When TradFi Builds Its Own Chains and Issues Stock Tokens, Where Does the Web2+3 Stack Go Next?

EX.IO Research · 2 September 2026

For two years the market has heard the same line — “traditional finance is coming on-chain” — usually followed by an ETF launch, a sliver of Bitcoin in custody, and then silence. A handful of events in 2026 should make everyone sit up: Robinhood, the leading U.S. internet broker, has built its own chain; the New York Stock Exchange’s tokenized-securities trading rules have taken effect; and this week the London Stock Exchange announced a partnership with a crypto heavyweight to move U.K. blue chips on-chain.

This is no longer a scatter of pilot programmes. It is a collective rebuild of TradFi’s market infrastructure. In our view, a complete Web2 + Web3 stack is taking shape — and it answers the question that matters most: what does the second half of RWA actually look like?

A two-month-old chain lit the fuse 

Start with Robinhood Chain. Less than two months after launch, trading volume, active users and protocol revenue have set successive records — income already exceeding that of a number of older public chains. On-chain data cited by PANews points to a flywheel with three interlocking gears.

Gear one: an issuance factory that manufactures assets. Pons, the chain’s largest token-issuance platform, has deployed more than 22,000 tokens since going live. Single-day trading volume has topped USD 308 million — nearly 80% of the entire chain. It rebates 70% of fees to token creators (about USD 20.93 million over 47 days) and uses 80% of protocol revenue to buy back and burn its platform token. Creators, traders and token holders each have a reason to stay. The flywheel feeds itself.

Gear two: making on-chain trading feel like scrolling short video. Fomo, the fastest-growing trading terminal, recasts complex on-chain execution as a social-app experience — swipe tokens, watch the tape, copy trades, one-tap orders. Market reports put App Store additions at around 40,000 users a day, a meaningful share of whom may never have touched crypto before. On-chain trading terminals together account for roughly 47% of network volume.

Gear three — the decisive one: the chemistry between stock tokens and memes. Liquidity pools pairing tokenized U.S. equities with meme coins have appeared on-chain. Trading the meme simultaneously generates volume in the stock token. Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev has said on a podcast that the dynamic exceeded the company’s expectations: memes became the on-ramp that routed users into real stock tokens.

Not just Robinhood: NYSE and LSE are stepping onto the field 

If Robinhood is building a chain upward from a brokerage front door, the exchange giants are rewriting the foundations of the market itself.

The New York Stock Exchange has been the most aggressive. In January, parent Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) announced a new blockchain-based trading venue for tokenized stocks and ETFs on a 24/7 clock — existing matching technology married to a private blockchain, with real-time funding and real-time settlement, retiring the T+1 cycle U.S. equities still run on. Michael Blaugrund, ICE’s VP of strategic initiatives, put it plainly: investors want “to complete a trade at 5:04 p.m. on a Saturday and, at 5:05, use those proceeds to buy something else.” Legacy rails cannot do that. The new platform can. In May, NYSE National’s tokenized-securities trading rules were noticed by the U.S. SEC — joining Nasdaq’s March approval and the Depository Trust Company’s three-year tokenized-settlement pilot to form a complete U.S. regulatory roadmap. In July, tokenization platform Securitize listed on the NYSE and simultaneously issued an on-chain tokenized version of the same ordinary share — the first issuer-endorsed tokenized equity to walk onto a Wall Street main board.

The London Stock Exchange chose to partner with crypto-native distribution. In September last year, London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) launched its distributed-ledger Digital Markets Infrastructure (DMI) and completed a first tokenized private-fund issuance. In February it announced an institutional Digital Securities Depository supporting on-chain settlement of tokenized bonds and equities, with Barclays, Lloyds and Standard Chartered among the U.K. institutions standing behind it. The latest move landed on 1 September: LSEG announced a collaboration with Payward, parent of crypto exchange Kraken, to assess tokenized U.K. equities, with xStocks trading planned for 2027 on its new extended-hours venue, LSE 24. In the coming weeks Payward will also bring tokenized versions of the 100 largest U.K. stocks onto its own platforms. Notably, while offering synthetic-exposure tokens, LSEG has said it is exploring native equity tokens carrying full shareholder rights — tokenized stock evolving from a price-tracking certificate into actual equity.

Brokers building chains. Exchanges rewriting the rulebook. Clearing houses swapping engines. The entire skeleton of traditional finance is moving on-chain.

The point is not “going on-chain.” It is the full stack. 

Lined up, these moves share one logic: everyone wants to stitch Web2 user experience to Web3 asset rails into a vertically integrated value chain.

Inside Robinhood’s map, the front end is an app with tens of millions of users (the Web2 traffic gate), the middle is a self-built public chain (the Web3 settlement base), the upper layer is issuance platforms and trading terminals (the use cases), and the asset layer is tokenized U.S. equities (RWA) — people, chain and assets, all in one pair of hands. NYSE and LSE are doing the same thing in substance: replacing trading, settlement and custody, one by one, with programmable, 24/7, real-time on-chain versions. As crypto analyst Qinbafrank has observed, when TradFi builds a chain, “get the chain alive first, then embed your own assets into the speculative and DeFi behaviour that already exists” — which may move faster than “get compliant first, then wait for users to arrive.”

Three keywords for the second half of RWA 

Replay the first half: BlackRock’s tokenized fund BUIDL, tokenized U.S. Treasuries of every flavour. Third-party on-chain data platforms put the sector above USD 30 billion. The score is real. So is the awkwardness. Most tokenized assets remain at “can be bought, can be watched on a screen” — static exhibits hung on a chain, with no use case and no combinatorial play. The first half solved how assets get on-chain. It did not solve what they do once they are there.

The current wave supplies the second half with three keywords:

Composable. Stock tokens are no longer “share certificates on a chain.” They are programmable building blocks: they can enter liquidity pools, serve as pairing assets, and in time plug into lending, indices and structured products.

Use-cased. RWA’s cold-start trap is “the asset is on-chain — where are the users?” The answer is to gather people with high-frequency, high-engagement activity and let that traffic feed real assets.

Boundary-dissolving. For the first time, users can trade high-volatility crypto and traditionally priced equities in the same pool. Speculative flow and real financial assets are wired together. That is the largest imagination RWA has.

Asia’s answer: the same road, a different method 

Across the Pacific, the American playbook is “get it running first.” In Asia — and in Hong Kong, a market that puts compliance first — the same full-stack logic is landing by another route. EX.IO, a Hong Kong-licensed virtual asset trading platform focused on the compliant RWA niche, is among the leading examples.

An SFC-licensed VATP invested in by Wah Sun Group under Sina (SFC CE Number: BUT670), EX.IO carries dual DNA — a Web2 brokerage inheritance and a Web3 licensed base. Licensed by the Hong Kong SFC in December 2024, it has completed Stage 2 assessment and is fully operational. Mapped against the full stack, every piece is visible.

On the asset side, in April 2026 EX.IO became the first Hong Kong-licensed VATP to list compliant U.S. equity tokens issued by Anchored. The tokens are 1:1 referenced to shares of Magnificent Seven names such as Apple and Nvidia, as well as blue chips including Broadcom and Walmart (coverage is as disclosed by the issuer), with U.S. market liquidity accessed through Anchored’s compliant channel. The products are available to Professional Investors only.

In other words, as the NYSE itself began moving stocks on-chain, EX.IO had already wired Wall Street liquidity into a Hong Kong-licensed venue. Inclusive of tokenized funds, gold and other products, by mid-2026 EX.IO had become the local licensed exchange listing the largest number of compliant tokenized products in Hong Kong. After obtaining approval to conduct OTC business, it also listed the on-chain gold token XAUM (issuer: Matrixdock) in Hong Kong, likewise for Professional Investors only.

On infrastructure and services, EX.IO is more than a listing venue. It is a full-stack RWA service provider. In its commercial-real-estate RWA collaboration with Hong Kong-listed China New City, EX.IO delivered an end-to-end package — legal documentation, smart-contract development and audit, wallet solutions, investor KYC and primary distribution. In February this year it partnered with Star Path Technology to build a compliant RWA ecosystem, focusing on secondary-market trading design, multi-chain custody and cross-chain clearing — exactly the liquidity and composability lesson of the second half.

On capital and distribution, backed by Wah Sun Group’s long-built traditional brokerage users and channels, EX.IO sits naturally at the Web2–Web3 interface. As Chen Wu, Co-founder and CEO of EX.IO, has put it: as Hong Kong’s compliant stablecoins roll out, on-chain finance will see a wave of real-world asset cases and traditional capital, evolving toward atomic settlement and high liquidity — the same end-state Robinhood, the NYSE and the LSE are now racing toward.

Two paths. One destination. 

The American approach used “get the chain alive first” to prove the power of use cases and traffic. London used a handshake with a crypto-native platform to fill the distribution and user gap. Asia’s EX.IOs used “make every step real inside a licensed frame” to show that licensing, custody and 1:1 asset referencing can also complete the full stack. Different paths; same direction: lower the threshold with Web2 experience, unlock asset efficiency with Web3 rails, and give stocks, bonds, gold and real estate — the old assets — a new life on-chain.

The first half of RWA was a race to get assets on-chain. The second half is a race to make those assets move, work and circulate. The starting gun has only just fired. This time, Asia is on the track.

Risk Warning and Conflict Disclosure 

This article is prepared by EX.IO Research Institute for general information only. It does not constitute an offer, solicitation, recommendation or investment advice in respect of any securities, virtual assets or other financial products. The tokenized securities and related products referred to herein (including Anchored U.S. equity tokens, XAUM and others) are available only to Professional Investors and are not offered to the public. Such products have not been reviewed or authorised by the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission. Virtual assets and tokenized products are highly volatile; investment involves risk and may result in the loss of the entire principal. Before making any investment decision, investors should read the relevant offering documents and risk disclosures in full and seek independent professional advice. Conflict disclosure: EX.IO is a licensed trading platform and/or collaborator in respect of products mentioned in this article; this article contains content in which the Group has an interest. Third-party data is drawn from public sources and is subject to the original source. Sources: PANews, company public disclosures, third-party on-chain data platforms. 

— EX.IO Research