Ondo

What it is

Ondo (ONDO) is the governance token of Ondo DAO, the body that steers the protocols around Ondo Finance, a firm building what it calls institutional-grade finance on public blockchains. The company’s speciality is tokenisation, turning conventional financial assets into tokens that move on chain. Its products include USDY, a yield-bearing dollar token, OUSG, which gives institutions tokenised exposure to short-term US Treasuries, and Ondo Stocks, which offers more than 440 listed securities as freely transferable tokens outside the United States. One memorable detail: the non-profit foundation that issues ONDO began life under a different name, the Neptune Foundation, before becoming the Ondo Foundation.

How it works

ONDO itself is a straightforward governance token. Holders vote on proposals covering economic parameters and smart contract upgrades for Ondo DAO and the related Flux Finance lending protocol, and they can delegate their voting power to other wallets. The token is not a claim on the assets inside Ondo’s products; USDY and OUSG are separate instruments backed by Treasuries, bank deposits and cash equivalents. Supply is fixed by design. Ten billion ONDO were created, the Foundation states there is no scheduled inflation, and about 4.9 billion tokens are in circulation as of July 2026, with the rest still under unlock schedules.

The story so far

Ondo Finance was founded by Nathan Allman. In 2022 the company helped establish the Ondo Foundation, an independently governed Cayman Islands foundation, which took over ONDO issuance and sold tokens to more than 18,000 buyers through CoinList in mid-2022. Those tokens stayed locked until January 2024, when a Foundation proposal opened them for trading. The firm has since become one of the most visible names in real-world asset tokenisation, and its site lists partnerships with institutions including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Mastercard. In June 2026 the company announced the sudden death of Allman at the age of 32; Ian De Bode now leads the business as chief executive.

Where it stands

As of late July 2026 ONDO ranks about 41st among cryptocurrencies by market value, at roughly $1.9bn, with the token trading near $0.39 according to CoinGecko. The products it governs have genuine scale: Ondo reports about $2.2bn in USDY and roughly $1bn in Ondo Stocks, which gained 24/7 minting and redemption in June 2026. Things to watch next include the growth of Ondo Stocks outside the US, progress on Ondo Chain, the network the company has announced for institutional tokenisation, and how regulators treat tokenised securities generally. As with every page in this reference, the figures are observations, not investment advice.