Ondo Finance is urging U.S. regulators to rethink how traditional financial market infrastructure operates, arguing that blockchain technology can address a range of market risks without duplicating legacy systems. The company's proposal arrives as the SEC and CFTC examine how existing frameworks can accommodate digital-asset markets and newer forms of derivatives trading. Comment letters such as Ondo's are a formal channel through which market participants feed into U.S. rulemaking, and digital-asset firms have used the process extensively as agencies weigh how to classify and oversee crypto derivatives.

Ondo has submitted three comment letters asking U.S. regulators to create new rules for blockchains. The company firmly believes that perpetual futures, modern margining, and onchain data can coexist with existing regulations. It also opposes U.S.-listed stock perpetuals trading offshore and seeks to bring them onshore.

Ondo Targets Three Areas of Crypto Market Structure

Ondo's three comment letters cover perpetual futures, portfolio margining, and market data reporting. While the filings raise distinct regulatory concerns, they share a common argument: rather than taking over dated infrastructure, regulators should assess whether a system is effectively controlling risk.

The most striking suggestion concerns perpetual futures. Unlike traditional futures, perpetual contracts have no fixed expiration date. Ondo argues that continuous funding mechanisms and mark-to-market can achieve the same risk-management goals without a fixed expiry date—and more. This is particularly relevant in crypto markets, where perpetual futures are among the most dominant crypto derivatives traded. Ondo believes the same concepts could help regulate perpetual exposure to U.S.-listed assets.

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Onchain Infrastructure Could Change Risk and Data Reporting

Ondo also broke with tradition on margining. Legacy models were built around slower settlement cycles and fragmented transparency into what qualifies as collateral. According to the company, blockchain-based infrastructure can enable more frequent settlement and continuous monitoring of exposures.

The same argument extends to market data. Onchain systems produce a verifiable, shared transaction history rather than reconstructing trading activity from numerous private records. Ondo contends that regulators should be able to rely on this data if it meets the applicable standards, rather than imposing yet another reporting layer to re-create what is already available on-chain.

The company is already active in the perpetual-futures market. Its push into regulated U.S. markets with blockchain-native derivatives infrastructure comes as Coinbase's derivatives platform listed ONDO Perp Style Futures in 2026. Ondo is also a major issuer of tokenized real-world assets, including tokenized securities and ETF-linked products, giving its market-structure proposals a direct commercial dimension.

Ondo Wants Crypto Derivatives Back Onshore

Ondo's argument extends beyond technology. The company notes that perpetual exposure to U.S.-listed securities is already trading on offshore venues—a market structure it considers counterproductive. It wants the SEC and CFTC to use existing regulatory objectives to bring these products onshore and regulate them within the United States rather than outside it. The pitch lands amid a longstanding jurisdictional divide in which the SEC oversees securities markets while the CFTC oversees derivatives, a split crypto firms have long said complicates compliance for products that straddle both categories.

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Source: Ondo Finance, "Open Markets by Design"