Major blockchain oracle platform Chainlink has launched its innovative 24/5 U.S. Equities Streams, designed to provide real-time market data for U.S. equities and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) outside the confines of standard trading hours. This groundbreaking feature allows protocols to create on-chain equity markets that function around the clock, five days a week, signaling a paradigm shift in how market data can be utilized.
The 24/5 U.S. Equities Streams are now accessible on more than 40 different blockchains, enabling developers to create products such as equity perpetuals, prediction markets, and other financial applications that can operate throughout the day. Prominent projects already harnessing the power of these streams include Lighter, BitMEX, ApeX, HelloTrade, Decibel, Monaco, Opinion Labs, and Orderly.
Chainlink’s new offering builds on its established Chainlink Data Standard, which has enabled an astonishing $27 trillion in transaction value and processed over 19 billion verified messages on the blockchain. The platform has managed to secure approximately 70% of oracle-related decentralized finance (DeFi) activity.
The new data streams offer comprehensive market details, including bid and ask prices, trading volumes, mid prices, last traded prices, staleness indicators, and market status flags. This advancement allows for seamless access to U.S. equity market data, including after-hours and overnight sessions, unlocking immense potential in the approximate $80 trillion U.S. stock market for on-chain applications.
By providing reliable sub-second pricing across regular, pre-market, post-market, and overnight sessions, the 24/5 U.S. Equities Streams eliminate significant issues like price gaps and stale reference prices. Chainlink emphasizes that this expanded access offers asset data crucial for financial applications, leading to “smarter pricing logic, enhanced risk management, and faster execution” for on-chain protocols.
In a competitive trading environment, the new streams allow traders to engage with stocks and ETFs throughout the majority of the week for activities like trading, lending, and creation of new financial products. Key use cases include the development of perpetual and derivative markets that can operate continuously, the establishment of prediction markets with accurate data resolution, and the launching of synthetic equities and ETFs.
Moreover, the increased functionalities promote safer execution and help define risk controls essential for lending markets and dynamic margining, alongside encouraging the development of structured financial products tied to U.S. equities.
While acknowledging the rapid growth of real-world asset (RWA) adoption on-chain, Chainlink notes that U.S. equities have been underrepresented despite their potential. The firm highlights that while blockchain-enabled trading can operate continuously, traditional U.S. equity markets are restricted to fragmented trading hours, leading to gaps in market data that can hinder the development of secure on-chain financial instruments.
Chainlink’s latest innovation aims to resolve these challenges by converting fragmented U.S. equity market data into continuous, cryptographically verified data streams. This transformation is expected to facilitate traditional markets functioning effectively on-chain, thereby paving the way for a more integrated financial landscape.
