit in a collateral system becomes part of a larger trading stack. On Ondo Perps, users can trade perpetual futures on U.S. stocks, ETFs, and commodities around the clock with leverage of up to 20x.
Ondo is testing whether RWA can move into market infrastructure
The launch goes straight to a central question around tokenized real-world assets: can they become active parts of trading and margin systems, or will they remain passive wrappers for offchain securities? Ondo says the platform is built to bring liquidity and capital efficiency closer to traditional derivatives venues while preserving the onchain structure of the assets used as collateral.
Ondo Finance President Ian De Bode described the shift in broad terms, saying, “We are rapidly approaching an investing experience that is, quite frankly, far better than what a traditional brokerage account can offer.” The statement captures the company’s ambition, but the model still depends on how well pricing, liquidity, and collateral management hold up once trading scales.
Jurisdictional limits remain central to the product
The geographic restrictions are not a side note. They show how closely tokenized equities and derivative products remain tied to securities and market rules in traditional finance. Even if the assets trade onchain, they still reference regulated securities, and that keeps access boundaries in place.
By excluding U.S. users, Ondo reduces some of the pressure tied to launching stock-linked perpetuals and equity-backed collateral. At the same time, those limits define who can use the product and how liquidity may form. For institutions and larger traders, jurisdiction is a core part of the business model rather than a minor compliance detail.
Competing in perps with a tokenized asset angle
Ondo is entering a crowded perpetual futures segment where crypto-native venues such as Hyperliquid and Ostium are already active. Its main point of separation is the connection between tokenized real-world assets and derivatives collateral.
The company has been expanding that base over the past year. It previously introduced 24/7 onchain access to more than 100 U.S. stocks and ETFs for eligible investors in Asia-Pacific, Europe, Africa, and Latin America. More recently, it expanded in the U.S. with tokenized versions of BlackRock’s iShares Core S&P 500 ETF and Micron shares under a third-party custody framework. The larger that tokenized stock and ETF inventory becomes, the more useful the collateral model could be for traders moving exposure across equities, commodities, and other perpetual markets.
The constraints are clear as well. Tokenized equity products sit in a complex regulatory zone, and tighter access rules or regulatory scrutiny over stock-backed tokens in leveraged derivatives could slow adoption. At the pre-alpha stage, Ondo Perps is still an early test of whether tokenized stocks can move beyond market access products and become part of core trading infrastructure.