Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov predicts tokenized equity surge

Sergey Nazarov thinks the stock market is about to move onchain, and he picked a fitting room to say it: a panel at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. Speaking on September 25, 2026, the Chainlink co-founder predicted that the amount of tokenized equity will greatly increase as onchain markets grow. His argument rests on a fresh regulatory development: the SEC’s Innovation Exemption, a framework approved just before his remarks. What the Innovation Exemption does The Innovation Exemption is a five-year framework that allows onchain trading of tokenized US equities. A tokenized equity is a share of stock represented as a token on a blockchain. Instead of living only in a brokerage’s internal ledger, ownership is recorded on a shared digital network that can, in theory, settle trades in real time. According to Nazarov, the exemption is expected to catalyze a significant shift toward onchain trading. He framed the result as a more formal, real-time and efficient market infrastructure. Nazarov also emphasized that the US equities market accounts for the majority of the global financial system’s equity value and flow, and said that market needs this technological transition to ke...