Coinbase has chosen Chainlink, a decentralized oracle network, to provide price infrastructure for its tokenized stocks, enabling shares of companies such as Apple and NVIDIA to move more freely across decentralized lending and trading marketplaces.

The move is especially significant for crypto users outside the United States, as it allows them to use blockchain-based versions of U.S. stocks in the same way that the decentralized finance (DeFi) sector already uses stablecoins and tokenized Treasury bonds.

The timing matters for the wider crypto market. Tokenized equities have become one of the most developed areas of on-chain finance this year, but many of these tokens have remained idle in wallets. Reliable price feeds could change that by making the assets usable as collateral, liquidity, and building blocks for other protocols.

Why an oracle matters

For tokenized shares to have value in DeFi, protocols must first be able to price them. Oracles are built for exactly that job: they take prices from off-chain markets and publish them on-chain, where automated programs can act on them. According to Base’s technical documentation, the token price mirrors the underlying stock price but includes an on-chain multiplier adjustment to account for dividends and stock splits without changing the number of tokens held.

In lending markets, a trusted price feed is essential because it allows a platform to value collateral accurately and liquidate positions when they fall below required thresholds.

Chainlink will perform that function for Coinbase. A report from Galaxy, a crypto financial services firm, said Chainlink was already included in Robinhood Chain when it launched in July, underscoring how important accurate pricing has become for tokenized equity products.

Apple and NVIDIA as collateral on Base

Tokenized shares are already trading natively on Base, Coinbase’s Layer-2 Ethereum network. Base says the shares are fully matched with real shares under Alpaca regulation and are structured to be bankruptcy remote, meaning the assets are designed to remain legally separate from an insolvent issuer.

Through self-custody wallets, users can hold fractional exposure to companies such as Apple and NVIDIA, trade them through Aerodrome, a decentralized exchange on Base, and in the case of NVIDIA use the tokenized position as collateral for a loan on Aave, one of DeFi’s largest lending protocols.

The shares use Base’s B20 standard, which extends ERC-20. Once minted, they can interact with DeFi applications like other on-chain assets. The secondary market does not use whitelisted wallets, allowing the tokens to move across compatible DeFi protocols.

The regulatory wrapper is in Abu Dhabi

The legal structure is offshore. On August 11, Coinbase said it had received financial services approval from the FSRA, the regulator of the Abu Dhabi Global Market, a financial center in the United Arab Emirates, to operate its global tokenization hub.

Coinbase said tokens issued under the framework are backed by underlying shares, while verified holders receive dividends and voting rights.

Access is limited to non-U.S. users in eligible jurisdictions. Coinbase also said transfers are subject to sanctions screening and that assets can be frozen at the wallet level.

Tokenized assets are being used, not just minted

The data helps explain why collateral use matters. By the end of June 2026, a16z crypto, the crypto arm of venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, estimated tokenized stocks had reached about $1.7 billion in market capitalization, more than five times the $329 million recorded at the end of June 2025. Monthly on-chain transfer volume rose from $53 million in June 2025 to $9.22 billion in June 2026.

Deposits of tokenized real-world assets into DeFi lending platforms and exchanges also increased from $2.3 billion in Q2 2025 to $7.4 billion in Q2 2026, according to crypto asset manager CoinShares and analytics platform Token Terminal, even as total DeFi deposits fell by about 15%.

Coinbase is not alone in targeting that demand. The Block reported that Nasdaq is building a gateway with Kraken parent Payward to connect tokenized equities with blockchain networks, while Robinhood Chain already leads in tokenized-stock holders.

For Coinbase, the key question is whether users will do more than simply hold these assets. If tokenized equities increasingly become collateral and liquidity within DeFi, the Chainlink integration could help turn them from static digital representations of stocks into a more active part of on-chain finance.

The idea is not new. Sentora co-founder Jesus Rodriguez has argued that tokenized equities should not merely “exist onchain” but should “do something onchain,” including serving as productive collateral. Coinbase’s Chainlink integration points toward that same next stage, where reliable market data and blockchain settlement allow equity exposure to interact with DeFi applications.