Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov predicted on September 25, 2026, that the volume of tokenized equity will rise sharply, citing the SEC's newly approved Innovation Exemption as the catalyst that could move US stocks onchain. He made the remarks on a panel at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

The Innovation Exemption is a five-year regulatory framework that permits onchain trading of tokenized US equities. A tokenized equity represents a share of stock as a blockchain token, recording ownership on a shared digital network rather than solely in a brokerage's internal ledger — a structure that can, in theory, settle trades in real time.

Nazarov said the exemption is expected to catalyze a significant shift toward onchain trading, framing the outcome as more formal, real-time and efficient market infrastructure. He also stressed that the US equities market accounts for the majority of the global financial system's equity value and flow, and argued that this market needs the technological transition to maintain its worldwide leadership position.

Why the venue matters

The Philadelphia Fed appearance was not an isolated statement. Nazarov has carried the same argument through several high-profile venues in recent months.

• At an August 2026 roundtable connected to the CFTC — where he participates in the agency's Innovation Advisory Committee — he projected that tokenizing equities could create significant value onchain.
• At Sibos 2026, the annual banking and payments conference, he discussed how tokenization systems could support AI agents participating in trading processes.

Across these appearances, Nazarov has outlined three core benefits he attributes to tokenization:

• Improved liquidity, meaning assets can be bought and sold more easily.
• Lower compliance costs, since rules can be built into the infrastructure itself.
• Around-the-clock trading, removing the traditional market-hours constraint.

Where Chainlink fits in

Chainlink builds the infrastructure that tokenized markets would rely on, and the company has implemented two key products for tokenized equity use cases. The first is Data Feeds, which supply external information such as prices to blockchains. The second is the Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol, or CCIP, which lets different blockchains communicate and move assets between one another.

Chainlink has applied these tools to corporate actions — events like dividend payments and stock splits — and to settlement operations. According to the research summary, the tools are already streamlining those back-office processes and paving the way for institutional adoption.

What comes next?

The five-year window of the Innovation Exemption now defines the timeline for onchain equity experimentation in the US. Whether tokenized equities move from exempted pilots into mainstream market structure will depend on how issuers, trading venues and infrastructure providers like Chainlink perform under the framework during that period.