Written by: Shannon@金财经

On May 25, 2026, the cryptocurrency and blockchain industry lost a visionary leader.

The official X account of Ondo Finance posted that Ondo Finance founder and CEO Nathan Allman passed away unexpectedly at the age of 32.

Ondo Finance wrote in the announcement: "It is with great sadness that we announce the unexpected death of Ondo founder Nathan Allman. Our thoughts are with his family and close friends." The company did not disclose the cause of death.

It is with great sadness that we announce that Mr. Nathan Allman, the founder of Ondo, has unfortunately passed away. Our deepest condolences go out to his family and loved ones. Nate's talent, humility and enterprising spirit have shaped every aspect of Ondo. He firmly believes that the power of technology can create a more open and convenient financial system, and this belief runs through everything we do. His impact on the industry, and on each of us, is immeasurable. Nate has also helped us build a solid organization with experienced leaders in all aspects of the business. Ian De Bode, long-time president of Ondo Finance, will take over as CEO. Ian has led our strategy, product and day-to-day operations for more than two years and has the full trust of the leadership team. We will continue to build on Nate's unfinished business. This is the best way we can think of to honor him.

After the news came out, the entire industry was deeply shocked and saddened. This article briefly describes the origin of Ondo Finance established by Nathan Allman and the development process of Ondo Finance.

1. Academic and early career: profound accumulation of traditional finance

Nathan Allman studied economics and biology as an undergraduate at Brown University, and then obtained an MBA from Stanford University's Graduate School of Business. This interdisciplinary academic background - integrating rigorous financial analysis with an understanding of life science systems - to some extent foreshadows his future path to creating an ecosystem integrating finance and technology.

According to his own account, after graduating from college, he started in private credit and private equity investment, and then became very interested in the encryption world. In 2017, he began to actively trade crypto assets, participate in ICO investments, and explore early DeFi platforms such as dydx.

Since then, he has worked as an investment assistant at Prospect Capital Management and co-founded the quantitative crypto hedge fund ChainStreet Capital. This experience allowed him to accumulate profound practical experience in quantitative investment and crypto markets.

In 2019, Allman joined Goldman Sachs. In the Goldman Sachs Global Markets Department, he focuses on the field of digital assets and is committed to building cryptocurrency market services for institutional clients. It was during his work experience at Goldman Sachs that he witnessed the huge integration opportunities between traditional finance and emerging blockchain technology, and gradually formed a clear entrepreneurial idea.

2. The creation of Ondo Finance: building a bridge between traditional finance and the on-chain world

At the beginning of 2021, Allman left Goldman Sachs and officially embarked on the road of entrepreneurship. His core proposition is direct and ambitious: moving institutional-grade financial products onto the chain.

The birth of this idea has its macro background. In 2022, DeFi's endogenous high returns were hit hard by the Terra/Luna collapse and the FTX bankruptcy. While the Federal Reserve continued to raise interest rates during the same period, the appeal of traditional fixed income products increased significantly. When the Federal Reserve maintains policy rates above 5%, on-chain income products backed by U.S. Treasury bonds become the first tools in the crypto space that can truly compete with traditional money market funds on a risk-adjusted dimension.

Allman captured this opportunity keenly. He believes that blockchain technology can make the financial system more open and accessible. Ondo's announcement cited his core beliefs and wrote: He has always believed that technology can build a more open and accessible financial system, and this vision will continue to lead the company's future construction.

3. The development history of Ondo Finance

2021: Seed Germination

Ondo Finance completed a $4 million seed round of financing in 2021 led by Pantera Capital. The company launched DeFi liquidity vault and Liquidity as a Service (LaaS) products early on, attracting many decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) as early partners.

2022: Financing expansion, strategic transformation

In 2022, Ondo completed a US$20 million Series A financing with participation from top institutions such as Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures and Tiger Global Management. However, with the overall compression of DeFi revenue, Allman made a decisive decision to shift from the original liquidity products to a more disruptive direction: tokenizing real world assets (RWA).

2023: Core products officially launched

In January 2023, Ondo launched the first batch of tokenized treasury bond products on Ethereum. This was a key turning point in the company's history. Core products include: OUSG—a tokenized fund tied to the BlackRock Short-Term Treasury Bond ETF; and USDY—an income-generating stablecoin backed by short-term U.S. Treasuries and bank deposits. The company also launched the Flux Finance protocol, which supports tokenized securities as collateral.

2024: Jump in scale and break the circle in all aspects

In 2024, the Ondo platform’s TVL jumped from US$40 million to more than US$534 million. In the same year, the ONDO governance token was officially launched, and its market value quickly exceeded US$1 billion. This year, traditional financial giants such as BlackRock, Fidelity, and JP Morgan Chase entered the Ondo ecosystem one after another, marking the formal recognition of institutions’ on-chain RWA infrastructure.

2025 to present: Becoming an industry leader

In 2025, Ondo Finance continued to accelerate its expansion, expanding the deployment of USDY and OUSG to multiple blockchains, and launched Ondo Nexus and Ondo Global Markets—the latter is its tokenized securities trading platform. Since its launch in September 2025, the cumulative trading volume has exceeded US$6.8 billion, and the TVL has exceeded US$460 million. At the same time, by mid-September 2025, Ondo's overall TVL has reached US$1.6 billion, becoming the second largest platform in the field of tokenized US Treasury bonds, with a market share of approximately 17%.

As of the time of Allman's death, Ondo Finance's TVL had reached approximately US$3.86 billion, with more than 111,000 holders, and its assets covered many categories such as treasury bonds, stocks and commodities.

4. Posthumous legacy

Ondo’s new CEO and former president Ian De Bode wrote on social media:

"The mission of Ondo, Nate's mission, has not changed. If Nate were here, he would want to continue executing with excellence. We will make him proud."

At the age of 32, Nathan Allman has accomplished a career that many people will find difficult to achieve in their lifetime.

He grew from an economics student at Brown University to a digital asset practitioner on Wall Street, and then single-handedly promoted the establishment of the entire tokenized financial infrastructure.

His departure is a huge loss to the industry, but the path he created will be continued by those who come after him.