Uniswap ($UNI), one of the largest and longest-running decentralized exchanges, is making a deeper push into tokenized assets, introducing a feature designed to let regulated securities trade on the venue without sacrificing compliance requirements.
The decentralized exchange's developer, Uniswap Labs, is rolling out "Permissioned Pools" on Thursday, a piece of infrastructure that allows issuers of tokenized funds, equities and other regulated assets to restrict trading to approved investors while still using the protocol's automated market maker.
That “gives issuers a flexible way to enforce their own compliance rules without building separate trading infrastructure,” Ken Ng, head of ecosystem at Uniswap Labs, explained to CoinDesk.
“The next generation of value coming onchain, and it’s trading on Uniswap,” he said.
Launch partners include tokenization firms Securitize (SECZ) and Superstate, along with European digital securities platform Dowgo, all of which plan to use the framework for regulated onchain assets.
Tokenization trend enters DeFi
The move fits into a broader shift across decentralized finance (DeFi), where protocols originally built for open, permissionless trading and lending are increasingly adapting to the needs of financial institutions bringing traditional, regulated real-world assets (RWA) onto blockchain rails. One example for that is Aave, the largest decentralized lender, which rolled out Horizon, an institutional lending venue for tokenized assets.
The potential opportunity is significant. Global asset managers including BlackRock, Apollo, Franklin Templeton and VanEck have launched tokenized funds, while brokerages and exchanges are expanding tokenized stock offerings. A recent report by global bank Citi projected tokenized securities growing into a $5.5 trillion market by 2030.
Uniswap has been quietly laying the groundwork for institutional tokenized assets. In February, BlackRock's tokenized money market fund, BUIDL, issued by Securitize, became tradable on the protocol, while the asset manager disclosed an investment in $UNI, Uniswap's governance token. The protocol has also seen a surge in activity with the launch on Robinhood’s new chain and tokenized stocks trading.
The new Permissioned Pools standard, built on top of Uniswap v4, extend that effort by giving issuers a way to enforce investor eligibility directly within the protocol rather than relying on offchain compliance checks.
Before a trade or liquidity deposit can occur, the pool verifies whether a wallet has been approved by the asset issuer. Investors who meet those requirements can trade through Uniswap's automated market maker, while issuers retain control over investor eligibility.
That approach aims to preserve many of decentralized finance's benefits while accommodating the regulatory controls expected by institutional issuers.
“Until now, compliance for tokenized securities lived at the app layer; a gate standing in front of the market,” Superstate CEO Robert Leshner told CoinDesk. “Permissioned Pools move those rules into the pool itself, so a regulated asset can tap real AMM liquidity without the issuer giving up the controls securities law requires.”