Exclusive: The State of Kinexys in 2025 — Scaling Clients, Expanding Networks

Blockchain acceleration: Over the past weeks, Kinexys — J.P. Morgan’s blockchain division — has been accelerating client adoption, adding names like FedEx, clearing house Marex, and payments provider Corpay, among others. Amid these recent developments, we sat down with Zack Chestnut, Head of Business Development at Kinexys.

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Louis Tellier & Maximilian Vargas
August 28, 2025

With everyone talking about Circle and Stripe’s new Layer-1s, Google had its “hold my beer” moment. On Tuesday, Rich Widmann, Google Cloud’s Head of Web3 Strategy, took the LinkedIn stage to tell people that Google is also planning to sell blockspace.

The project is called Universal Ledger, a permissioned blockchain designed for tokenized bank deposits. It’s still in testnet (with early users like CME Group), but according to Widmann, the ambition is (ofc) to eventually scale to “billions of users” and “100s of institutional partners”.

While some people might call it “Google Sheets with smart contracts”, we’re eager to learn more about the technical details in the coming months.

Today, we’ll talk about:

  • Exclusive: The state of Kinexys in 2025

  • Ubyx: Building the global stablecoin acceptance network

  • Ethereum Foundation: Check-in with the Enterprise Team

A quick note: We just kicked off Tokenization Season with an incredible first summit in Zurich. Many thanks to everyone who joined us yesterday! Next stop: London on September 11.

HIGH SIGNAL NEWS

  • ECB weighs permissionless blockchains for retail digital euro. According to a Financial Times report, the move is being spurred by the passage of the US GENIUS Act on stablecoins.🇪🇺 

  • DBS tokenizes structured notes for crypto trading. Singapore’s largest bank has expanded its blockchain capabilities by tokenizing crypto-linked structured notes on Ethereum, making them available in fractional form on platforms like ADDX, DigiFT, and HydraX.🇸🇬 

  • State Street joins JPMorgan's Digital Debt Service. In its first transaction on the platform, the custodian ($49 trillion under custody) oversaw a $100 million commercial paper issuance by Singapore’s OCBC Bank.🏦

  • SBI Holdings and Startale launch RWA trading platform. One of Japan’s largest financial services groups (¥11 trillion AUM, 65 million customers) has formed a joint venture with Singapore-based tech company Startale to build a 24/7 blockchain platform for tokenized stocks and real-world assets.🇯🇵

  • Sygnum arranges $50m BTC-backed financing for Ledn. Swiss digital asset bank has arranged a $50 million refinancing for the Bitcoin lender, with part of the loan issued in tokenized form. The deal follows a similar transaction in 2024 and provides institutional investors with exposure to fully collateralized, yield-bearing debt secured by Bitcoin.🇨🇭

INSTITUTIONAL ADOPTION

Exclusive: The State of Kinexys in 2025 — Scaling Clients, Expanding Networks

Blockchain acceleration: Over the past weeks, Kinexys — J.P. Morgan’s blockchain division — has been accelerating client adoption, adding names like FedEx, clearing house Marex, and payments provider Corpay, among others. The bank now counts “several dozen clients” actively using its blockchain-based services.

  • Expanding beyond private rails: For years, J.P. Morgan focused on building an internal transfer infrastructure around JPM Coin, which today processes over $2 trillion in notional volume on the bank’s private blockchain, previously known as Onyx and now rebranded as Kinexys Digital Payments. Today, the strategy is evolving: Kinexys is gradually extending its reach to public networks, most notably with the launch of JPMD, a deposit token issued on Base, Coinbase’s Layer 2 blockchain.

Interview: Amid these recent developments, we sat down with Zack Chestnut, Head of Business Development at Kinexys. In this interview, we discuss how the bank’s blockchain unit scaled into a global business, how the new JPMD token complements Kinexys’ existing blockchain deposit accounts, and how J.P. Morgan is approaching different use cases across private and public networks.

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On the current state of Kinexys and its strategic positioning:

“Kinexys by J.P. Morgan has evolved from a small experimental team into a global blockchain business unit serving clients across five continents. Today, we operate four product pillars: 

1. Kinexys Digital Payments, our deposit ledger and payment rail
2. Kinexys Digital Assets, an asset tokenization platform
3. Kinexys Liink, the world’s first bank-led peer-to-peer data-sharing network
4. Kinexys Labs, our R&D hub.

What differentiates Kinexys is its horizontal platform architecture, a single infrastructure designed to move information, money, and assets seamlessly. Since launch, the platform has processed over $2 trillion in notional value, with daily payments now exceeding $3 billion and achieving ~10× year-over-year growth on average.”

Where Kinexys sees the strongest client adoption:

“Liquidity optimization is one of the main drivers. By removing cut-off times and speeding up settlements, clients can reduce or even eliminate pre-funding and keep more cash in their highest-yield or main funding currencies instead of spreading it across multiple markets. For example, U.S. broker-dealers can now cover unexpected margin calls in Hong Kong instantly, without having to pre-position large HKD balances.

Another major driver is streamlining operations through programmable payments, which automate complex money flows. For example, one of the largest U.S. commercial real estate loan services cut a process that used to take two days down to just five minutes by automatically splitting and sending funds.”

On Kinexys’ money products — blockchain deposit accounts and JPMD:

“Over the last few years, we’ve focused on bringing commercial cash onchain in multiple formats. First came our blockchain deposit accounts, effectively traditional bank accounts running natively on Kinexys infrastructure. They provide clients with 24/7 settlement, near-instant liquidity, and programmable workflows inside J.P. Morgan’s ecosystem.

This year, we added JPMD on Base, our USD deposit token. With JPMD, clients can settle with selected partners directly onchain, provided both parties meet our risk and compliance requirements.

We see these products as complementary rather than competitive. Deposit accounts are ideal for internal flows and automated treasury management, while deposit tokens unlock native settlement and Delivery-vs-Payment (DvP) use cases in broader digital-asset ecosystems. Together, they form a complete money product suite.”

On Kinexys’ approach to private and public blockchain infrastructure:

“We believe the future will involve both private and public networks, and they will serve different use cases.

Clients transacting natively on public blockchains, for example, settling tokenized assets, will likely use JPMD. By contrast, our blockchain deposit accounts remain the foundation for broader treasury solutions and internal settlement rails.

Think of it like a road system: we want to be on the public roads, but we control which cars can interact with our car. We’ll never be able to interact with every participant without understanding who they are. That’s why our pilots, like the Ondo Chain DvP settlement and JPMD on Base, are designed around whitelisted participants only.”

On the 6-month roadmap and client-driven scaling priorities:

“Our strategy has always been to scale alongside client demand. The launch of JPMD in June generated significant interest, partly due to growing attention around deposit tokens and the preference many institutions have for bank-issued solutions.

Over the next six months, our focus is on three priorities:

1) Scaling JPMD adoption by developing practical use cases in tokenized settlement and cross-border payments.

2) Expanding usage of our blockchain deposit accounts as the programmable foundation for next-generation treasury workflows.

3) Continuing selective integrations with external infrastructure where clients want to transact natively.

STABLECOINS

The Citi Veteran Who’s Building a Universal Acceptance Network for Stablecoins: “Make Them Like Bank Checks”

Global layer for stablecoins: As interest in stablecoins accelerates among banks, a new generation of infrastructure providers is emerging to connect traditional finance with onchain payments. Among them is Ubyx, which is building a global acceptance network designed to make stablecoins as easy to receive and settle as traditional payment instruments.

  • Founded by a Citi veteran: The project has gained visibility largely thanks to its main public figure, founder and CEO Tony McLaughlin, who has spent his career navigating the intersection of banking and payments.

  • Prominent backing: In March 2025, Ubyx published its white paper and completed a $10 million seed funding round led by Galaxy Digital’s venture arm. Backed by a team of ten, the company plans to launch its network in Q4 2025.

Interview: We sat down with McLaughlin to explore the market structure of today’s stablecoins, how Ubyx is building the equivalent of a digital check-clearing system, and why banks stand to benefit from integrating this emerging payment rail.

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On why Ubyx exists and the problem it solves:

“After the U.S. elections, it became obvious to me that banks would eventually need to operate on public, permissionless blockchains. Stablecoins live on these rails, and if there’s going to be a stablecoin bill, it would be strange for banks not to compete in this space.

But today’s market structure is broken. A handful of issuers dominate because new entrants lack distribution and acceptance networks. If I want to send you a stablecoin, someone has to be ready to receive it and in most cases, that infrastructure simply doesn’t exist.

The best analogy is checks and travelers’ cheques. A stablecoin is just a new form factor of money, a negotiable instrument, like a digital check. Historically, banks built systems where you could deposit a paper check seamlessly into your account. We need the same infrastructure for stablecoins, so basically the ability for anyone, anywhere, to receive, redeem, and settle them at par. That’s what Ubyx is building: a universal clearing layer.”

On why banks will embrace stablecoin clearing layers like Ubyx:

“There’s a clear revenue opportunity. Each time a bank receives a U.S. stablecoin and converts it into local currency, it earns FX spreads and transaction fees. As cross-border stablecoin flows grow, this creates a strong incentive for banks to integrate stablecoin payments into their existing infrastructure and capture a share of this new payment rail.”

On how Ubyx works and its role in the stack:

“We’re not an exchange. We don’t touch client funds. We’re a clearing platform that orchestrates redemption between banks and stablecoin issuers.

Here’s a concrete example:

1) An American importer owes a Japanese exporter $10,000 but U.S. payment systems are closed, so the importer sends $10,000 in USD stablecoin instead.

2) The exporter receives the stablecoin instantly in their bank-provided wallet; the bank forwards the USD stablecoin to Ubyx, which redeems it with the issuer and returns dollars to the bank.

3) The bank credits the exporter in yen, earns FX revenue, and the payment settles instantly.

Crucially, we’re issuer-agnostic and chain-agnostic. Banks don’t need to do separate integrations for each stablecoin or blockchain.”

On the future of stablecoin adoption, hosted wallets, and bank-issued coins:

“The endgame is a pluralistic world where anyone can send, receive, and issue stablecoins. Just like checks and cards in the past, every bank will be able to process them — and many will issue their own.

For users, the shift will feel almost invisible. Tomorrow, you’ll log into your banking app and, next to your IBAN, see a stablecoin wallet address. You’ll be able to receive stablecoins, tokenized deposits, and CBDCs directly into your account without touching an exchange.

Over time, these wallets will increasingly come from banks and fintechs rather than being self-hosted. They already manage customer relationships and compliance, making them the natural providers. And once the acceptance network is in place, adoption will accelerate quickly: most institutions will white-label infrastructure, enabling even smaller banks to issue their own branded stablecoins within days.”

A conversation with Ash Morgan, Head of Stablecoins & RWA at the Ethereum Foundation (EF). Two months ago, the EF underwent a major internal shift, launching a dedicated enterprise team to engage directly with financial institutions. We spoke with Ash about what’s happened since.

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Disclaimer: The information provided in the Institutional Briefing by Blockstories does not constitute investment advice. Accordingly, we assume no liability for any investment decisions made based on the content presented herein.

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