Nathan Allman, Founder of Ondo Finance, Passes Away
The blockchain industry is reeling from the sudden loss of one of its most consequential builders. Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman, one of the early pioneers of blockchain tokenization, passed away unexpectedly at the age of 32. The company announced the news in a post on X, without disclosing the cause of death.
“It is with profound sadness that we announce the unexpected passing of Nathan Allman, Ondo’s founder. Our hearts are with his family and loved ones,” the company said. “Nate’s brilliance, humility, and drive shaped every part of what Ondo is today. His belief in the power of technology to create a more open, accessible financial system lives on in everything we build.”
Allman, a Brown University graduate, founded Ondo in 2021 after his stint at Goldman Sachs’ digital assets team. Before that, he also founded ChainStreet Capital, a crypto hedge fund focused on algorithmic and event-driven trading. Under his leadership, Ondo Finance grew from an early DeFi yield platform into a dominant force in the tokenized real-world assets space. Allman grew Ondo to roughly $3.86 billion in tokenized real-world assets on-chain, spanning treasuries, equities, and commodities, with more than 111,000 holders.
The company’s growth accelerated after a $20 million Series A round in 2022, backed by Founders Fund, Pantera Capital, Coinbase Ventures, and Tiger Global Management. Ondo also pursued integrations with major financial firms including BlackRock, Fidelity Investments, Franklin Templeton, and WisdomTree.
Under Allman’s watch, Ondo launched flagship products such as USDY, OUSG, and tokenized equities through Ondo Global Markets. The ONDO token dropped 4.47% to $0.42 following the announcement of his passing.
With the loss of Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman, the question of continuity becomes central. Ian De Bode, Ondo’s longtime president, takes over as CEO. De Bode joined Ondo as chief strategy officer in March 2024 after running digital assets work at McKinsey, and was promoted to president in November 2025. De Bode described Allman as both an incredible founder and a close personal friend. “The mission of Ondo, Nate’s mission, has not changed,” he said. “If Nate were here, he would want to continue executing with excellence. We will make him proud.”
Ondo’s vice president and head of marketing, Ben Grossman, also remembered Allman as “a once-in-a-generation founder and visionary” whose impact on both the people around him and the industry itself would not be forgotten.
For many observers, the passing of Ondo Finance founder Nathan Allman marks the loss of a rare figure who genuinely bridged the gap between Wall Street and decentralized finance one who made tokenized assets feel less like a concept and more like infrastructure.
