Onchain equity: Last week, blockchain lender Figure announced the launch of its On-Chain Public Equity Network (OPEN), a new platform that allows companies to list and trade equity natively onchain. Integrated into Figure’s existing stack, OPEN is designed to make shares directly usable for financing, enabling holders to borrow against and lend out stock while disintermediating the prime broker model.
Why it matters: As one of the largest blockchain-based lenders, Figure has originated over $22 billion in loans and built out a broad digital asset product suite, including its public blockchain network Provenance, a blockchain-based lending platform, and trading infrastructure for crypto and tokenized assets.
New platform: With OPEN, it is now combining that stack to bring public equities natively onchain, at the same time as traditional incumbents like Nasdaq, DTCC, and NYSE take steps toward tokenized equities.
Market reaction: Since the announcement, $FIGR shares are up 28% in public markets.
Interview: In our conversation with Mike Cagney, co-founder and Executive Chairman at Figure, we discussed what OPEN enables beyond existing tokenization efforts, why he believes it will disrupt the traditional prime brokerage model, and how he expects onchain equity adoption and broader market structure to evolve over the next two years.
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On what OPEN enables:
“In short, OPEN is a platform for issuing equities natively onchain. It lets public companies create a blockchain-native share class through standard filings like an S-1 or S-3. That share class can be held in wallets and used in modern financing workflows, giving equity more utility than in today’s intermediated stack.
The goal is to broaden access to public stocks globally while improving shareholder economics through better collateral and lending. And importantly, this works under existing securities rules today, without waiting for new regulation like the Clarity Act.”
How OPEN differs from other existing tokenization efforts:
“The core difference is native issuance. It removes the limits of wrapped versions of traditional securities and lets us integrate equity directly into our stack. The share is issued on the Provenance blockchain, traded on our Alternative Trading System (ATS), and plugs into the lending infrastructure we already operate, turning equity into something you can finance, not just hold.
That’s where the unlock sits. Equity becomes usable collateral in DeFi, enabling cross-margin setups traditional prime brokerage can’t offer, like borrowing cash against a basket of equity and crypto assets.
We also built for liquidity. Investors worried about being stuck in an illiquid share class, so we added a seamless conversion mechanism between Nasdaq shares and the onchain shares. This conversion is a no-cost, no-tax event, anchoring early liquidity and giving market makers confidence to quote both venues.”
On the concrete benefits OPEN delivers:
“OPEN delivers two core benefits:
First is lower overhead. Public equities still carry heavy operational costs, from shareholder ops to back-office workflows. With native onchain shares, processes like voting can happen directly in wallets, and institutions can reduce reconciliation and manual work.
Second is better lending economics for shareholders. Stock lending today is heavily intermediated. A borrower might pay 20% annualized while the lender receives 5%. The rest is captured by the prime broker. OPEN lets shareholders supply stock through a transparent market and capture the true clearing rate.”
On how OPEN adoption could unfold:
“We’ll start by going first. We plan to issue Figure stock through OPEN soon, so the market can see what changes when equity is issued natively onchain.
From there, adoption should compound. Once investors see that onchain shares deliver better utility and better economics, they’ll start pushing companies to adopt the model, because it no longer makes sense to stay in a structure where financing and lending value is captured by intermediaries.
Crypto-native firms and digital asset treasuries (DATs) will likely move first. DATs benefit in particular because onchain equity enables redemption-style mechanics between shares and the crypto assets held in their treasury. That can pull the stock price back toward par instead of relying only on the secondary market.”
On the timeline for onchain equity adoption and whether blockchain reshapes or mirrors today's market structure:
“People are underestimating how fast this moves. The last four years created complacency because regulation kept the industry from leaning in. That has changed.
By the end of 2026 I expect a robust equity market trading natively on blockchain. By the end of 2027, stablecoin payment rails will start eating meaningfully into interchange economics.
I don’t expect incumbents to disrupt themselves quickly. Blockchain is a structural shift, and disrupting a business that already works is hard. So you’ll see players like DTCC, Nasdaq, and NYSE adopt “blockchain” in ways that preserve the same intermediaries and economics, rather than moving to a public, self-custody model.
And that’s the line in the sand. If the outcome is simply today’s market structure mirrored on new rails, the industry missed the point.”
