BlackRock, the world's largest asset manager, has packaged three professionally constructed model portfolios into single tokens through a partnership with Ondo Finance, extending tokenization beyond individual assets toward onchain investment strategies.

The three portfolios, built by BlackRock for Ondo's Intelligent Portfolios platform, target high income, diversified growth and high growth. Each token represents a full multi-asset strategy, removing the need for an investor to buy and rebalance the underlying components manually.

What changes when a strategy sits onchain?

Putting a portfolio onchain gives it structural properties that mutual funds and ETFs cannot replicate as easily. The token can transfer between wallets and platforms, remain visible onchain, serve as collateral for borrowing, and connect with other onchain financial products.

BlackRock positioned the Ondo partnership around that capability. "Tokenization creates new ways for portfolio strategies to be delivered through digital infrastructure," Lisa O'Connor, BlackRock's global head of model portfolio solutions, said in the announcement.

The framing aligns with how crypto investment firm Pantera described the market shift in a recent report: a move "from single securities to onchain portfolios." Pantera's analysts added: "For investors, the practical change is a reduction in the number of positions and rebalancing decisions they need to manage themselves."

How large is the existing pool?

The model portfolio market gives tokenization a sizeable target. Pre-built combinations of funds and other investments used by wealth managers held about $9.8 trillion in assets in June, according to Broadridge. Tokenization offers asset managers a new distribution mechanism for those strategies.

To date, most tokenization initiatives have focused on individual assets: tokenized U.S. Treasury funds, private credit products, and single stocks and ETFs. The BlackRock-Ondo products push the model up a layer, moving the multi-asset strategy itself onto the blockchain.

Who else is building in this space?

Bitwise introduced Automated Token Portfolios in August, partnering with Coinbase (COIN) and Glider, an infrastructure provider backed by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Eligible non-U.S. investors can follow Bitwise-designed portfolios of tokenized stocks while retaining custody of the individual assets in their own wallets. Glider's rebalancing engine automatically adjusts holdings to keep them aligned with Bitwise's target weights.

The simultaneous moves by BlackRock and Bitwise suggest that onchain model portfolios are evolving from a single-firm experiment into a broader product category. Convergence across custody arrangements, distribution terms, and jurisdictional rules will shape the pace at which wealth managers migrate the model portfolio market onto blockchain rails.