In brief
- JP Morgan Chase settled its first transaction on a public blockchain this week.
- The transaction comes roughly six years after the Financial titan debuted its decentralized platform, JPM Coin.
- It marks JP Morgan's deepening push into blockchain technology as institutional investors embrace tokenized real-world assets.
JP Morgan has completed its first transaction on a public blockchain—a sign of the financial powerhouse's deepening involvement with the Web3 world.
The global bank on Wednesday settled a transaction involving tokenized U.S. Treasuries on Ondo Finance, using Chainlink to connect between private and public networks, according to a joint statement from the companies.
The experiment marks the latest development in JP Morgan's decentralized finance project called Kinexys—a platform that aims to bridge the gap between traditional finance and DeFi.
"The debut transaction…isn’t just a major milestone, it’s a statement about the future of finance,” Ondo Finance CEO Nathan Allman said Thursday in a statement shared with Decrypt.
JP Morgan and Chainlink didn't immediately respond to Decrypt's request for comment.
In a comment to Decrypt, Colin Cunningham, head of tokenization at Chainlink Labs, noted that JP Morgan's transaction marked "the first time a major global bank has connected its core payment systems to a public blockchain."
"It’s a foundational step toward a future where real-world assets like U.S. Treasuries can move seamlessly across public and private chains," Cunningham wrote. "What’s especially powerful here is that JP Morgan’s payments chain is already proven at scale and supported by a global institutional user base—which means this isn’t just a test, it’s a model for real adoption.”
JP Morgan's latest push into Web3 comes as real-world-asset tokenization gains traction, particularly among institutional investors.
The total value locked of RWAs on blockchains topped $12 billion as of the time of writing, with assets spread across more than 80 decentralized finance platforms, DeFi Llama data shows. Meanwhile, BlackRock's USD Institutional Digital Liquidity Fund holds nearly $3 billion in assets, up roughly 19% in the past month as institutional investors pour funds into tokenized treasuries, according to data provider rwa.xyz.
JP Morgan has experimented with distributed-ledger technology since at least 2019, when it debuted a private blockchain called JPM Coin.
Later renamed Kinexys, it has processed approximately $2 billion in daily transaction volumes and amassed $1.5 trillion in underlying assets of derivatives contracts, JP Morgan said in a statement last year.
The decentralized platform is built on distributed-ledger technology, with the aim of facilitating near real-time, 24/7 cross-border transactions while paring down transaction costs for builders and traders, among other functions.
JP Morgan is one of several financial institutions that is increasing its involvement in Web3 as of late. Earlier this month, Citi unveiled a partnership with SDX to tokenize private companies’ shares for wealthy investors.
UPDATED (May 14, 2025, 2:39 p.m.): Adds Cunningham quote.
Edited by James Rubin
