Skip to main content

Chainlink Cracks Wall Street Open: How 24/5 Equities Data Streams Unlock the $80 Trillion Stock Market for DeFi

· 8 min read
Dora Noda
Dora Noda
Software Engineer

For the first time in history, DeFi protocols can access real-time U.S. stock market data during after-hours and overnight sessions. Chainlink's January 2026 launch of 24/5 U.S. Equities Data Streams delivers sub-second pricing for major American stocks and ETFs directly on-chain—across more than 40 blockchains—bridging the $80 trillion U.S. equities market with the always-on world of decentralized finance. The temporal divide that has kept traditional equities and blockchain trading in separate universes is officially closing.

Blockchain markets never sleep. DeFi protocols operate 24/7, 365 days a year. But U.S. equity markets trade across fragmented sessions: regular hours (9:30 AM – 4:00 PM ET), pre-market, post-market, and closed weekends. This mismatch created a fundamental infrastructure gap.

Most on-chain data solutions only provided a single price point for equities during standard trading hours. After 4 PM ET, pricing went dark. Weekends meant two full days of stale data. For any protocol trying to build perpetual futures, lending markets, or synthetic equities tied to U.S. stocks, these pricing blind spots introduced unacceptable risk.

The problem wasn't just inconvenience—it was structural. Tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) have surged past $20 billion (excluding stablecoins), with projections reaching $400 billion by year-end 2026. But U.S. equities remained "significantly underrepresented" on-chain, according to Chainlink. Without reliable off-hours pricing, developers couldn't build secure, scalable equity-based financial products.

Chainlink's 24/5 Equities Streams eliminate this gap. By aggregating data from multiple primary and backup sources through decentralized oracle networks (DONs), the service delivers continuous pricing across regular, pre-market, post-market, and overnight sessions—five days a week, with plans to explore full 24/7 capabilities.

What the Data Streams Actually Deliver​

The expanded feeds go far beyond simple price updates. Each stream includes:

  • Mid-price data for core pricing
  • Bid and ask prices for spread analysis
  • Bid and ask volumes for liquidity assessment
  • Last traded prices for execution reference
  • Market-status flags indicating session state
  • Staleness indicators for data freshness verification

Each data point is timestamped, allowing protocols to automatically differentiate between fresh and stale prices, pause trading during market closures or halts, and implement context-aware risk management in real time.

Unlike traditional price feeds that push periodic updates, Data Streams deliver sub-second updates only when trades occur. This reduces gas costs while supporting continuous trading—a critical efficiency for DeFi protocols operating on-chain.

The streams cover all major U.S. equities and ETFs, including SPY, QQQ, NVDA, AAPL, MSFT, and more. They're currently live across 37 different blockchain networks, with expansion to over 40 chains completed by the January 2026 announcement.

Early Adopters and Use Cases​

Multiple protocols have already integrated Chainlink's 24/5 Equities Streams:

Lighter – The perpetual DEX has integrated the feeds for equity derivatives trading. With 89% airdrop odds according to prediction markets and leading 30-day volume among perp DEXs, Lighter represents a key distribution channel for the new data infrastructure.

BitMEX – The veteran derivatives exchange is utilizing the streams for professional-grade equity derivatives. BitMEX executives cited the data's integrity, low latency, and pricing context as requirements for running around-the-clock equity products.

ApeX Protocol – Another perpetual exchange integrating the feeds for tokenized equity exposure.

Orderly Network – Building omnichain liquidity infrastructure powered by the equities data.

HelloTrade, Decibel, Monaco, Opinion Labs – Additional early adopters spanning prediction markets, trading platforms, and DeFi infrastructure.

The use cases these protocols are building include:

  • Perpetual futures for U.S. equities and ETFs with native support for trading hours and halt detection
  • Lending and borrowing using tokenized U.S. equities as collateral
  • Synthetic ETFs and structured products combining multiple data streams
  • Vault protocols and arbitrage strategies monitoring divergences between real-world and tokenized stock prices

The Institutional Infrastructure Behind the Streams​

Chainlink's equities expansion builds on institutional relationships that have taken years to develop.

The company's Data Standard has enabled over $27 trillion in transaction value and delivered over 19 billion verified messages on-chain. Chainlink claims to secure approximately 70% of oracle-related DeFi value and 84% of Ethereum's oracle market.

More significantly, Chainlink is deeply embedded with traditional financial infrastructure:

Swift Partnership – Swift completed a landmark interoperability trial with BNP Paribas, Intesa Sanpaolo, and Société Générale's SG-FORGE, using Chainlink to settle tokenized bonds across both blockchain and traditional systems. The trial covered delivery-versus-payment workflows and bond lifecycle events, marking the first coordinated multi-system settlement orchestrated as a single process.

DTCC Collaboration – Chainlink worked with Swift, DTCC, Euroclear, and 24 of the world's largest financial institutions to create unified infrastructure for streamlining corporate actions processing. The second phase introduced a production-grade system where data accuracy for confirmed records reaches 100%.

Euroclear Integration – Part of the broader effort to automate corporate actions like dividends, stock splits, and mergers on-chain.

The Total Value Secured (TVS) on Chainlink infrastructure surged to $89 billion in Q2 2025, while CCIP (Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol) now supports 52 blockchains with $19 billion in asset value bridged to Solana alone.

The NYSE Connection​

The timing of Chainlink's announcement wasn't coincidental.

Days before the 24/5 Equities Streams launch, the New York Stock Exchange revealed plans to introduce a blockchain-based, around-the-clock venue for tokenized stock and ETF trading later in 2026. Chainlink's infrastructure appears designed to power exactly this kind of institutional trading environment.

The convergence signals a broader shift. Traditional exchanges are moving toward blockchain rails, while DeFi protocols are gaining access to traditional asset data. The result is a hybrid infrastructure where tokenized equities can trade with the reliability of institutional systems and the accessibility of decentralized networks.

Robinhood, Kraken, and Gemini have already started offering tokenized versions of popular stocks. Nasdaq submitted SEC filings as a first step toward bringing assets on-chain. Ondo Finance expanded its catalog to over 200 tokenized assets, including 98 new stocks and ETFs.

The market infrastructure for on-chain equities is materializing faster than many anticipated.

The $400 Billion Opportunity​

The tokenized RWA market has cleared $20 billion, up nearly fourfold through 2025. Projections for 2026 vary dramatically:

  • Conservative: $100 billion TVL in RWA tokens by year-end 2026 (Hashdex)
  • Aggressive: $400 billion by late 2026 (Hashdex CIO Samir Kerbage)
  • Long-term: $2 trillion by 2030 (McKinsey)

U.S. Treasuries currently dominate on-chain RWAs at $8.7 billion—roughly 45% of total value—but represent a tiny fraction of the $28 trillion Treasury market. Equities represent an even larger opportunity: the U.S. stock market alone exceeds $80 trillion.

Tokenized stocks from Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla through platforms like Backed Finance's xStocks have generated over $457 million in trading volume since June 2025. But secondary market activity remains limited, with most tokenized assets exhibiting low trading volumes and long holding periods.

Chainlink's 24/5 data infrastructure addresses one of the key friction points: reliable pricing that enables confident trading around the clock. Without dependable off-hours data, institutional-grade trading products remain impossible to build.

Challenges and Limitations​

Several obstacles remain before tokenized equities achieve mainstream adoption:

Liquidity fragmentation – Despite $36 billion+ in tokenized RWAs, 1-3% pricing gaps exist for identical assets across chains, and 2-5% friction when moving capital cross-chain.

Regulatory uncertainty – Questions persist around legal enforceability of on-chain contracts, security classification, and cross-jurisdictional compliance.

24/5 vs. 24/7 – Chainlink's current offering covers weekdays only. Full weekend coverage remains in exploration phase, leaving two days of potential pricing gaps.

Adoption curve – While institutional pilots have proliferated, production-scale tokenized equities trading remains nascent. Swift, DTCC, and Euroclear integrations are promising, but haven't yet translated to mass retail or institutional adoption.

Data accuracy dependency – The entire infrastructure relies on aggregated data from primary and backup sources. Any failure in these upstream feeds would propagate to all consuming protocols.

What Comes Next​

Chainlink has outlined expansion plans covering additional equities and ETFs, plus new asset classes including forex, commodities, and OTC markets.

The company's 2026 roadmap includes a Digital Assets Sandbox Expansion in Q1 adding workflows for institutional tokenization trials, and a Blockchain Abstraction Layer (BAL) to simplify enterprise blockchain integration.

For DeFi protocols, the 24/5 Equities Streams represent a foundational building block. The ability to build perpetual futures, lending markets, and synthetic products tied to U.S. stocks—with institutional-grade data integrity—unlocks product categories that were previously impossible.

For traditional finance, Chainlink's infrastructure demonstrates that blockchain rails can meet institutional requirements. Swift's multi-bank settlement trials, DTCC's corporate actions automation, and NYSE's planned tokenized trading venue all depend on the kind of data infrastructure Chainlink is deploying.

The $80 trillion U.S. stock market going on-chain isn't a theoretical possibility anymore. The plumbing is being installed. The question is how quickly builders and institutions will run capital through these new pipes—and what new financial products will emerge when they do.

BlockEden.xyz provides enterprise-grade blockchain infrastructure for developers building on Ethereum, Solana, Aptos, Sui, and other leading networks. As tokenized assets expand across chains, reliable API access becomes essential for building applications that bridge traditional and decentralized finance. Explore our API marketplace to access production-ready blockchain infrastructure.

Share on Twitter