Coinbase, the largest US crypto exchange, has chosen Chainlink to provide price infrastructure for its tokenized stocks, enabling shares of companies such as Apple and NVIDIA to move more freely through decentralized lending and trading marketplaces.

The agreement is especially significant for crypto users outside the US, where blockchain-based versions of US stocks can now be used more like stablecoins and tokenized Treasury bonds are already used across decentralized finance (DeFi).

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

Why an oracle is the missing piece

For tokenized shares to have value in DeFi, protocols must first be able to price them. That requirement is not trivial: smart contracts cannot natively read off-chain data such as equity prices, so they depend on oracles to relay external market data onto the blockchain. According to Base's technical documents, 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 a wallet.

In lending markets, the lack of a trusted price feed prevents accurate collateral valuation and makes it difficult to liquidate positions when they fall below required thresholds.

Chainlink will perform that function for Coinbase. Chainlink is a decentralized oracle network whose Price Feeds aggregate market data from multiple independent providers and already serve as a core pricing source across DeFi. A Galaxy report also noted that Chainlink was already included in the Robinhood Chain when it launched in July, reflecting the importance of accurate pricing data 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 backed one-for-one by real shares regulated by Alpaca and structured to be bankruptcy remote, a design intended to keep the backing assets segregated if an intermediary fails.

Using self-custody wallets, users can hold fractional exposure to companies such as Apple and NVIDIA, trade those assets on Aerodrome, Base's largest decentralized exchange, and in NVIDIA's case use the tokenized position as collateral for a loan on Aave, one of DeFi's largest lending protocols, which already relies on Chainlink oracles for pricing.

The shares use Base's B20 standard, an extension of ERC-20. Once minted, they can interact with DeFi applications in the same way as other on-chain assets. The secondary market does not use whitelisted wallets, which allows the tokens to move across compatible DeFi protocols.

The regulatory wrapper sits in Abu Dhabi

The legal structure is offshore. On August 11, Coinbase said it had received financial services approval from the Financial Services Regulatory Authority, the regulator of Abu Dhabi Global Market, to operate its global tokenization hub.

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

Access remains limited to non-US 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 numbers help explain why the collateral use case matters. As of the end of June 2026, a16z crypto estimated that 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 CoinShares and Token Terminal, even as total DeFi deposits fell by about 15%.

Coinbase is not the only company pursuing 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.

The key question for Coinbase is whether users do more than simply hold these assets. If tokenized equities increasingly function as collateral and liquidity within DeFi, the Chainlink integration could help turn them from digital stock representations 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 to that next stage, where reliable market data and blockchain settlement allow equity exposure to interact more directly with DeFi applications.