World Liberty-backed Ondo Finance launches first tokenized Treasury fund on Sei

Real-world asset startup Ondo Finance is launching its United States Dollar Yield (USDY) fund on the Sei Network, according to an announcement on Thursday. This represents the first tokenized Treasury bill product on the scalable blockchain, the Ondo team stated in a press release.

Founded in 2021, Ondo is focused on onchain, institutional-grade financial products like its OUSG fund, backed by BlackRock’s BUIDL fund, and OMMF tokenized money market fund that invests in low-risk, income-generating assets.

Ondo is closely aligned with the Trump family-backed World Liberty Financial project, which has purchased ONDO tokens for its strategic token reserve. In February, for instance, World Liberty acquired nearly half a million worth of ONDO tokens in a transaction closely coinciding with the launch of Ondo’s native Layer 1 Ondo Chain and Ondo Global Markets trading platform. ONDO is currently World Liberty’s twelfth-largest holding, according to Arkham Intelligence.

Ondo is one of the largest RWA projects by total value locked, with approximately $1.4 billion worth of managed assets, according to The Block’s data. The team calls USDY its “flagship” product. The note, backed by short-term U.S. Treasurys and bank demand deposits, is designed to combine the stability of a stablecoin with a yield of approximately 4.25% APY.

“USDY represents the exact kind of high-quality, composable yield primitive that will unlock new possibilities for developers building the next generation of onchain applications,” Sei Development Foundation Executive Director Justin Barlow said in a statement.

Earlier this week, Ondo announced the acquisition of blockchain developer Strangelove, in a bid to enhance its onchain capabilities for RWAs. It's also agreed to purchase Oasis Pro, which would provide the necessary access to a broker-dealer license to enter the blockchain-based equities market.

What is Sei?

Sei is an EVM-compatible Layer 1 built using the Cosmos SDK. The network uses parallel order execution and order bundling to achieve 400 millisecond block finality, according to its documentation. The team raised a $5 million seed round led by Multicoin Capital in 2022 and $30 million Series A in 2023, valuing the company around $800 million.

Earlier this year, the Sei Foundation launched a U.S.-based non-profit focused on network growth and awareness called Sei Development Foundation amid a softening regulatory environment in the country.

Circle also announced a strategic investment in Sei around the time it bridged its USDC stablecoin to the network.

SEI is currently trading at $0.36, down from an all-time high of $1.14. The token has a fully diluted market capitalization of $3.6 billion with a total supply of 10 billion, about 5.6 billion of which is in circulation. ONDO is trading at $1.04, up over 10% over the past 24 hours, according to The Block's data.

USDY is only offered and sold to organizations and individuals outside the U.S. and other restricted jurisdictions. The token has previously been issued on Arbitrum, Ethereum, Mantle, and Solana, according to its documentation. Meanwhile, Ondo’s BUIDL-backed OUSG fund is available on Ethereum, Polygon, Solana, and the XRP Ledger.

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