Ethereum News Today: Block Street's $11.5M Push to Match Wall Street Speed on Blockchain

Block Street, a blockchain infrastructure startup, has raised $11.5 million in a funding round led by Hack VC, with participation from Generative Venture, DWF Labs, and executives from firms like Jane Street and Point72. The capital will support the development of an "execution layer for on-chain stocks," a system designed to replicate the speed and reliability of traditional markets for tokenized equities. The startup's platform, Aqua, operates on the Monad blockchain and employs a request-for-quote (RFQ) model to enable market makers to compete for best prices. These quotes are cryptographically signed and verified on-chain to prevent manipulation and delays.

The platform introduces two key components: Aqua, the trading system, and Everst, a lending and liquidation tool tailored for tokenized equities. Everst aims to reduce "MEV leakage" (maximal extractable value inefficiencies) and enhance the functionality of tokenized assets beyond speculative use. Hedy Wang, co-founder of Block Street, emphasized the project's focus on infrastructure rather than applications. "Monad's parallel EVM gives us the settlement guarantees and latency budget institutions expect, while Aqua and Everst push best-execution and equity-native risk controls directly on-chain," Wang stated.

Block Street plans to launch its system on Monad later this year, with expansion to Ethereum, BNB Chain, and Base pending integration progress. The team, composed of veterans from Citadel, Point72, and Google, aims to publish transparency dashboards comparing their execution performance against automated market-makers. This data-driven approach underscores the startup's commitment to institutional-grade standards in a market where tokenized stocks face regulatory and operational challenges.

The funding round reflects growing interest in blockchain-based financial infrastructure. Tokenized stocks, which have surpassed $1.3 billion in value, are seen as a potential bridge between traditional markets and decentralized systems. However, they also introduce risks such as 24/7 price volatility, smart contract vulnerabilities, and regulatory ambiguities. Block Street's focus on execution efficiency aligns with broader industry efforts to address these challenges, including initiatives by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and traditional exchanges like Nasdaq to modernize trading systems.

The startup's strategic use of Monad, a high-throughput blockchain capable of 10,000 transactions per second (TPS), positions it to compete with Ethereum's evolving scalability solutions. While Ethereum's Dencun upgrade has introduced sharding, Monad's architecture is designed for parallel processing from the ground up. This technical differentiation is critical for handling the high-frequency trading demands of tokenized equities, which require near-instant settlement and minimal latency.

As the market for tokenized assets matures, Block Street's project highlights the tension between innovation and regulation. While the SEC has signaled openness to blockchain-based trading, legal clarity remains a barrier for widespread adoption. For instance, tokenized securities must navigate complex frameworks such as the Investment Company Act and broker-dealer rules. Block Street's approach-prioritizing institutional-grade infrastructure over speculative applications-may help mitigate some of these regulatory concerns by focusing on execution and risk management rather than direct asset ownership.

Source: [1] Coindesk (https://www.coindesk.com/business/2025/10/09/block-street-raises-usd11-5m-to-build-execution-layer-for-on-chain-stocks)