Grayscale is putting Chainlink in the spotlight as essential infrastructure for the booming tokenized assets market, calling the project the “critical connective tissue” linking crypto to traditional finance.
In a new research report, Grayscale highlights how Chainlink’s suite of tools is becoming foundational for tokenization, cross-chain settlement, and real-world asset integration on blockchain.
The firm described Chainlink as “modular middleware that lets on-chain applications safely use off-chain data, interact across blockchains, and meet enterprise-grade compliance needs.”
This growing footprint has propelled LINK to become the largest non-layer-1 crypto asset by market cap outside of stablecoins, offering investors exposure across multiple ecosystems rather than a single chain.
Tokenization is where Chainlink’s value becomes most visible. Almost all financial assets, from securities to real estate, exist off-chain today. To bring these assets on-chain and unlock blockchain efficiency and programmability, they must be verified, tokenized, and linked to external data sources.
“We expect Chainlink to play a central role orchestrating the tokenization process,” Grayscale wrote. Partnerships with S&P Global and FTSE/Russell are helping Chainlink bridge the gap between traditional finance and blockchain innovation. The tokenized asset market has exploded from $5 billion to over $35.6 billion since early 2023, according to RWA.xyz.
A landmark pilot in June saw Chainlink, JPMorgan’s Kinexys, and Ondo Finance complete a cross-chain delivery-versus-payment settlement between a permissioned bank system and a public blockchain testnet. Using Chainlink’s Runtime Environment, Ondo’s tokenized U.S.
Treasurys fund, OUSG, was exchanged for fiat payment without leaving native chains—a milestone for real-world asset settlement.
Grayscale filed to convert its Chainlink Trust into a U.S. ETF trading under ticker GLNK on NYSE Arca, signaling growing institutional confidence. The report notes that tokenized assets currently represent just 0.01% of global fixed income and equity securities, underscoring enormous potential for growth—and rising demand for Chainlink’s infrastructure.
According to Grayscale, LINK offers diversified exposure to crypto’s infrastructure layer, positioning the token to benefit as banks, asset managers, and data providers increasingly explore on-chain solutions for compliance, data feeds, and cross-chain interoperability across the expanding real-world asset sector.
