Interview with Ondo Perps Team: US Stocks as Collateral Is Just the Beginning, AI-Driven Trading Volume Will Be the Key
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Interview with Ondo Perps Team: US Stocks as Collateral Is Just the Beginning, AI-Driven Trading Volume Will Be the Key
Amidst Massive Attention and Trading Enthusiasm, How Does Ondo Perps Propel the On-Chain Derivatives Market into a New Phase of Capital Efficiency?
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsCompiled by: TechFlow
Introduction
On July 7, 2026, the Ondo Perps public beta officially launched. As the first perpetual contract platform supporting tokenized stocks and stablecoins as derivative margin, Ondo Perps exceeded $100 million in trading volume within 24 hours of launch, and surpassed $2 billion in 48 hours.
Amidst huge attention and trading enthusiasm, how does Ondo Perps push the on-chain derivatives market into a new stage of capital efficiency?
On July 9, 2026, the Ondo team will join the TechFlow Chinese AMA for the first time, to deeply share the mechanism design, significant differences, and underlying thinking behind Ondo Perps.
Host:
- Zolo: TechFlow Co-founder
Guests:
- Matt Blumberg: Ondo Finance Head of DeFi
Star: Day1Global Host
[Listen to the full AMA content]
Guest Introduction
Zolo:
Hello everyone, I am Zolo, Co-founder of TechFlow, and also the host of tonight's AMA. I am very happy to invite Matt and Star today to communicate with everyone.
I believe everyone knows that on July 7, Ondo Perps officially started public beta, and achieved over $2 billion in trading volume within 48 hours of launch. Therefore, in today's AMA, we also hope to talk with everyone about the product mechanism behind Ondo Perps, as well as its latest progress.
First, welcome the two guests to make a self-introduction.
Matt:
Hello everyone, I am Matt, currently serving as Head of DeFi at Ondo Finance.
Ondo Finance's mission is to allow more people around the world to equally access high-quality financial products and financial services. We believe that in many regions, including Asia, there are still a large number of users who cannot conveniently access global financial markets. And RWA is exactly the important bridge to help these users get more investment opportunities.
Very happy to be here tonight to communicate with everyone.
Star:
Hello everyone, I am Star, the host of the podcast Day1Global.
Day1Global is a podcast focusing on the AI and Crypto fields in the Chinese-speaking region. I personally have also been very following the RWA track, and have done quite a bit of research on Ondo before. Very honored to be invited here today to communicate with everyone.
The Asian Market is Becoming Increasingly Important
Zolo:
Welcome the two guests again.
Next, let's first ask Matt to introduce Ondo Perps to everyone, and share Ondo Perps' development vision in the Asia-Pacific community and future overall plans.
Matt:
Before introducing Ondo Perps, I want to briefly introduce Ondo's current development situation.
The first product launched by Ondo was tokenized US Treasuries. This product has already achieved good results, and we are also the second largest issuer of tokenized US Treasuries globally.
Later, we found that many users actually hope to trade stocks through blockchain, so we launched Ondo Global Markets (On July 14, 2026, Ondo announced the Ondo Global Markets brand upgrade to Ondo Stocks, hereinafter Ondo Stocks will be used uniformly). Currently, Ondo Stocks has become the tokenized securities platform with the highest TVL.
I think, a very important reason why Ondo Stocks is popular is that our liquidity is very good, this is very important, our model is very different from other tokenized securities platforms, this model also gives Ondo Perps some unique advantages, about this, we can expand later.
As for the Asian market, I think it is especially important for Ondo, mainly for two reasons.
First, in the past, if Asian users wanted to trade US stocks, or participate in US stock futures and other markets, there were actually not many platforms to choose from, and many products could not provide leverage. On one hand, this means trading costs will be relatively high. On the other hand, for users with smaller capital scales, no leverage also means capital utilization efficiency is relatively limited. Of course, leverage itself also comes with risks, which everyone needs to fully understand.
The second point, I think is also very interesting, is to allow users from different countries around the world to more conveniently invest in other countries' stock markets. For example, for US users, buying Hong Kong, South Korean, or other countries' stocks is actually not an easy thing. As global financial markets become more internationalized, we hope that no matter which country users are in, they can more conveniently participate in global stock market investment through Ondo Perps, this will be a very meaningful thing.
In addition, I also think that the current Asian stock market is very interesting and itself contains many opportunities worth attention.
Liquidity and Product Innovation, Ondo's Two Core Advantages
Zolo:
Next regarding Ondo Perps' unique mechanisms in design, and what problems it aims to solve, welcome Matt to give a bit more detailed introduction.
Matt:
We decided to enter the Perps market because we discovered a very big problem, that is liquidity.
Currently, the liquidity of many RWA Perp DEXs actually cannot meet traders' demands. The reason is that these platforms' liquidity mainly relies on market makers, and what market makers value most is capital efficiency.
For market makers, they actually have many choices, they can go to Binance to make markets, or make markets in traditional financial markets. So, why choose to come to a RWA Perp DEX? I have communicated with many professional market making institutions, they generally encounter a problem: if making markets on a Perp DEX, they also need to hedge in traditional financial markets at the same time. And the biggest pain point is collateral management.
For example, on a Perp DEX, they need to prepare stablecoins as margin; while in traditional financial markets, they need to prepare funds again. In this way, both sides need to occupy capital, the whole process is both complex and capital efficiency is very low.
Suppose a market maker wants to short sell a stock worth $100, then to complete the hedge, it also needs to buy $100 worth of spot. That is to say, a total of about $200 of capital needs to be occupied. But in traditional financial markets it might only need about $20.
The problem lies in that spot assets themselves cannot directly serve as collateral for Perp DEX, therefore leading to a large amount of capital being repeatedly occupied, and capital efficiency dropping significantly.
And this is exactly the problem Ondo Perps wants to solve.
Since Ondo Stocks itself possesses very deep liquidity, we found that, if building a Perp DEX, and allowing RWA spot assets in Ondo Stocks to directly serve as collateral, then market makers can significantly improve capital efficiency, providing liquidity at lower costs.
Ultimately, this not only can reduce market making costs, but also let traders get better liquidity and trading experience.
Zolo:
Beyond collateral types, compared to platforms like Hyperliquid or DYDX, what other unique advantages does Ondo Perps have?
Matt:
Ondo Perps just launched this Tuesday, currently still in a very early stage, but if speaking of what we are most focused on at this stage, it must be liquidity. Because for any trading platform, if liquidity is insufficient, users will not be willing to use it.
Although the launch time is still very short, currently our liquidity is already almost similar to Trade.xyz on Hyperliquid. At the same time, Ondo Perps trading volume surpassed $2 billion within a very short time after launch, this speed actually exceeded our expectations, we are also very happy about this.
However, for me, what is more interesting is actually what new products we can make based on this technical architecture in the future, and what new investment opportunities we can create.
One very interesting one is Funding Rate, many people like to buy spot then short perpetual contracts, to get a Yield. On Ondo Perps, the efficiency of this type of strategy will be higher, because if you do the same strategy on Trade.xyz, you have to hold USDC on Trade.xyz, buy spot buy RWA on blockchain, while on Ondo Perps, you can directly use held tokenized stocks as collateral, therefore no need to repeatedly occupy capital, the capital efficiency of the whole funding rate arbitrage strategy will be higher.
In addition, facing the future, we are also doing a lot of preparation around AI, including API, SDK, etc. We believe that future platform users are not just real people, but could also be AI Agents. Precisely because of this, we now when designing every product, every function, will think about a question: Can AI Agents smoothly access and use our platform.
Star:
Here I have a few relatively deeper questions to ask Matt.
The first question is, Ondo initially mainly focused on tokenized stocks. I am relatively interested to know, what is the user profile of this type of product currently? In addition, why do you now hope to further launch Perp DEX on the basis of tokenized stocks? Besides what was just mentioned, that institutions can use tokenized stocks as collateral to provide liquidity, what linkage scenarios will there be between these two products in the future?
Matt:
Actually, most of us did not expect, last September, we launched Ondo Stocks around tokenized stocks, at that time did not expect it would be so popular.
I think there are mainly two reasons.
First, is liquidity. Actually tokenized stocks are not a brand new concept, I myself have also worked in this industry for many years. Before Ondo Stocks, there were already quite a few similar products on the market. But our liquidity model is completely different from other platforms, the outstanding liquidity advantage allows us to provide better trading experience, so more popular with users, especially for Whales.
Second, because our liquidity model is more flexible, therefore can support more types of assets. Currently users can already trade over 300 different stocks through Ondo Stocks. This world changes very fast. Today everyone is focused on NVIDIA, tomorrow it might be SpaceX, in the future new hot assets will continue to appear. Because we can list new tokenized assets more flexibly, so can continuously meet investors' constantly changing demands.
As for the future, I think actually no one can accurately predict which assets will be most important. But my own judgment is, cross-border assets, globalized assets will definitely become increasingly important. This is also why Ondo is now increasingly valuing the Asian market. We believe, in the future global users will all hope to be able to more conveniently invest in different countries' assets, and Asia will be a very important part of that.
In addition, I think DeFi's development around tokenized assets, is actually still in a very early stage, there might also be many new products appearing. Currently most products everyone sees, such as Aave, Morpho, essentially still provide the most basic lending services around tokenized assets, this is just the first step, in the future I think there might appear more AI-based, or professionally managed Tokenized Portfolio.
Recently we also observed, market demand for Yield is getting higher and higher, but will worry about DeFi's security, at the same time currently Yield actually doesn't have too many choices, many users will choose Aave, Morpho etc. protocols to get returns, but these protocols' current yield rates for many investors are not so attractive.
We also saw attempts, for example STRC (Perpetual Preferred Stock issued by Strategy) gaining attention, many users hope to get over 4% returns, at the same time not willing to directly bear risks of Bitcoin etc. high volatility assets, because they think the market might still be in a bear cycle.
Therefore, we think in the future whether Fund Managers, Institutional Managers or various Tokenized Portfolio will all be very interesting. At the same time for this industry, AI's addition will change the situation.
US Stock Market Closed, How Does Ondo Perps Still Remain Reliably Online?
Star:
Thanks for sharing. I have one more relatively detailed question.
Tokenized stocks on Ondo currently are consistent with US stock trading hours, that is to say, cannot trade during the two days of the weekend, pre-market and after-hours liquidity is relatively not so sufficient.
So, for Ondo Perps, during US stock market closed periods, how is price calculated? When users use tokenized stocks as collateral how will collateral ratio be set?
Matt:
This question is indeed relatively detailed, explaining it is also a bit complex.
I'll give an example.
US stock market closes at 8 PM Friday night. During that time, you can see how each asset's price is, you can also see Perp DEX's buy and sell data, although weekend liquidity is not that high, but there will still be many people trading, these data can all be used for auxiliary analysis. Actually currently weekend Perp market formed price direction is already basically consistent with Monday US stock opening direction, we can see Perp DEX has already formed a kind of price signal, although cannot say completely reliable, but general direction is correct.
Of course, the whole RWA Perp DEX industry currently is still very early, every day, every week, the market is constantly maturing. Frankly I originally thought still needed one or two years time, weekend market could form relatively effective price signals. But now looking at it, market forming price speed is faster than my expectation, efficiency is also getting higher and higher.
I believe, in another one or two months, with liquidity further improving, this market will also bring us more surprises.
Star:
There is another related question, if users use tokenized stocks as collateral, its price doesn't change on weekend, but Perp market price is still fluctuating, under this situation how is Ondo Perps designed and discussed?
Matt:
Regarding collateral valuation, we internally actually discussed a lot, also considered many options.
One kind is directly using Friday closing price, but we think, this for traders is relatively big risk. For example if you simultaneously hold tokenized stock spot, and short corresponding Perp, but if weekend Perp price rises, then trader position might generate losses.
So Monday to Friday, we can use traditional market's price, on weekend we synthesize various parties' data, used to calculate an Internal Market Price, simply put, this price will both reference Friday closing price, and also reference weekend Perp market formed price, calculated through a certain weighting method.
We don't really want to completely rely on our market's Perp price, therefore we will set limits on weekend, price fluctuation will be controlled around 10%, this will effectively prevent someone attempting to use small amount of capital to manipulate market.
Most importantly, whether collateral value or Perp position value, both are calculated based on the same set of reference price system. This way if user holds $100 worth of tokenized stocks, simultaneously shorts $100 worth of Perp, then even if weekend market fluctuates, collateral and position will both be re-valued according to same price system, thereby able to maintain whole hedge strategy's consistency, and won't generate extra risks because two markets adopt different prices.
Of course, inside here there are still many complex implementation details, we spent a lot of time repeatedly deducing various extreme situations, hope to as much as possible reduce those avoidable risks, because if traders lose money, then definitely won't come again.
Mechanism Design and Core Barriers Behind Liquidity Advantages
Zolo:
Thanks for Matt's detailed introduction.
From the sharing just now, we noticed, whether Ondo Stocks or Ondo Perps, strong liquidity is all a prominent advantage, so also want to ask Matt to continue sharing, regarding liquidity advantages specifically how are they formed? Why can achieve such good spreads or depth?
Matt:
Want to explain this question clearly, first must understand Ondo Stocks' mechanism design.
On most other platforms, there is a disconnect between primary market and secondary market, the whole tokenized stock issuance minting trading often needs several days, process lacks efficiency, this inefficiency often leads to missing opportunities, also further leads to secondary market's liquidity being very low.
And on Ondo, asset minting and redemption are almost all instant, if you see opportunities in secondary market, can directly go to Ondo primary market to mint and trade for profit in secondary market, this makes Ondo primary market and secondary market's link very efficient, also makes Ondo's secondary market price and primary market price difference very small.
Instant minting and instant redemption are exactly Ondo Stocks' able to maintain excellent liquidity's core reason, and Ondo Perps supports Ondo Stocks' tokenized stocks as collateral, this makes between two sets of products formed linkage, also lets Ondo Perps able to inherit Ondo Stocks established liquidity advantages.
From a longer term perspective, we hope Ondo can become the whole on-chain tokenized stock ecosystem's liquidity infrastructure. In the future, any DeFi protocol hoping to use tokenized stocks as collateral, can rely on Ondo provided liquidity, because everyone knows Ondo always possesses sufficient liquidity.
Zolo:
This mechanism currently should be Ondo is exclusive, want to ask this mechanism itself will have what barriers? Other related products in future possible to quickly replicate this advantage?
Matt:
I think, competition is inevitable.
In fact, already have some competitors started trying to replicate our model, but they currently development progress has not reached our maturity. So, for us, the most important is not worrying about competition, but continuous innovation, understanding what market truly needs.
I think Ondo Perps is just a very good example. Precisely because we through Ondo Stocks verified this set of liquidity mechanism's effectiveness, we have ability to further launch Ondo Perps. We of course welcome competition, because we have already established a set of very high efficiency, very strong liquidity infrastructure, also can on this basis continue develop more new products.
In addition, Ondo Perps located track currently competitors are not too many, we think we in very early stage faster seized user mindshare.
Looking to future, we will more towards traditional finance learn.
We will research traditional financial market's most popular products, such as various Yield Funds, or future combined AI Agent investment management products. We believe, these more complex financial products, future on blockchain similarly will have very big demand.
Of course, we think the most important is still do every stage's every layer product well. Only having best liquidity, highest quality products, can on this basis build more complex financial products.
Crypto industry has always been a very fiercely competitive industry, here has very open, open-source culture, therefore many innovations will all be quickly replicated by other projects. Facing this competition, I think the only truly effective method, is continuous progress, continuously launching new products.
At the same time, we also very value user feedback. We often receive users proposing various demands, such as users hope to trade certain stock on-chain, or weekend market liquidity insufficient, whether we can provide better solutions etc., for these feedbacks, we will all seriously research.
Because we think, truly deciding product direction's, shouldn't just be team's own ideas, but should come from users' real demands.
In the past there were quite a few RWA projects, more focused on technology itself, and didn't truly listen to users hope to see what kind of products. But for Ondo, continuously listening to users, and according to user demands continuously iterating products, this has always been one of our most valued things.
Traditional Financial Strategies and AI, Ondo's Next Step Plans
Zolo:
From your perspective, Ondo Stocks has already covered more and more assets, Ondo Perps performance after launch is also very good. So, in future what other vertical fields will make you feel excited? Or say, what other directions are Ondo hoping to further explore?
Matt:
Actually, Ondo recently hired many people. I two years ago joined Ondo when company maybe not yet 40 employees; but now we already have over 150 employees, at the same time still have dozens of positions still continuously recruiting. This also means, we prepare to advance many new products and new directions.
We think, now is RWA development very critical stage, so we don't hope to miss any important opportunities.
For example, Pre-IPO equity is just one we very focused on direction. Especially in US, if future OpenAI, Anthropic etc. companies list, they very likely will quickly become global market cap highest companies one of. Therefore, we think, Pre-IPO assets future definitely will possess huge market demand, we are also seriously researching related products' possibilities.
Besides this, I personally also very focused on stock markets outside US. Recently, around me many US investors all started following South Korea, China Hong Kong etc. markets. This shows, global economy increasingly internationalized, investors' allocation demands also increasingly globalized.
My own view is, currently US market already very mature, but other countries in this aspect maybe not have US perfect. If you in US Monday evening want to trade NVIDIA or Tesla, traditional financial markets already can provide very good liquidity, but other countries few markets can achieve near 24 hour trading experience.
Therefore I to what we now doing very excited, because I think blockchain has opportunity to help more countries improve financial markets' infrastructure, let global assets can achieve more continuous, more efficient trading.
In addition, we recently also hired many new colleagues, help us research more traditional financial products, such as ETF, Portfolio Management, Yield Funds etc., are all we very focused on directions.
Taking Fixed Income as example, they usually involve bonds, credit assets etc. complex underlying, analysis difficulty higher than stocks. I myself past have five years stock market work experience, therefore relatively familiar with stock analysis, but for this type of products, I still need professionals help me understand, future also might borrow AI to complete more analysis work.
In traditional financial system, if your capital scale not big enough, no suitable network resources, or located overseas, many high quality investment opportunities actually are unable to participate. And I think, blockchain can lower these thresholds, let more users get past only institutional investors could access investment products.
So, I always think, various more complex Portfolio strategies, will be future very important development direction.
If say I personally most look forward to what, that is still AI. I think AI and Crypto's combination, every day will produce new opportunities.
Everyone maybe also saw, yesterday BNB Chain released new AI related plans, hope to build more suitable for AI Agents infrastructure. This lets me start thinking, since more and more work will all be handed to AI Agent to complete, then future investment, why won't along same direction develop?
So, currently Ondo also actively researching AI and RWA's combination methods, although now still no can officially announce specific plans, but our team almost every week will discuss this topic several times, if everyone has what new ideas, also very welcome anytime give Ondo Perps team send message communicate with us.
Let Ondo More Directly Contact End Users
Star:
I want to ask a question about the future.
If stretch time to future two to three years, Matt thinks whole tokenized assets (Tokenized Assets) industry will develop into what appearance?
Ondo counts as this track relatively early explorer and leader, but now more and more participants start entering this market, whether Binance, Hyperliquid, or Robinhood, all are laying out related business.
So, I want to ask, how do you view this industry's future two to three years development? At that time whole market will be what kind of pattern?
Matt:
Indeed, now competitors getting more and more. But I think, this exactly shows RWA is becoming a more and more important market.
When Ondo in 2022 started laying out this direction, many people actually did not favor RWA. They thought this market risk very big, also doubted it future whether really will have demand. So, at that time we entered this industry, actually bore quite a lot of pressure.
And today, more and more competitors entering this track, instead proves market has already realized RWA's value. The reason Ondo able to walk in front, is because we very early believed its importance. Future, we still hope continue maintain this kind of thinking, continuously search for those others have not yet focused on, or have not yet truly solved problems, and around these demands launch new products.
Of course, no one can one hundred percent accurately predict three years later RWA will be what appearance, Ondo again will develop into what.
But if say my own judgment, I think, future global financial markets will all gradually move on-chain.
Future, whether RWA, Perps, or other on-chain financial products, users can all more conveniently invest global different countries' assets. I think, this will to whole world's financial system produce very profound impact.
Today's financial markets, essentially still are by country divided, vast majority investors also mainly invest home country markets. Many excellent companies, if located in capital markets not enough mature countries, actually very hard to get enough capital support. But future, through blockchain, RWA and Perps, global investors can all more conveniently invest different countries' assets.
This means, global capital allocation efficiency will be higher. Excellent entrepreneurs, excellent companies, no matter come from which country, can all more easily get global investors' support. I think, this is future one of most important changes.
Second point, I think future many products in crypto assets and RWA will all coexist. We have already seen many changes happening. For example Robinhood started laying out Crypto, and launched own blockchain; Binance initially mainly focused on crypto assets, now also actively laying out RWA. Currently, users even already able on Binance trade Ondo's tokenized stocks.
These things, if placed a few years ago, almost were unimaginable. So I believe, technology finally will connect global all financial markets together.
Third point, I want to talk about Ondo itself's development.
Reviewing past few years' product evolution, actually can also see our strategic changes.
Earliest product was tokenized US Treasuries OUSG, its main users were institutional investors, needed complete KYC, and had relatively high investment thresholds. Later, we launched USDY. Many users through DeFi protocols held USDY, mainly was to get returns. Then later, we launched Ondo Stocks, but many users were not directly through Ondo use this product, but through centralized exchanges or DeFi platforms trade.
That is to say, past our distribution model more relied on third party platforms, but with products continuously developing, we more and more realize, future must establish with users more direct connections.
Therefore, Ondo Perps is a very important attempt. Users will directly come to Ondo's platform use products, instead of completely rely on other platforms.
Future, we hope more products can all adopt this kind of model, with users establish more direct relationships. Because only like this, we can continuously provide best product experiences, best trading opportunities, and fastest launched new functions. If always rely on third party platforms for distribution, users may not be able to first time experience our innovations, also may not be able to enjoy optimal rates and services.
Therefore, our future one of goals, is to build Ondo into a truly end-user facing financial platform.
Zolo:
Okay, thanks for Matt and Star tonight's communication and sharing, today's Space up to here already nearing end, look forward to RWA future bringing industry more surprises, also welcome everyone continue follow Ondo Perps' subsequent dynamics.
Disclaimer: Ondo Perps is not available in the United States, Canada, Panama or other jurisdictions subject to judicial restrictions. Any third-party projects, products or services mentioned herein are for illustration or information purposes only and do not imply any endorsement, affiliation or approval. The content shared in this AMA does not constitute any invitation, recommendation or investment advice. Anyone should seek independent professional advice before making any decisions. Trading leveraged products carries significant risks.
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