zerohash, the leading onchain infrastructure provider, and Ava Labs, the high-performance blockchain platform built for business, have announced the findings of The Onchain Readiness Report, a new survey examining how banks, fintechs, payments companies, brokerages, asset managers, and crypto-native firms are approaching onchain adoption.

Drawing on responses from 162 institutional operators and executives, the report offers signals on sentiment, investment priorities, adoption timelines, and multi-chain strategy. The findings show that institutional adoption has moved past the experimentation phase for a meaningful share of the market, but that readiness varies sharply by sector — and that a small number of structural gaps, chief among them regulatory clarity, will determine which organizations scale successfully and which fall behind.

Regulation Remains the Industry's Biggest Unlock

Regulatory clarity ranks as both the top-cited barrier to adoption and the top-cited accelerant, ahead of every other factor measured in the survey. More than two-thirds of respondents (68.5%) say regulatory clarity would accelerate adoption more than anything else, ahead of customer demand (60.5%) and proven ROI from peers (45.7%).

At the same time, roughly two in five respondents (38.9%) name regulatory uncertainty and licensing as the single biggest hurdle to adoption — more than double the next-closest barrier, unclear ROI (17.3%).

The dual placement is what makes the finding stand out: the factor respondents most want unlocked is the same one most often named as holding them back, placing regulatory developments at the center of the report's two-year adoption outlook.

Investment Is Consolidating Around Stablecoin Settlement and RWA Tokenization

Stablecoin payments and settlement (37.7%) and real-world asset (RWA) tokenization (25.3%) together draw nearly two-thirds of all expected institutional investment (63%) over the next 24 months, leaving every other use case to compete for the remaining 37%.

Priorities diverge by sector: banks are far more focused on tokenization, with 42.3% naming it their top priority, while fintechs overindex on cross-border settlement (25%).

Banks Show a "Readiness Paradox" Pointing to a Compressed Demand Wave

Just over one in seven bank respondents (15.4%) say blockchain is already standard for their business, the lowest share of any segment surveyed. Yet more than half (61.5%) expect it to be standard within two years — nearly double the overall average of 32.1% — pointing to a rapid catch-up rather than a gradual ramp.

Payments companies (57.9%) and brokerages (45.8%) are already the furthest along.

That 46.1-point gap between banks' current state and their expectations is the arithmetic behind the compressed demand wave: if those timelines hold, most of the segment's adoption work would fall inside a single two-year window.

Asset Managers Are the Segment Most at Risk of Falling Behind

Asset managers are the most likely to say they are behind their peers (35.7%, nearly double the rough average of about 19.1%), the most likely to cite a lack of internal expertise (28.6%, versus under one in ten overall at 9.3%), and the most likely to say onchain adoption is not even on their roadmap (21.4%).

The expertise gap also marks a different kind of obstacle from the regulatory one leading the survey: unlike licensing and rulemaking, in-house capability is something firms can address directly.

Interoperability Confusion Remains a Largely Unaddressed Planning Gap

More than one in five respondents (22.8%) say they simply do not know how many blockchain networks they will need to support over the next two years. That share climbs to nearly half among organizations still evaluating their strategy or with no current plans in place.

The gap matters because decisions on infrastructure, budgeting, and vendor selection depend on knowing how many networks must be supported — choices that are difficult to finalize while that number remains unknown.

AI Agents Expected to Transact on Customers' Behalf Within Two Years

Nearly half of all respondents (46.9%), and nearly two-thirds of product leaders specifically (63.6%), expect AI agents to routinely transact, trade, or manage balances on behalf of customers within two years.

That expectation lands on the same 24-month horizon as the survey's stablecoin settlement investment priorities.

Executive Perspectives

"This data confirms what we hear from institutions every day: the technology is ready, and for banks especially, momentum is building fast," said Mark Daly, Chief Business Officer at zerohash. "The institutions that get ahead of that shift now, by working with infrastructure that's already built for scale, will be the ones setting the pace instead of playing catch-up."

"The report makes clear that institutional adoption is no longer a question of if, but how quickly organizations can move from strategy to production," said John Nahas, Chief Business Officer at Ava Labs. "As stablecoin settlement and tokenized assets become core investment priorities, institutions need infrastructure that delivers the control, interoperability, and scale required for deployment. The organizations building that foundation today will be best positioned to lead the next phase of onchain finance."