Ondo Finance launches network for CEX-speed crypto trading

Ondo Finance has launched the Ondo Network, a new financial infrastructure layer designed to give institutional traders the speed and privacy of a centralized exchange while maintaining the verifiable settlement and user control of blockchain technology. The network, which the company publicly introduced on July 27, is already live and powers Ondo Perps, a perpetual futures trading platform launched earlier in July.

The launch represents a strategic shift for the company, which had previously announced plans for a traditional Layer 1 blockchain called Ondo Chain. Company officials stated that after consulting with potential users, they concluded that execution speed and privacy, rather than settlement capacity, were the primary barriers preventing on-chain platforms from competing with traditional exchanges. As a result, the Ondo Network is an execution layer that separates the high-speed processing of trades from the final settlement of assets on a public blockchain.

The network's architecture relies on secure hardware enclaves, known as trusted execution environments, to privately run application code. A decentralized group of independent attestors verifies the exact code...