Institutions are using Ethereum to launch tokenized stocks, money market funds, stablecoins, and deposits.
In recent months, 35 of the world’s leading financial and technology firms, including BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Fidelity, have launched new products and services built directly on the Ethereum blockchain.
These moves, detailed in a social media thread from the official Ethereum account, signal a rapid acceleration in the tokenization of real-world assets (RWAs) by mainstream institutions.
The trend also highlights Ethereum’s emerging role as a foundational settlement layer for global finance, moving beyond speculative crypto trading into equities, bonds, and institutional payments.
Institutions Push Tokenization and Settlement on Public Rails
The Ethereum X account said on January 19 that adoption by financial institutions had accelerated, pointing to launches spanning tokenized stocks, money market funds, stablecoins, and bank deposits.
For example, Kraken rolled out xStocks on the network, allowing eligible clients to move fully collateralized U.S. equities on-chain, while Ondo Finance launched a platform with more than 100 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs backed by real securities.
Large asset managers have also taken similar steps, with Fidelity introducing its tokenized money market fund, FDIT, on Ethereum, and China Asset Management’s Hong Kong arm launching a tokenized USD money market fund, one of the first from a major Chinese asset manager. In Europe, Amundi introduced a tokenized share class of its euro money market fund on the Ethereum mainnet.
Banks, too, have expanded their footprint. JPMorgan moved its JPM Coin deposit token from an internal blockchain to Base, an Ethereum Layer 2, and later launched its first tokenized money market fund on Ethereum, seeded with $100 million of its own capital. Furthermore, Societe Generale FORGE deployed euro- and dollar-denominated lending and trading products on Ethereum-based DeFi protocols.
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Payment firms and fintechs joined in, spearheaded by Stripe’s expansion of stablecoin subscriptions using USDC on Ethereum, while SoFi issued SoFiUSD, becoming the first U.S. national retail bank to launch a stablecoin on a public blockchain. Additionally, Google announced an agent payments protocol using stablecoins on Ethereum, built with partners including the Ethereum Foundation and Coinbase.
Network Growth Meets Questions About Scale and Simplicity
The institutional push has come alongside rising on-chain activity, illustrated by Ethereum staking surpassing 30% of supply this month, with about 36.2 million ETH locked, according to Ultrasound Money. Wallet creation also hit a record earlier in the month, with nearly 394,000 new addresses created in a single day on January 11.
At the same time, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin warned on January 18 that growing protocol complexity could weaken security and self-sovereignty over the long term, urging developers to prioritize simplicity. His comments highlighted a tension between expanding institutional use cases and keeping the base protocol understandable and resilient.
The breadth of recent announcements shows how Ethereum and its Layer 2 networks are being used as testing grounds for regulated tokenized finance, from funds and equities to payments and settlement, while debates about governance and design continue in parallel.
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