Introducing Chainlink 24/7: Always-On Markets for Real-World Assets Article 5 mins

Chainlink's price feeds already underpin most DeFi lending and derivatives markets, but until now its equity and commodity data followed traditional market hours, with a 24/5 feed launched earlier to cover weekday trading. Tokenized stocks and commodities, however, trade on-chain continuously, leaving a gap every weekend and holiday when protocols had no fresh reference price. Aave, the largest lending protocol by deposits, has been expanding into tokenized real-world assets and needed pricing that does not go dark when Wall Street closes.

Aave can now treat tokenized stocks as collateral without freezing valuations over weekends, and says stock-backed loans are coming soon on top of this feed. Borrowers using tokenized equities gain continuous mark-to-market exposure instead of a stale Friday-close price carrying through to Monday; liquidators and risk managers get a live number to act on at any hour. Other protocols building on tokenized RWAs can plug into the same feed rather than engineering their own off-hours pricing workaround.

An oracle feed is not the same as a redeemable cash-market price, and that gap widens precisely when markets are shut. Chainlink's off-hours numbers come from perpetual-futures venues, a derivative reference that can diverge from the price set at the next opening auction. Protocols relying on this for collateral valuation and liquidations are trusting a proxy market to stand in for one that is legally closed, a trade-off worth stating plainly rather than treating as solved.