Mantle Network's xStocks product — built with Bybit, BackedFi, and Flowdesk — lets traders buy ERC-20 tokens tracking Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, and seven other US equities around the clock on its Ethereum Layer 2, using Swiss DLT-compliant tracker certificates as the legal wrapper.
Mantle Network launched xStocks on 10 April, a tokenised equities product that lets traders buy and sell ERC-20 tokens tracking ten major US stocks and ETFs around the clock on its Ethereum Layer 2 — one of the first deployments of 24/7 equity trading on a rollup.
The initial lineup includes tokens tracking Tesla, Nvidia, Apple, Meta, Alphabet, Strategy Inc. (formerly MicroStrategy), Robinhood, and Circle, alongside the SPY and QQQ index ETFs. Each xStock is structured as a fully collateralised tracker certificate issued under Switzerland's Distributed Ledger Technology Act, a legal framework that gives the tokens the status of ledger-based securities rather than unregulated synthetic derivatives. BackedFi handles the issuance; Bybit provides custody and fiat on-ramp infrastructure; Flowdesk supplies institutional liquidity.
Trading happens on Fluxion, Mantle's native decentralised exchange, which uses a hybrid model that combines an automated market maker with a request-for-quote mechanism. The idea is to capture the composability of DeFi — any xStock can be used as collateral, lent, or paired in a liquidity pool — while delivering the tighter spreads that institutional traders expect from RFQ systems. Whether the execution quality holds up under real volume is an open question, but the architecture is more sophisticated than the pure-AMM approach that most on-chain trading platforms still rely on.
The timing is deliberate. Tokenised real-world assets have become the most bankable narrative in crypto finance this year. Amundi and Spiko's tokenised money market fund pulled in $400 million in three weeks; Securitize has been tokenising Nasdaq-listed shares on Ethereum and Solana; and BlackRock's BUIDL fund has crossed $2 billion in assets. Mantle's move extends the trend from bonds and money market funds into individual equities — a category that crypto traders have wanted exposure to for years but could previously only access through centralised platforms like eToro or through perpetual futures contracts with significant counterparty risk.
xStocks GM Val Gui described the product's goal as providing "greater liquidity, 24/7 trading capabilities, and improved accessibility." The 24/7 element is the genuine differentiator. Traditional equity markets close at 4pm Eastern and don't reopen until 9:30am the next business day — leaving a sixteen-and-a-half-hour gap during which crypto markets continue to move. When bitcoin drops 5 per cent overnight, correlated equities like Strategy Inc. and Coinbase don't reprice until the opening bell. An on-chain token tracking those same stocks settles continuously, which means crypto-native traders can hedge equity exposure in real time rather than waiting for New York to wake up.
Bybit's involvement adds a distribution layer that most tokenised asset experiments lack. The exchange, which serves over 70 million traders globally, provides direct deposit and withdrawal rails into xStocks — meaning a Bybit user can move from spot crypto into tokenised Tesla exposure without leaving the platform's broader infrastructure. Emily Bao, a Bybit executive, framed it as serving "institutional participants seeking equity exposure without leaving the digital asset ecosystem." The phrasing is corporate, but the implication is practical: if you're already trading ETH on Bybit, buying NVDAx on Mantle is now one bridge transaction away.
The Swiss DLT Act wrapper matters more than it might seem. Several earlier attempts at tokenised equities — including Mirror Protocol's synthetic stocks, which the SEC shut down — failed because they lacked a credible legal structure. The tracker certificate model gives xStocks a defined relationship to the underlying security: BackedFi holds the actual shares (or equivalent exposure) and issues tokens against them, with the Swiss regulatory framework providing investor protections that pure DeFi synthetics never offered. Whether US regulators will accept this structure for American users is another matter entirely; Mantle's documentation notes the product is available "where permitted," a hedge that implies certain jurisdictions — almost certainly including the United States — are excluded.
Mantle itself is controlled by BitDAO's treasury, one of the largest DAO treasuries in existence, which gives the network a financial backstop that most Layer 2s cannot match. The xStocks launch is part of a broader strategy to position Mantle as the chain where traditional finance and DeFi intersect — a positioning that Pyth Network's new on-chain data marketplace and similar infrastructure plays are also chasing.
Ten equities is a starting point. The architecture supports adding more tickers, and if volume materialises, the competitive pressure on every other Layer 2 to offer similar products will be substantial. The race to bring Wall Street's menu onto blockchain rails has been talked about for years; Mantle is one of the first to actually ship it.
