JPMorgan has taken a decisive step into digital asset infrastructure with the launch of MONY, a tokenized money-market fund built on Ethereum—positioning the bank at the forefront of institutional blockchain adoption.

JPMorgan Chase has formally introduced MONY, a blockchain-native money-market fund that tokenizes investor shares directly on Ethereum. The initiative represents one of the largest moves by a global banking institution toward real-world asset (RWA) tokenization, as demand grows for programmable financial products with faster settlement and enhanced transparency.

Why JPMorgan Is Moving Toward Tokenized Funds

The fund arrives at a time when major financial institutions are accelerating blockchain experimentation. MONY, launched with an initial $100 million seed, reflects a broader shift in capital markets where tokenization is becoming a strategic priority. Similar offerings by BlackRock and Franklin Templeton have demonstrated rising institutional appetite, and JPMorgan’s entry strengthens its position in the rapidly expanding RWA ecosystem.

By issuing blockchain-based fund shares as digital tokens, MONY allows investors to interact with a traditional money-market portfolio—primarily short-term U.S. Treasuries—while benefiting from on-chain operational efficiencies. Subscriptions and redemptions can be processed through the Morgan Money platform using cash or stablecoins such as USDC.

How MONY Differs From Traditional Money-Market Funds

MONY’s architecture blends conventional investment principles with blockchain features:

• Tokenized ownership: Investors receive on-chain tokens representing their positions.
• Faster settlements: Blockchain rails reduce operational friction often present in legacy fund processes.
• Transparent record-keeping: Tokenization enhances auditability and improves collateral tracking.
• Flexible liquidity: On-chain execution enables quicker movement of assets across platforms.

Despite these technical enhancements, the fund maintains a traditional exposure profile, focusing on low-risk, short-duration government securities to appeal to established treasury investors.

Expanding Roles in DeFi and Institutional Finance

Beyond investment utility, tokenized funds like MONY are increasingly viewed as high-grade collateral in decentralized finance systems. Their transparency and programmability make them suitable for institutional-grade settlement, lending, and liquidity management.

“We designed MONY to merge modern blockchain capabilities with familiar investment structures,” a JPMorgan representative said, noting that the bank sees tokenized funds as foundational elements for future digital finance products.

The bank also remarked that MONY is part of a larger roadmap to bring more financial instruments on-chain, supporting a future where digital and traditional finance coexist across shared settlement networks.

A Growing Market for Tokenized Real-World Assets

The tokenized fund sector has already surpassed $9 billion in value, driven by rapid adoption from major institutions. Analysts expect the next phase of growth to include broader collateral use cases, cross-platform settlement tools, and regulated digital cash components.

With MONY’s launch, JPMorgan signals that the tokenization of traditional financial vehicles is moving from experimentation into active deployment—setting the stage for more banks and asset managers to explore blockchain-based infrastructure.

Aster, the rapidly growing decentralized perpetuals exchange, has introduced Shield Mode, a high-privacy trading feature designed for users who want to execute leveraged positions without revealing their activity to the market. The update marks one of the biggest advancements in on-chain trading privacy to date and signals Aster’s intention to differentiate itself in an increasingly competitive perps ecosystem.

Aster Introduces Encrypted High-Leverage Trading

Shield Mode enables traders to open perpetual positions with up to 1,001x leverage on Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) pairs while keeping all order details hidden from the public mempool and DEX order books. The system offers:

• Instant execution
• Zero slippage
• No public exposure of order size or price
• Isolated margin controls for precise risk management

As part of a promotional rollout, Aster has also waived gas and trading fees until December 31, although Shield Mode trades will not count toward the platform’s ongoing airdrop program.

This upgrade follows Aster’s earlier release of Hidden Orders in June 2025, which made the exchange the first major perps DEX to integrate native order-concealment tools.

Transparency Has Become a Liability for DeFi Traders

While blockchain transparency is foundational to decentralized finance, it has also introduced a structural weakness: traders cannot hide their intent. This has enabled MEV strategies such as:

• Frontrunning – trading ahead of large pending orders
• Sandwich attacks – placing trades before and after a victim’s transaction to extract profit

Because most decentralized exchanges publish all pending activity, large orders often become targets for opportunistic bots, validators, or other traders. Unlike traditional finance, where dark pools and private execution venues offer institutional privacy, DeFi has historically lacked equivalents.

Aster’s Shield Mode directly tackles this problem—providing the benefits of private execution within an open blockchain ecosystem.

Aster Pushes Toward Market Leadership

In its announcement, Aster described Shield Mode as “a protected execution environment for traders who want performance without broadcasting their next move,” framing it as an early building block for the privacy roadmap planned under Aster Chain, the project’s emerging Layer-1 infrastructure.

The exchange has been gaining traction rapidly. In September 2025, Aster briefly surpassed Hyperliquid in perpetuals volume and continues to post strong numbers:

• 24h Perps Volume: Aster ~$4.95B vs. Hyperliquid ~$3.17B
• 30-Day Perps Volume: Aster ~$219.85B vs. Hyperliquid ~$204.35B
• 30-Day DEX (spot) Volume: Hyperliquid leads with ~$6.59B, while Aster records ~$2.72B

Shield Mode gives Aster a powerful differentiator as competition intensifies across decentralized derivatives platforms.

Privacy Is Becoming a Core Theme in Crypto’s Next Phase

Aster views Shield Mode as the starting point for a broader suite of privacy-centric products. The platform is also preparing a Flexible Fee Model, offering:

• Commission Mode: fixed percentage fee per trade
• PnL Mode: traders pay fees only when they make a profit

The industry’s renewed interest in privacy—illustrated by assets like Zcash experiencing a major resurgence—suggests strong user demand for tools that protect strategy, order flow, and execution.

The Bottom Line

Aster’s Shield Mode signals a shift in DeFi: traders increasingly want transparency from systems, not from their own strategies. By merging high performance with private execution, Aster is positioning itself at the forefront of the next evolution of decentralized perpetuals trading.

Ripple is reshaping its stablecoin strategy, transitioning RLUSD from a single-chain asset into a regulated, multichain settlement system. Rather than making a high-profile announcement, the company has been quietly laying the technical groundwork to ensure RLUSD can move across multiple execution environments while keeping issuance centralized and compliant.

Regulatory Foundations Come First

This shift follows Ripple’s recent conditional approval to operate as a U.S. trust bank — a distinction that places RLUSD in a different category from typical crypto-native stablecoins. Instead of racing to market, Ripple is prioritizing regulatory alignment before scaling distribution.

This approach positions RLUSD as financial infrastructure rather than a speculative token, with the regulatory scaffolding established before significant liquidity arrives.

Why Ripple Is Building for Layer-2 Networks

Ripple is deliberately steering RLUSD toward layer-2 ecosystems, where lower fees and faster throughput increasingly support payments, commerce, and consumer-facing applications. Layer-1 congestion and higher costs make L2s the natural home for scalable settlement.

Crucially, Ripple isn’t relying on wrapped assets or synthetic versions. RLUSD is designed to remain a natively governed stablecoin even as it moves across chains, reducing fragmentation and eliminating the risk associated with third-party bridges.

Maintaining Issuer Control in a Multichain World

Multichain stablecoins often suffer from fractured liquidity and opaque supply tracking. Ripple’s approach avoids these pitfalls by keeping a single source of issuance while enabling RLUSD to appear across different networks.

This design mirrors traditional financial infrastructure and aligns RLUSD with the growing regulatory emphasis on transparency and issuer control.

XRP’s Expanding Utility Alongside RLUSD

As XRP becomes usable on additional chains through wrapped representations, RLUSD serves as the stable counterweight that enables pricing, settlement, and payment flows. Together, XRP and RLUSD form a complementary liquidity stack — one optimized for movement, the other for stability.

A Deliberate, Compliance-Driven Rollout

Ripple is not rushing RLUSD into full production. Deployments remain permissioned and contingent on regulatory clearance. This stands in contrast to earlier stablecoin expansions that prioritized rapid growth over compliance.

What It Means for the Future

Ripple’s strategy suggests that the next era of stablecoin competition will center on regulatory legitimacy, portability, and centralized issuer governance. RLUSD’s quiet evolution into a multichain settlement layer signals a long-term bet on a future where digital money must be both technically flexible and institutionally compliant.