Chainlink launched 24/5 Data Streams for U.S. equities and ETFs on January 20, extending real-time market coverage to instruments such as SPY, QQQ, NVDA, AAPL and MSFT. The move aims to remove off-hours pricing blind spots and enable tokenized real‑world assets (RWAs) to track tradable stocks with institutional-grade data.
Chainlink’s Data Streams introduce a ‘pull’ delivery model: smart contracts request updates when needed rather than receiving continuous pushed reports. That architecture is designed to slash unnecessary on‑chain transactions and make high-frequency data economically viable for decentralized applications.
Streams include contextual metadata — market status flags, bid/ask spreads and timestamps — so protocols can adjust risk parameters during thin-liquidity periods such as overnight trading. The service relies on Decentralized Oracle Networks (DONs) that aggregate feeds from multiple providers, including Finalto, Tiingo and Finnhub, to limit single‑point failures and preserve uptime.
Adoption, partnerships and market impact
Leading DeFi protocols and derivatives venues adopted the streams during 2025. GMX and Kamino Finance integrated the feeds in August 2025 to support tokenized stock trading, perpetual futures and synthetic ETFs; exchanges such as BitMEX and Lighter began using the data to underwrite perpetual stock contracts. Those early integrations demonstrate the practical utility of near‑real‑time equity pricing on chain.
Chainlink has also framed the product as a bridge to TradFi by working with financial infrastructure players to automate corporate actions — dividends, splits and mergers — so tokenized holdings reflect off‑chain events without manual reconciliation. Johann Eid, Chainlink’s chief business officer, described the rollout as ‘a significant leap forward for tokenized markets’ (Aug. 5, 2025), underlining the firm’s intent to meet institutional standards.
The company positions the product as foundational for a rapidly expanding RWA market currently measured in the low hundreds of billions and projected to exceed $30 trillion by 2030. By closing off‑hours pricing gaps and offering context‑rich feeds, Data Streams remove a practical barrier to using tokenized equities as collateral and to launching complex on‑chain derivatives.
Investors and builders will now watch how protocols use 24/5 coverage and sub‑second updates to manage liquidation risk, margining and arbitrage between on‑chain and off‑chain venues. The rollout on January 20, 2026, and the integrations already live set the stage for broader institutional tests as the tokenized RWA market scales toward the 2030 projection.
