Our answer is one line: we started without the layers, and we run on shared context and shared intelligence instead of management ones. The rest of this is what that means and how we got there.

Ascend operates market infrastructure for regulated securities. That makes the question specific. AI-native means something different for a firm meant to hold onchain securities under stress than it does for a consumer app or a research lab.

Two versions of the same word

The first version is cosmetic. A firm announces a strategy, introduces a few internal tools, circulates a note. Six months later the team works the same way, the product looks the same, and the risk surface is unchanged. The shift is real to the people who wrote the announcement and invisible to anyone who depends on what the firm produces.

The second is structural. It changes how the firm decides, documents, stores institutional memory, replaces its own components, and draws the line between deterministic work and human-owned work. This change shows up over months as fewer surprises, tighter feedback loops, and a shrinking distance between what the firm says and what it does.

Both use the same word. Only one is load-bearing. Cosmetic AI-native is worse than not using AI at all: it signals a firm that took on the language without changing its substrate, and counterparties read that accurately. The cost compounds for the whole category, not just the firm that sent the signal.

What the market is doing, and where we sit

The clearest thinking has come from firms cutting. Cloudflare split its workforce into builders, sellers, and measurers: builders compound, sellers gain, and the measurers (middle management, much of finance, legal, internal audit) are largely replaced by AI, except the best, who are augmented. Coinbase flattened its org and set a hard ceiling, never more than five layers between the CEO and the newest contributor. Jack Dorsey argued that pure managers are finished, and that what survives is individual contributors, directly responsible individuals, and player-coaches.

We think those are basically true. Jamie Dimon reflects the same truths from the regulated end. JPMorgan redeployed staff rather than firing at scale and holds a consistent line: AI can process information, but accountability stays human, because compliance, risk, and trust do not compress the way a marketing function does.

The difference for us is that we never had to cut. Those firms are subtracting layers they already built. As a new firm, we reimagined the org before we went past a single team. We started without the layers, and add shared context and shared intelligence in their place, so a small team carries the capability that once required a large one, without the coordination tax.

A three-part operating model

The AI work at Ascend is run by three people with three distinct jobs, and the structure of the firm reflects it.

It started with two people and a sequence. Dennis O'Connell, who led the protocol build, stepped up to CEO. He is the engineer of the group, with two decades in derivatives and capital markets behind the code, and he runs the ERC-3643 securities standard that Ascend's compliance model is built on. He brought in Marcelo Fleitas as Chief Strategy Officer. Marcelo is the strategist and operator, with 27 years across emerging technology and large-scale financial infrastructure, including modernizing the listings and regulatory-technology stack at the NYSE. He was already at maximum conviction on what AI plus people could do, so as the two of them designed the org, they designed it AI-native. Besides identifying the AI bet early, Marcelo shaped Ascend's team around it, bringing in the people who could turn an AI-native intent into a firm that runs that way.

To co-design and implement AI Ops, Marcelo brought in Manny E. Reimi as Chief Product Officer: a zero-to-one product and ProductOps specialist at the intersection of DeFi and regulated finance, whose studio Escape Velocity Labs was early to shipping custom AI Ops builds and to running an AI-native product, engineering, and growth studio.

The three jobs stay separate on purpose. Strategy decides where AI belongs and where it must never touch a regulated decision. The build proves every such decision can be inspected later, and holds the line between deterministic work and human-owned work. Product turns the operating model into systems that actually run. No one of the three absorbs the others, because the moment strategy, build, and accountability collapse into one voice is the moment the audit trail stops meaning anything.

In their own words:

Marcelo Fleitas, Chief Strategy Officer. "The question was never whether to use AI. It was where AI belongs and where it must never touch a regulated decision. Drawing that line is the strategy."

Dennis O'Connell, Chief Executive Officer. "AI raised our capacity to keep the audit trail, not our permission to skip it. Accountability stays with a named human on every regulated decision. That order is the whole design."

Manny E. Reimi, Chief Product Officer. "An operating model that only lives on a whiteboard is a liability. My job is to turn it into systems a counterparty can inspect and a small team can actually run."

How we operate

These are operating principles, stated as how we work. Beneath them sit the values that hold a small team together: radical candour, maximal autonomy, and the highest leverage we can put behind each contributor.

We separate deterministic control from probabilistic control. Deterministic processes run by policy: parameters onchain, lifecycle actions on runbooks. Probabilistic work can use AI evaluation. We use optimistic controls where we can, on the probabilistic, non-regulated side, never on the path that touches a regulated decision.

A decision we cannot inspect later is one we will not make. The audit trail is built before the feature, across code, vault parameters, oracle policy, and internal calls. AI raises our capacity to maintain it. It does not relax the requirement.

Ownership is a clear human chain, and the work is split by topology. Separation of concerns, then context engineering against each concern, with deliberate depth-versus-width tradeoffs in how we run agentic operations. Every regulated decision traces to a named person.

We run in continuous loops, and we try to run them faster and at higher amplitude. Shared systems of record and shared systems of intelligence keep effort aligned and coordination cost low, so discovery, delivery, and operations compound instead of colliding.

We skillify our standard operating procedures. As we build our own harnesses, the procedures and best practices that work get encoded into them, so the floor under routine work keeps rising and the knowledge does not leave when a person does.

Every component is replaceable, including the ones we built. Custody is documented so another team could run it. Tooling is composable, not monolithic. We assume drift, vendor failure, and personnel change, and design for them.

We trade short-term excitement for long-term trust. We would rather ship a smaller piece of infrastructure a counterparty can verify than a larger one taken on faith.

Why the firm is the unit of trust

When a firm builds a consumer product, the product is what users assess. Bugs get fixed, versions ship, trust accrues over time. When a firm operates market infrastructure, the firm itself is what counterparties assess. Allocators cannot redeem a position because they liked last quarter's release notes. They evaluate the operator the way they evaluate a custodian: the operating model, the recovery paths, the audit trail, the cadence of disclosure, and what happens when something breaks. The protocol is the artifact. The firm operating it is the unit of trust.

The three-part model and the principles above are how we translate that into a firm-level operating model: not a category we are claiming, but a description of how we have chosen to work, open to inspection by anyone whose decisions depend on us being accurate about it.

The institutions that allocate to onchain market infrastructure over the next decade will look past the language of the moment and assess the operating model underneath. It's a long bet, and a quiet one. For a team building something this consequential for onchain finance, it is the only one worth making.

Ascend is the standards-first protocol building the credit market structure for onchain, regulated securities; and is built by the team at PSG Digital Labs, part of PSG Digital.

Ascend is being built by PSG Digital Labs, the technology arm of PSG Digital, a globally licensed asset management and digital investment platform. The protocol is designed to provide the first compliant credit market infrastructure for onchain regulated RWA collateral, building on the identity-aware token standard ERC-3643. Unlike generic tokenization approaches, Ascend's infrastructure is architected from the ground up for regulated assets: enforcing eligibility and transfer controls at the asset layer. This approach enables tokenized assets to function as productive collateral in permissioned credit vaults, and connects institutional RWAs to DeFi liquidity without compromising regulatory posture.

"Ascend is solving a critical gap in the market by building credit infrastructure purpose-built for regulated, real-world assets. Their compliance-first approach aligns directly with how institutions actually operate, and that's what makes them a natural partner for the Stellar Development Foundation. This is how RWAs move from being issued onchain to being actively used across financial markets at scale."

— Jose Fernandez da Ponte, President and Chief Growth Officer of the Stellar Development Foundation

"Stellar was built to be the settlement layer for institutional finance. This partnership cements the commitment of both our organizations to build infrastructure that supports identity-aware issuance, permissioned credit mechanics, and deterministic resolution on a network that was designed for exactly this purpose."

— Dennis O'Connell, CEO and Co-Founder of Ascend

A Partnership Built on Structural Alignment

The strategic rationale for this partnership is straightforward: both Ascend and the SDF are building towards a world where regulated institutional assets operate on public blockchain infrastructure with the same reliability and compliance standards as traditional finance.

The Stellar network was purpose-built for fast, low-cost settlement and real-world asset tokenization, with existing institutional relationships including Franklin Templeton, WisdomTree, and Paxos. Ascend brings to Stellar a standards-first approach to onchain credit infrastructure: compliant tokenization via the ERC-3643 standard, permissioned credit vaults with oracle-verified collateral monitoring, and a Distressed Disposal Facility (DDF) providing institutional-grade liquidation and resolution.

Together, the partnership extends Ascend's regulated asset infrastructure to the Stellar network, enabling ERC-3643-standard assets originating on Stellar to access Ascend's permissioned vault and credit framework — and in doing so, establishing a shared foundation for compliant institutional finance on public blockchains.

April 21, 2026 — T-REX Network, the multi-chain RWA orchestration layer, has partnered with Ascend to enable ERC-3643 tokenized securities and real-world assets to function as compliant collateral in onchain credit markets. Ascend is a US-based protocol designed to operate within existing regulatory frameworks, building on the strength of the ERC-3643 standard and its institutional adoption to further power the growth of onchain markets.

This partnership connects two critical layers of the tokenization stack for the first time. T-REX Network provides the compliance infrastructure, ensuring that identity, eligibility, and transfer rules travel with the asset across every chain. Ascend builds on top of that foundation, enabling those same compliant assets to enter permissioned credit vaults and access onchain liquidity under explicit compliance, transfer, and resolution controls. This partnership is further bolstered by Apex Group's recent commitment to adopt the T-REX Ledger as its default infrastructure, with a target of $100 billion in tokenized assets by June 2027 — with the assets eligible for use across integrated credit infrastructure including Ascend's credit vaults.

When an ERC-3643 asset is posted to an Ascend credit facility, eligibility is verified in real time against the T-REX Ledger before any liquidity is released, ensuring no transfer occurs outside permissioned bounds. Through existing institutional partnerships, Ascend brings a pipeline of over $8 billion in institutional-grade RWAs ready for deployment across these credit markets.

Tokenization Proved Assets Can Go Onchain. It Did Not Prove Markets Would Form Around Them.

The first wave of tokenization solved issuance. But issuance alone does not create a market. For regulated assets to truly scale with tokenization, they need to do more than exist onchain. They need to be borrowed against, generate yield, and move to wherever liquidity exists — all without breaking a single compliance rule.

Most DeFi credit infrastructure was built for crypto-native assets, which in practice means anonymous users, instant liquidations, and assets that can be priced in real time. These assumptions break down when dealing with regulated tokenized securities, which depend on identity verification, compliance rules, and orderly resolution mechanisms. The result: compliant assets exist onchain, but with nowhere to go. Issuance without liquidity is not a market.

A Complete Stack for Compliant Onchain Credit

T-REX Network is the compliance layer. Built on ERC-3643, the standard already used to tokenize more than $32 billion in assets, the T-REX Ledger acts as the single source of truth every connected chain references before settling a transaction. Compliance, identity, and transfer rules stay attached to the asset across every chain it touches.

Ascend builds the credit layer on top. Through permissioned credit vaults, oracle-verified risk data, and eligibility-aware issuance, Ascend enables ERC-3643 compliant assets to be posted as collateral and used to access onchain liquidity — while maintaining the full compliance and resolution controls that regulated markets demand. Ascend was built specifically with regulated and restricted securities in mind, building on the increasing recognition that ERC-3643 has had among regulators and institutions.

From Compliant Issuance to Productive Capital

"T-REX Ledger was built to be the compliance backbone of the multi-chain tokenization era, ensuring that regulated assets can move freely across chains without breaking a single rule. Ascend is the natural next layer. By enabling ERC-3643 assets to function as productive collateral in onchain credit markets, this partnership turns tokenization from an issuance exercise into a functioning market. That is what institutional scale actually requires."

— Joachim Lebrun, Co-Founder of the T-REX Network

"The institutions we work with don't just want compliant issuance. They want their capital to be productive. Ascend's eligibility-aware vaults and oracle-verified risk data are built precisely for that: taking ERC-3643 assets and connecting them to onchain liquidity without sacrificing a single compliance control. T-REX Network's cross-chain infrastructure, built on the institutionally trusted foundation of ERC-3643, will finally close the gap between tokenization and a functioning market."

— Dennis O'Connell, CEO of Ascend

We're confident that through enhanced support, secure offchain services, and the backing of Chainlink's vibrant community, we can accelerate awareness of Ascend, supported by PSG Digital's institutional expertise, and significantly increase institutional adoption — enabling a new class of fully onchain, composable RWAs by providing financial institutions with the infrastructure rails, compliance, and institutional-grade services that sophisticated parties require.

Ascend: The World's First Onchain Investment Banking Infrastructure

Ascend is a US-focused, end-to-end real-world asset securities and capital markets protocol that seamlessly bridges institutional issuers from origination, structuring, permissioned tokenization, and collateralization into permissionless DeFi. Built on the success of the ERC-3643 standard and PSG Digital — a leading global asset manager for digital assets — this new marquee capital markets infrastructure, launched on Ethereum and powered by Chainlink, introduces a scalable, compliance-first architecture designed to bring institutional-grade RWA issuance onchain at scale.

Ascend brings three key value offerings to the RWA ecosystem:

• Flagship yield-bearing assets. PSG and its partners are introducing flagship yield-bearing assets in collaboration with well-known institutional partners. PSG provides the investment capabilities and product structuring that enable these flagship assets.
• Real yield via the PEAK token. The PEAK token will provide real yield from the Ascend DAO Treasury, sourced from RWA fund yield, protocol fees, and tokenomics — and can be staked and redeemed for stablecoins. PEAK delivers real yield, real utility to incentivize and power the protocol, and real governance for the Ascend DAO.
• Permissioned Vaults. Ascend brings meaningful innovation to RWAs by creating the world's first Permissioned Vaults, enabling ERC-3643 tokens to be collateralized and used to generate ERC-20 stablecoins or digital twins for use in DeFi.

Ascend unifies several key challenges. It is a U.S.-based platform designed to capture emerging regulatory clarity and growing market demand in the U.S., catalyzing billions in new issuance and reshoring of assets back to U.S. markets. Ascend bridges the divide between permissioned onchain securities, such as ERC-3643 tokens and the incentives and opportunities found in DeFi via Permissioned Vaults — which will be open-sourced, follow an open standard, and be proposed as an EIP in collaboration with key partners, including Chainlink as a critical enabler. Ascend will be natively onchain, reimagining capital markets infrastructure, services, and operations for financial institutions on blockchain rails end to end.

Ascend is transforming the landscape of onchain capital markets and RWAs by bringing together a fully integrated, institutionally aligned suite of capabilities — unlocking an end-to-end solution that has never before existed.

Why We Joined Chainlink Build

Ascend would not be possible without the key innovations delivered by Chainlink. While the idea of an onchain investment banking infrastructure had been considered before, it only became feasible with the development of Chainlink technologies. The Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE), CCIP, Price Feeds, and the Chainlink Automated Compliance Engine (ACE) are the key unlocks that provide sufficiently decentralized data infrastructure to support sophisticated pricing, quantitative risk calculations, dynamic rules and compliance datasets, live data, and the complex data payloads that accompany real securities onchain.

As part of Chainlink Build, Ascend will receive key benefits, including access to new Chainlink product alpha and beta releases, among other program advantages. In exchange for these services, Ascend will allocate a percentage of its native token supply to make it available to Chainlink service providers, including stakers, over time. These mutually aligned economic incentives enable both communities to support one another.

"We're excited to join the Chainlink Build program to bring the full power of onchain capital markets infrastructure to life through Chainlink's fully realized platform."

— Dennis O'Connell, CEO of Ascend and President of the ERC-3643 Association