coindesk.com
Chainlink has expanded its Data Streams product to include 24/5 U.S. stock and exchange-traded fund coverage, a move meant to enable decentralized trading platforms to price equities during pre-market, post-market and overnight sessions.
The upgrade, according to the firm, addresses a liquidity gap in the on-chain trading of real-world assets (RWAs). Historically, U.S. stock feeds only covered regular market hours, leaving decentralized exchanges unable to maintain accurate pricing overnight or during pre-market sessions.
That meant developers either paused trading or took on unnecessary risk and helped keep U.S. equities “significantly underrepresented on-chain.”
Chainlink’s move, distinct from its Price Feeds offering, is built specifically for U.S. equities to operate on-chain, according to a press release shared with CoinDesk.
Where Price Feeds push periodic updates suited for lending platforms like Aave, Data Streams operate on a “pull” model. According to Chainlink, this approach is designed to support high-frequency trading by delivering sub-second updates only when a trade occurs, thereby reducing the network gas costs associated with constant on-chain reporting.
The expanded feeds also include metadata such as market status flags and bid/ask spreads, which are necessary for protocols to adjust risk parameters when liquidity thins during overnight trading.
The 24/5 data roll-out is one piece of a broader push to mirror the full lifecycle of traditional assets on-chain. The company is also working with Swift, Euroclear, and the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) to automate corporate actions like dividends, stock splits, and mergers.
That infrastructure is designed to ensure that tokenized assets reflect key changes to underlying equities without manual intervention and to reduce the risk of error.
Together, the two systems, Data Streams for trading and corporate actions infrastructure for asset maintenance, aim to replicate how real-world financial instruments behave. The result is a setup in which tokenized equities remain functional and accurate even during off-hours, aligning blockchain-based markets more closely with the mechanics of traditional finance.
Major derivatives exchanges, including BitMEX and Lighter, are now leveraging the product to offer perpetual futures contracts — which have no expiry dates — on U.S. stocks and ETFs.
Chainlink’s announcement comes just a day after the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) unveiled plans to introduce an around-the-clock, blockchain-based tokenized stocks and ETF trading venue later this year.