The quiet stir of innovation often starts with a single announcement. This week, Ondo Finance, a real-world asset (RWA) player, made some noise. They’ve launched their United States Dollar Yield, or USDY, fund on the Sei Network. It’s a significant step, marking the first tokenized Treasury bill product to land on this scalable blockchain.
- Ondo Finance launched its USDY fund on the Sei Network, a significant step in tokenized Treasury bills. This move marks the first of its kind on the scalable blockchain.
- World Liberty Financial, backed by President Trump’s family, has been accumulating ONDO tokens, showing a strategic alignment of interests. This includes a substantial purchase of ONDO tokens.
- USDY is a note backed by short-term U.S. Treasurys and bank demand deposits, aiming to blend stablecoin stability with a decent yield. It offers an approximate 4.25% APY.
Ondo isn’t new to this game. Founded in 2021, they’ve been building institutional-grade financial products onchain. Think of their OUSG fund, which taps into BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, or their OMMF, a tokenized money market fund. These are designed for low-risk, income-generating assets, a steady hand in a sometimes wild market.
If you’ve been following the crypto space, you might have heard Ondo’s name linked to World Liberty Financial. This project, backed by President Trump’s family, has been quietly accumulating ONDO tokens. It’s a strategic move, building up a reserve of these digital assets.
Just this past February, World Liberty acquired nearly half a million dollars worth of ONDO tokens. This transaction happened right around the time Ondo launched its own Layer 1, the Ondo Chain, and its trading platform, Ondo Global Markets. It shows a clear alignment of interests. In fact, ONDO is currently World Liberty’s twelfth-largest holding, according to Arkham Intelligence data. That’s not a small detail.
Ondo stands tall in the RWA space. By total value locked, they manage approximately $1.4 billion in assets. That figure comes from The Block’s own data. It places them among the leaders in bringing traditional assets onto the blockchain. They call USDY their ‘flagship’ product, and it’s easy to see why.
So, what is USDY? It’s a note, backed by short-term U.S. Treasurys and bank demand deposits. The idea is to blend the stability you’d expect from a stablecoin with a decent yield. We’re talking about an approximate 4.25% APY. It’s a bridge, really, between the old world of finance and the new.
Justin Barlow, the Executive Director of the Sei Development Foundation, certainly sees the potential. He stated that “USDY represents the exact kind of high-quality, composable yield primitive that will unlock new possibilities for developers building the next generation of onchain applications.” That’s quite a vote of confidence, isn’t it?
Ondo hasn’t been sitting still. Just recently, they announced the acquisition of Strangelove, a blockchain developer. This move aims to sharpen their onchain capabilities for real-world assets. It’s like adding a specialist team to your roster, ready to tackle complex plays.
They also agreed to purchase Oasis Pro. This acquisition is a big one. It would give Ondo access to a broker-dealer license. That’s the kind of license you need to step into the blockchain-based equities market. It shows a clear ambition to broaden their reach beyond just Treasuries.
Understanding Sei’s Role
So, we’ve talked about Ondo. But what about Sei, the network hosting this new fund? Sei is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 blockchain. It’s built using the Cosmos SDK, a toolkit for building custom blockchains. Think of it as a specialized highway, built for speed and specific types of traffic.
This highway is fast. Sei uses clever tricks like parallel order execution and order bundling. These features help it achieve block finality in just 400 milliseconds. That’s quick, especially for a blockchain. It means transactions are settled very, very fast, which is key for trading applications.
Sei has attracted significant investment. Back in 2022, they raised a $5 million seed round, led by Multicoin Capital. Then, in 2023, a $30 million Series A round valued the company around $800 million. That’s a substantial backing for a relatively young network.
The Sei Foundation, which supports the network’s growth, also launched a U.S.-based non-profit earlier this year. This group focuses on network adoption and awareness. It’s a smart move, especially with the regulatory environment in the country softening a bit. They’re clearly playing the long game.
And it’s not just venture capital. Circle, the company behind the USDC stablecoin, also made a strategic investment in Sei. Around the same time, they bridged their USDC stablecoin to the network. This brings a major stablecoin to Sei, adding liquidity and utility for users.
Now, for the numbers many of us watch closely. SEI, the network’s native token, is currently trading at $0.36. That’s down from its all-time high of $1.14. It has a fully diluted market capitalization of $3.6 billion, with a total supply of 10 billion tokens. About 5.6 billion of those are currently in circulation. Meanwhile, ONDO, Ondo Finance’s token, is trading at $1.04, showing a nice bump of over 10% in the past 24 hours, according to The Block’s data.
Keep in mind that USDY has specific rules about who can use it. It’s only offered and sold to organizations and individuals outside the U.S. and other restricted jurisdictions. So, if you’re in the States, this particular product isn’t for you. It’s a common approach for certain crypto offerings, navigating different legal landscapes.
But USDY isn’t confined to just Sei. It has been issued on Arbitrum, Ethereum, Mantle, and Solana, according to Ondo’s documentation. Their OUSG fund, the one backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL, is also quite spread out. You can find it on Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and even the XRP Ledger. This multi-chain strategy is a sign of the times, aiming for broader reach.
So, what does this all mean? Ondo bringing USDY to Sei is more than just a new listing. It’s a signal. It shows a growing maturity in the real-world asset space. It highlights the continued push to bring traditional financial instruments onto the blockchain, making them more accessible and, in some cases, more efficient.
For Sei, it’s a validation. Attracting a major RWA project like Ondo, especially with its significant managed assets, strengthens Sei’s position as a serious contender for high-performance applications. It adds another layer of credibility to their fast blockchain.
The trend of tokenizing real-world assets isn’t slowing down. From Treasuries to real estate, the digital representation of physical value is gaining traction. It’s a fascinating area to watch, as it blends the stability of traditional finance with the innovation of decentralized technology. Will we see more such partnerships? I certainly think so.
The café table conversation around crypto often turns to volatility and speculative gains. But stories like Ondo’s move to Sei, backed by tangible assets and strategic partnerships, remind us of a quieter, perhaps more profound, transformation taking place. It’s about building bridges, one tokenized asset at a time.
