Onchain finance

Onchain finance is a financial service or record kept on a public or permissioned blockchain instead of a bank's own database. A fund share, a bond or a euro deposit can each exist onchain as a token, and the blockchain, not a custodian's private ledger, becomes the record of who owns what. This differs from decentralized finance in scope: DeFi is a specific way of running a service, through smart contracts without an intermediary, while onchain finance covers any asset or process moved onto a chain, including ones a bank still controls.

Finance Loop has used this framing for its own mission since its first year: onchain finance was still "just getting started" when Finance Loop marked its first year of events, and the field has moved from a niche interest to a line item at large asset managers since.

Tokenization is the step that puts an asset onchain: a fund, a bond, a real estate share or a deposit gets represented as a token that a blockchain can settle and transfer. Tokenized funds and real-world asset tokenization cover two of the largest categories moving onchain today: fund shares that settle on a blockchain instead of through a transfer agent, and physical or financial assets such as bonds, real estate or commodities represented as tokens. Deutsche Bank published its DAMA 2 litepaper on tokenized market structure from Frankfurt in 2025, a sign that a major bank now treats onchain settlement as its own research topic, not someone else's.

Two EU rulebooks reach most onchain finance activity from Germany. The Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) sets authorization and conduct rules for firms that issue or trade crypto-assets, including tokenized assets that meet its definitions, and BaFin supervises those firms in Germany. Separately, the EU's DLT Pilot Regime, Regulation (EU) 2022/858, lets market infrastructures test the trading and settlement of tokenized financial instruments such as shares and bonds on distributed ledger technology under supervised exemptions from standard securities law, before those exemptions expire and the infrastructure has to fit the ordinary rules or wind down. Deutsche Börse Group's D7 platform and 21X, a Frankfurt-based DLT trading venue, both operate in this space.

A bank or asset manager moving a product onchain works out early which rulebook its token falls under: MiCA if the token is a crypto-asset in the regulation's sense, securities law with a DLT Pilot Regime exemption if it is a tokenized financial instrument, or ordinary banking law if it is a tokenized deposit that never leaves the issuing bank's balance sheet. Tokenized deposits vs stablecoins sets out that last distinction, which matters for deposit insurance and settlement finality.

Settlement speed is the second recurring topic: an onchain trade can settle in the time it takes a block to confirm, against the one to two days a traditional securities trade still needs, and treasury and custody teams are building the operational processes to make that speed usable inside existing risk controls.

Finance Loop is the meeting place for people who move financial products and records onto a blockchain: banks, asset managers, DLT trading venues and the developers who build the infrastructure. It connects the finance, IT and AI communities in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, with events in Frankfurt, Munich, Berlin and Hamburg.

Finance Loop announced a strategic cooperation with 21X, a Frankfurt-based trading venue for tokenized securities regulated under the EU's DLT Pilot Regime, and has covered its work in a dedicated piece on 21X and DLT trading in Frankfurt. Finance Loop also has a long-term partnership with BTC-ECHO on crypto assets, DeFi and Web3. Venturebloxx and Finance Loop entered a partnership for on-chain finance and published the report Stablecoins: The Operating Layer for Global B2B Payments. CoreLedger, a Finance Loop partner, builds asset tokenization technology. At Capital & Code in Frankfurt, where Finance Loop is media partner, tokenized funds and faster settlement are on the program, and Vienna Blockchain Week, with Finance Loop as official partner, lists on-chain finance, tokenization and MiCA among its topics. Related pages: DeFi in Germany, crypto in Frankfurt, crypto assets in Frankfurt and finance in Frankfurt.

Onchain finance means running a financial process, such as holding, transferring or settling an asset, on a blockchain instead of in a bank's private database. It covers tokenized funds, tokenized securities, tokenized deposits and stablecoins alike; what they share is that the blockchain itself is the record of ownership.

Onchain finance is the wider category; DeFi is one way of doing it. DeFi specifically means a service run through smart contracts without an intermediary. A bank that tokenizes its own deposits and keeps full control of the ledger is doing onchain finance without doing DeFi, because the bank is still the intermediary. The comparison of DeFi, CeFi and TradFi sets out that distinction in more detail.

Onchain finance appears as a track inside broader crypto and digital asset conferences, not under one fixed event name across Europe. In Frankfurt, the Crypto Assets Conference at Frankfurt School and the Digital Euro Conference of the Digital Euro Association both cover onchain settlement and tokenization alongside their main topics. Current dates are in the events calendar.