Ondo Finance confirmed that founder Nathan Allman passed away unexpectedly on May 26, but the company did not disclose the cause of death. Following the announcement, market sentiment quickly weakened, with ONDO dropping nearly 4% over the past 24 hours, falling from $0.444 to around $0.421 during trading, and daily volume rising above $229 million.
Price retraced but trading volume increased.
This decline interrupted ONDO’s recent rebound momentum. Over the past 30 days, ONDO has gained nearly 62%, driven by rising interest in RWA tokenization and growing institutional demand for on-chain financial products.
Despite the shock from the news, Ondo’s on-chain scale has not been significantly impacted. The platform’s current total value locked remains above $2.67 billion, maintaining its position among the leaders in the tokenized treasury bond space.
Ondo has completed its management transition.
To stabilize external expectations, Ondo Finance quickly announced that Ian De Bode will assume the role of CEO. De Bode, previously president, has been responsible for the company’s strategy, product development, and operations over the past two years.
According to the company’s statement, the management transition will not alter the long-term development strategy. This statement is primarily intended to reassure token holders and institutional partners about business continuity.
The founder previously drove institutional partnerships and expansion.
Nathan Allman has been a central figure in Ondo’s recent expansion. Public records show that before founding Ondo Finance in 2021, he worked in Goldman Sachs’ digital assets team and has a background in private credit investing.
During his tenure, Ondo partnered with institutions such as JPMorgan, Franklin Templeton, Broadridge Financial Solutions, and BlackRock. The company’s flagship products include OUSG, which provides tokenized exposure to short-term U.S. Treasuries, and USDY, a yield-generating digital dollar backed by U.S. Treasury assets.
In recent years, Ondo has also expanded its business into tokenized stock infrastructure. In the short term, market attention will shift to how the new CEO will maintain existing institutional partnerships and advance future expansion plans.