ONDO 三週漲 30%，資金在押注什麼？

Original Author: Curly, Shenchao TechFlow

When the market is bad, seeing what's still rising might be a way to gauge which projects are still active.

Bitcoin has been grinding around $63,000 for nearly a month, with most altcoins lying flat and overlooked. The crypto market in the first half of this year has essentially been in a state where, after the meme craze receded, both money and attention are searching for the next destination.

Memes on Robinhood count as part of it, but currently show signs of cooling down; RWA, on the other hand, is another high-conviction battleground.

For instance, the ONDO token was around $0.31 in early July and has now reached near $0.40, up nearly 30% in three weeks. This could certainly be market makers pumping or market cap management. But more interestingly, ONDO's price increase has occurred against a larger backdrop.

On Hyperliquid, the trading volume for tokenized stocks and commodities in the third week of July reached $25.1 billion, according to Startup Fortune, surpassing the platform's crypto asset trading volume for the first time.

Trade[XYZ] has listed on-chain contracts for SpaceX and the latest Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT), with tokenized stocks now comprising 23 of the top 30 assets on Hyperliquid. Binance is also following suit, capturing 56% of the market share for RWA perpetual contracts on CEXs. Even the SEC is discussing opening an "innovation exemption" for tokenized stock trading.

In other words, trading US stocks on-chain is clearly the main narrative for this version of crypto. And Ondo happens to be the most active player on this front recently.

Many Underlying Assets for Those US Stock Contracts on Hyperliquid Come from Ondo

If you see ONDO's recent 30% gain and just think "another RWA concept coin is up," you've missed the point. Ondo's position at this table is different from Hyperliquid and Binance.

Hyperliquid and Binance are competing for trading volume.

Trade[XYZ] has achieved 79% of open interest in the RWA perpetuals track, while Binance's cumulative RWA perpetual trading volume in Q1 reached $450 billion.

To make a rough analogy, they are operating restaurants, and Ondo is supplying the ingredients.

The tokenized stock contracts listed by trade[XYZ] largely derive their underlying assets from Ondo Global Markets. According to AInvest, the on-chain tokenized stocks that Hyperliquid accessed via the Felix Protocol in May also used tokens issued by Ondo.

According to RWA.xyz data, Ondo Global Markets holds over 70% market share in the tokenized stock issuance segment, with a TVL exceeding $5 billion and cumulative trading volume surpassing $18 billion.

The platform features over 260 tokenized US stocks and ETFs, deployed across Ethereum, Solana, and BNB Chain, distributed through channels like Binance, Bitget, MetaMask, and Blockchain.com.

When the DTCC news broke on July 15, ONDO surged 18% in a single day. For an established token, such a strong market reaction happened precisely for this reason.

The DTCC is the settlement and clearing hub for US stock trading; nearly all US stock trades ultimately pass through it. Ondo's on-chain US stock certificates, issued via DTCC tokenization services, appear on the same participant list as BlackRock, J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, and Nasdaq.

This isn't a "partnership announcement" level of news; it's a distribution channel level of news.

When Ondo Goes from Supplier to Store Owner: Perps Data Analysis

After capturing 70% of the upstream market, Ondo is now moving downstream.

Launched on July 7, Ondo Perps is essentially Ondo opening its own trading platform, offering perpetual contracts for US stocks, ETFs, and commodities with up to 20x leverage.

This platform has a unique feature that competitors currently lack: using Ondo-issued tokenized stocks directly as margin. If you hold tokenized Apple or Nvidia tokens on-chain, you can use them directly to open positions.

On Hyperliquid or other perps platforms, you first need to convert your assets into USDC or USDT to use as margin because the trading platform and the asset issuer are separate parties. Ondo combines issuance and trading, eliminating that friction.

According to DefiLlama's RWA Perps rankings, as of July 28, Ondo Perps had a 24-hour trading volume of $221 million, ranking fourth.

Growth is indeed fast, but open interest is only $49.92 million, representing 1.15% of the total market. The volume-to-open interest ratio is 4.4x, indicating money comes in, turns over, and leaves the same day, leaving very thin overnight positions.

For comparison, trade[XYZ]'s same metric is 1.6x, showing significantly deeper capital retention.

A daily turnover of $221 million is a fraction compared to Hyperliquid's weekly volume of $25.1 billion. However, Ondo Perps targets a different user base.

It aims to convert holders within its $5+ billion asset pool into traders, earning fees from issuance and trading. The viability of this logic may not hinge on whether daily volume can catch up to Hyperliquid; whether open interest can climb from $50 million is more critical. Volume can be incentivized through market making and promotions, but overnight positions cannot be forced.

Notably, DefiLlama's overall RWA Perps ranking and Ondo Perps' protocol page show two different sets of numbers, differing by nearly three times (the protocol page shows $77.53 million in 24h volume and $10.3 million in open interest). Those tracking this should stick to one data source for longitudinal comparison; cross-referencing different sources can easily lead to errors.

Is the Promised Ondo L1 Chain Abandoned?

On July 27, Ondo released Ondo Network, replacing the previously promoted Ondo Chain L1 project that had been in the works for over a year.

Simply put, Ondo now splits transactions into two parts. Execution (matching, margin, settlement) runs in hardware secure enclaves – isolated spaces within the chip that even server administrators cannot see into, offering speeds close to centralized exchanges. Settlement (who owns what) still happens on Ethereum. Ondo Perps operates on this architecture.

Choosing not to build its own chain seems, in my view, more pragmatic than forcing an L1.

The L1 track has provided enough lessons over the past two years. Building your own chain means starting from scratch to accumulate liquidity and an ecosystem, whereas Ondo's assets are already spread across multiple chains like Ethereum and Solana. Isolating the execution layer allows for a leaner approach with significantly lower risk.

However, the current architecture has two compromises that even Ondo acknowledges.

First, execution runs in a single secure enclave, not a distributed network. Transaction verification is delegated to a group of independent operators called "witnesses," but their number, list, and identities have not been disclosed, making it somewhat centralized.

Second, the security of the enclave solution is anchored to the chip manufacturer. Ondo has not disclosed which vendor's hardware or chip generation it uses, leaving questions about chip security.

These technical details do not constitute a buy or sell signal, but they indicate Ondo Network currently resembles more of a "verifiable centralized execution layer," still distant from the decentralized endpoint described in its whitepaper.

Nevertheless, for those focused on the ONDO token, the more critical concern is that the CEO stated the ONDO token will assume incentive and governance roles in the future network's decentralization. However, the witness economic model and staking reward distribution are all described as "potential directions" without any timelines attached.

What is the Current ONDO Price Appreciation Pricing In?

Breaking it down, 18% of the price increase came from the DTCC news, which prices Ondo's upgraded distribution channel, specifically the "being on the same list as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs" identity.

An additional approximately 10% came from the partnership with SBI Group (an entry point into the Japanese market) and the overall beta gain from the RWA sector's rise.

The architectural upgrade announced on July 27—choosing a trading layer over an L1—had a very limited impact on the token price.

Therefore, the speculative signal is quite clear: catalysts are more likely from the 70% market share in the RWA issuance side and institutional distribution channels, not from the technical architecture.

From an investment perspective, ONDO at the current price of $0.38 gives it a market cap of approximately $2 billion, down about 65% from its 52-week high of $1.13.

If you believe that on-chain trading of US stocks will become a sustained structural trend over several years (Hyperliquid's weekly data at least suggests the trend exists), then Ondo, sitting on 70% of the issuance market share, certainly has a fundamental logic supporting it.

Ondo is indeed making big moves, and tokenized stocks are indeed the narrative of this era. However, constrained by the overall bearish sentiment in the crypto market, short-term catalysts are unlikely to form long-term structural growth, appearing more as short-term reactions to events and capital games.