Dinari Unveils L1 Blockchain Ambition: Building the ’DTCC for Tokenized Stocks’
Tokenization upstart Dinari just dropped a bombshell—it's rolling out its own Layer 1 blockchain. And their target? Nothing less than becoming the DTCC for on-chain equities.
Why it matters: The firm’s betting big that Wall Street’s creaky settlement infrastructure can be replaced by a decentralized ledger. No more T+2 delays—just instant ownership of tokenized stocks.
The cynical take: Because what finance really needs is another blockchain promising to disrupt legacy systems (while probably hiring ex-bankers to lobby regulators).
Bottom line: If they pull this off, Dinari could rewrite the rules of securities settlement. But that’s a big 'if' in a space crowded with wannabe disruptors.
Why another L1?
Dinari’s decision to build its own chain follows a recent pattern seen across fintechs and crypto firms. USDC stablecoin issuer Circle and payments company Stripe revealed this week to pursue proprietary blockchains. Rival tokenization firms like Ondo Finance and Securitize (teamed up with Ethena) are also working on their own networks.
With this approach, they aim to gain more control over compliance with regulations, uptime and integration with traditional finance systems compared to deploying on existing public blockchains.
For Dinari, having their own chain was "out of necessity," Otte said.
"A lot of the public chains doesn't really allow for the proper level of compliance needed for dealing with securities," he explained. Another key reason was to facilitate and coordinate trades of Dinari-issued tokens across multiple blockchains without fragmenting liquidity.
"If part of [the stock tokens] lives on Solana, part on Arbitrum, part on Base, you’re taking this $100 trillion market and fragmenting it," he said. "How do you prevent that? With a purpose-built chain that allows us to essentially pull liquidity across all these different chains."
By unifying settlement and liquidity, the company aims to bring continuous, compliant trading of U.S. equities to a global market, gunning for a similar role to the Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation (DTCC) for the stock market. DTCC is the world’s largest securities clearing and settlement system.
For choosing Avalanche to build on, Otte emphasized the need for flexibility and the ability to control transaction fees (gas prices), which is difficult with rollup and layer-2 solutions. Avalanche's blockchain service, Ava Cloud lets businesses spin up and customize blockchains for their own needs, said Morgan Krupetsky, VP of ecosystem growth at Ava Labs.
Neutral clearinghouse
Dinari wants to position the Dinari Financial Network to be a "neutral clearinghouse" for the industry, Otte said.
At the start, governance will come from a consortium of institutions including Gemini, custodian BitGo and asset manager VanEck, who will serve as validators and also offer custody services.
The plan is to fully decentralize the chain in future, Otte said. That includes potentially launching the chain's own governance token, he added.
