Glider and Ondo Finance have unveiled a platform that lets retail investors build and automate custom portfolios of tokenized U.S. stocks — giving direct equity exposure without a brokerage account. The service allows users to create personalized baskets of on‑chain stocks that mirror real-world shares, and it handles execution and rebalancing so investors don’t need to manage individual trades, hold wallets, or pay gas fees.
Unlike traditional exchange-traded funds, which package assets into fixed, pooled products, Glider’s approach supports direct indexing: users choose custom weightings and the platform maintains those allocations automatically. According to Glider co‑founder and CEO Brian Huang, this removes the liquidity constraints that have hampered earlier on‑chain ETF attempts because investors hold the underlying assets and tap into their liquidity rather than relying on pooled liquidity.
Ondo issues tokenized stocks designed to track the price of the underlying shares and to be transferable and tradable on‑chain, including beyond standard market hours. Glider builds and rebalances the user portfolios on top of Ondo’s tokenized securities, automating portfolio construction without requiring manual transactions. The initial rollout focuses on tokenized U.S. equities, with plans to expand into other asset classes such as commodities and to add features like lending positions to generate yield.
Ondo says the platform is not currently available to U.S. users, though the firm holds several SEC registrations that could support a future U.S. launch.
Market context: tokenized real‑world assets (RWA) and crypto exchange‑traded products (ETPs) have grown quickly. Data from RWA.xyz shows tokenized RWA value climbed to roughly $26.5 billion, up from about $7.5 billion a year earlier; tokenized stocks account for roughly $908.5 million of that total. At the same time, crypto ETP issuers are broadening offerings beyond spot Bitcoin and Ether into more complex and actively managed structures.
Examples include 21Shares’ Strategy Yield ETP, launched in Europe to give investors exposure to a preferred stock linked to Michael Saylor’s Strategy and its Bitcoin holdings, and BlackRock’s Nasdaq‑listed iShares Staked Ethereum Trust (ETHB), which offers spot Ether exposure while staking part of its holdings for potential monthly income. Asset managers continue to explore ways to expand access and liquidity for digital and tokenized products while navigating regulatory constraints.
This rollout represents a step toward making tokenized equities more accessible to retail investors by combining on‑chain tradability with automated portfolio management and direct ownership of underlying assets.