Stellar Development Foundation Makes Strategic Investment in Ascend to Accelerate Compliant RWA Infrastructure Development

Ascend and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) today announced a strategic partnership to advance the development of compliance-first credit infrastructure for regulated real-world assets (RWAs) on the Stellar blockchains. Central to this partnership is a US $1 million direct investment support for Ascend, reinforcing both organizations' shared commitment to bringing institutional-grade, regulated assets onto public blockchain infrastructure in a manner that meets the compliance standards of traditional finance. Ascend is being built by PSG Digital Labs, the technology arm of PSG Digital, a globally licensed asset management and digital investment platform. The protocol is designed to provide the first compliant credit market infrastructure for onchain regulated RWA collateral, building on the identity-aware token standard ERC-3643. Unlike generic tokenization approaches, Ascend's infrastructure is architected from the ground up for regulated assets: enforcing eligibility and transfer controls at the asset layer. This approach enables tokenized assets to function as productive collateral in permissioned credit vaults, and connects institutional RWAs to DeFi liquidity without compromising regulatory posture. “Ascend is solving a critical gap in the market by building credit infrastructure purpose-built for regulated, real-world assets,” said Jose Fernandez da Ponte, President and Chief Growth Officer of the Stellar Development Foundation. “Their compliance-first approach aligns directly with how institutions actually operate, and that's what makes them a natural partner for the Stellar Development Foundation. This is how RWAs move from being issued onchain to being actively used across financial markets at scale."

"Stellar was built to be the settlement layer for institutional finance," said Dennis O’Connell, CTO of PSG Digital and Co-Founder of Ascend. "This partnership cements the commitment of both our organizations to build infrastructure that supports identity-aware issuance, permissioned credit mechanics, and deterministic resolution on a network that was designed for exactly this purpose."

A Partnership Built on Structural Alignment

The strategic rationale for this partnership is straightforward: both Ascend and the SDF are building towards a world where regulated institutional assets operate on public blockchain infrastructure with the same reliability and compliance standards as traditional finance.

The Stellar network was purpose-built for fast, low-cost settlement and real-world asset tokenization, with existing institutional relationships including Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Paxos. Ascend brings to Stellar a standards-first approach to onchain credit infrastructure: compliant tokenization via the ERC-3643 standard, permissioned credit vaults with oracle-verified collateral monitoring, and a Distressed Disposal Facility (DDF) providing institutional-grade liquidation and resolution.

Together, the partnership extends Ascend's regulated asset infrastructure to the Stellar network, enabling ERC-3643-standard assets originating on Stellar to access Ascend's permissioned vault and credit framework — and in doing so, establishing a shared foundation for compliant institutional finance on public blockchains.

About Ascend:

Ascend Protocol is PSG Digital's standards-first protocol for regulated real-world assets on Ethereum. It is designed to support identity-aware issuance using the ERC-3643 standard, which allows eligibility and transfer rules to be enforced at the asset layer, and permissioned credit mechanisms intended to connect regulated assets to onchain liquidity under explicit controls.

Learn more at: https://www.psg-digital.com/ascend-protocol

Stellar Development Foundation

The Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) is a non-profit organization focused on working with and supporting changemakers to create equitable access to the global financial system through blockchain technology. SDF provides grants, investments, funding, and other awards to builders and organizations. SDF also develops resources and tooling on the Stellar network to help unlock real world utility. As a nonprofit foundation, SDF puts the health of the Stellar network and the Stellar ecosystem and its mission above all else. For more information, visit https://stellar.org/foundation.

Ascend, the Onchain Market Infrastructure Protocol for RWAs, Joins Chainlink Build

We’re excited to announce that Ascend Protocol is officially joining the Chainlink Build program. As a part of Build and with the strategic backing of PSG Digital, we aim to accelerate ecosystem growth and long-term adoption of onchain composable RWAs by gaining enhanced access to Chainlink’s industry-leading oracle services and technical support, as well as incentivizing greater cryptoeconomic security, in exchange for a commitment to provide network fees and other benefits to the Chainlink community and service providers, including stakers.  

We’re confident that through enhanced support, secure offchain services, and the backing of Chainlink’s vibrant community, we can accelerate awareness of Ascend, supported by PSG Digital’s institutional expertise, and significantly increase institutional adoption, enabling a new class of fully onchain, composable RWAs by providing financial institutions with the infrastructure rails, compliance, and institutional-grade services that sophisticated parties require.

Ascend: The World’s First Onchain Investment Banking Infrastructure

Ascend is a US-focused, end-to-end real-world asset securities and capital markets protocol that seamlessly bridges institutional issuers from origination, structuring, permissioned tokenization, and collateralization into permissionless DeFi. Built on the success of the ERC-3643 standard and PSG Digital, a leading global asset manager for digital assets, this new marquee capital markets infrastructure, launched on Ethereum and powered by Chainlink, introduces a scalable, compliance-first architecture designed to bring institutional-grade RWA issuance onchain at scale.

Ascend brings three key value offerings to the RWA ecosystem. First, PSG and its partners are introducing flagship yield-bearing assets in collaboration with well-known institutional partners. PSG provides the investment capabilities and product structuring that enable these flagship assets. Second, the PEAK token will provide real yield from the Ascend DAO Treasury, sourced from RWA fund yield, protocol fees, and tokenomics, and can be staked and redeemed for stablecoins. The PEAK token delivers real yield, real utility to incentivize and power the protocol, and real governance for the Ascend DAO. Finally, Ascend brings meaningful innovation to RWAs by creating the world’s first Permissioned Vaults, enabling ERC-3643 tokens to be collateralized and used to generate ERC-20 stablecoins or digital twins for use in DeFi.

Ascend unifies several key challenges. It is a U.S.-based platform designed to capture emerging regulatory clarity and growing market demand in the U.S., catalyzing billions in new issuance and reshoring of assets back to U.S. markets. Ascend bridges the divide between permissioned onchain securities, such as ERC-3643 tokens and the incentives and opportunities found in DeFi via Permissioned Vaults, which will be open-sourced, follow an open standard, and be proposed as an EIP in collaboration with key partners, including Chainlink as a critical enabler. Ascend will be natively onchain, reimagining capital markets infrastructure, services, and operations for financial institutions on blockchain rails end to end.

Ascend is transforming the landscape of onchain capital markets and RWAs by bringing together a fully integrated, institutionally aligned suite of capabilities, unlocking an end-to-end solution that has never before existed.

Why We Joined Chainlink Build

Ascend would not be possible without the key innovations delivered by Chainlink. While the idea of an onchain investment banking infrastructure had been considered before, it only became feasible with the development of Chainlink technologies: the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), CCIP, Price Feeds, and the Chainlink Automated Compliance Engine (ACE), are the key unlocks that provide sufficiently decentralized data infrastructure to support sophisticated pricing, quantitative risk calculations, dynamic rules and compliance datasets, live data, and the complex data payloads that accompany real securities onchain. As part of Chainlink Build, Ascend will receive key benefits, including access to new Chainlink product alpha and beta releases, among other program advantages.

In exchange for these services, Ascend will allocate a percentage of its native token supply to make it available to Chainlink service providers, including stakers, over time. These mutually aligned economic incentives enable both communities to support one another.

“We’re excited to join the Chainlink Build program to bring the full power of onchain capital markets infrastructure to life through Chainlink’s fully realized platform. Leveraging the Chainlink platform, Ascend can unlock institutionally secure Permissioned Vaults uniquely built to collateralize ERC-3643 tokens into DeFi with dynamic transparency, robust risk controls, and liveness. This collaboration with Chainlink is a major step toward a future where capital markets are inherently onchain.” — Dennis O’Connell, CTO of Ascend and President of the ERC-3643 Association.

About Chainlink

Chainlink is the industry-standard oracle platform bringing the capital markets onchain and powering the majority of decentralized finance (DeFi). The Chainlink stack provides the essential data, interoperability, compliance, and privacy standards needed to power advanced blockchain use cases for institutional tokenized assets, lending, payments, stablecoins, and more. Since inventing decentralized oracle networks, Chainlink has enabled tens of trillions in transaction value and now secures the vast majority of DeFi. 

Many of the world’s largest financial services institutions have also adopted Chainlink’s standards and infrastructure, including Swift, Euroclear, Mastercard, Fidelity International, UBS, S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell, WisdomTree, ANZ, and top protocols such as Aave, Lido, GMX and many others. Chainlink leverages a novel fee model where offchain and onchain revenue from enterprise adoption is converted to LINK tokens and stored in a strategic Chainlink Reserve. Learn more at chain.link.

About Ascend

Ascend is the world’s first, onchain investment bank infrastructure, providing an end-to-end bridge from institutional issuers into permissionless decentralized finance. Built on the success of the ERC-3643 standard and PSG Digital, a global asset manager and leader in the tokenization of digital assets, Ascend will be the premier US-based infrastructure layer for compliant digital securities and real-world assets natively on public blockchains.

Together, PSG and Ascend bring high-profile, flagship yield-bearing assets; compelling real yield, real utility, and real governance through its PEAK token; and innovative, open-source, open-standards-based Permissioned Vaults that enable ERC-3643 permissioned tokens to access DeFi via collateralization. Ascend provides the end-to-end onchain market architecture required for institutions to issue, manage, and settle tokenized financial instruments at scale.

By standardizing compliance, identity, and data, Ascend’s onchain infrastructure enables asset issuers, originators, investors, and DeFi protocols to originate permissioned credit, automate lifecycle operations, ensure real-time, live data for risk and compliance, and unlock global liquidity while emphasizing regulatory requirements in the US and abroad.

The Ascend Protocol delivers a unified framework for issuance, distribution, risk management, and collateral mobility—forming the foundational institutional rails for the next generation of onchain capital markets. Learn more at ascend-protocol.com.