TL;DR
Chainlink launched a service that provides reference prices for tokenized assets during weekends and holidays.
The service uses perpetual futures quotes to update prices outside regular market hours. Aave will be its first partner through its institutional lending platform, Horizon.
The infrastructure will allow lending protocols, trading platforms, and prediction markets to access continuous pricing and adjust their risk controls.
Chainlink introduced Chainlink 24/7, a service that provides reference prices for tokenized stocks, commodities, and other traditional assets during weekends and holidays . The tool uses data from perpetual futures markets when traditional exchanges are closed.
Aave will be the first protocol to integrate this infrastructure through Horizon , its institutional lending platform. The rollout will begin with tokenized versions of some of the most actively traded U.S. stocks.
The service addresses a challenge for blockchain applications: they need to value assets around the clock , even though the traditional markets where the underlying instruments trade operate on fixed schedules.
Chainlink Will Use Perpetual Futures to Provide Continuous Pricing
Chainlink 24/7 combines quotes from regular and extended trading sessions with prices obtained from perpetual futures platforms when traditional markets are closed.
These off-hours reference prices come from derivatives markets and do not represent transactions executed on traditional exchanges while they are closed.
The system aggregates data from multiple platforms, filters out stale quotes, and limits the influence of outliers when calculating reference prices.
Each asset will have a continuous series of prices , although the underlying data source will change depending on the trading session .
Until now, applications dealing with tokenized traditional assets have had to suspend certain operations, rely on the last available price, or develop their own valuation mechanisms during market closures.
In January, Chainlink introduced a pricing service for U.S. stocks and ETFs covering premarket, regular, after-hours, and overnight trading sessions on weekdays.
According to the company, that infrastructure already provides pricing data for more than $1.6 billion in tokenized stocks .
Aave Will Integrate the New Pricing Data Into Its Horizon Platform
Horizon allows investors to obtain loans using tokenized assets as collateral . Integrating Chainlink 24/7 will make it easier to update collateral valuations even when traditional markets are closed.
Lending protocols will be able to receive prices directly onchain through Chainlink Data Feeds , the oracle service used to supply information to smart contracts.
Meanwhile, trading platforms and prediction markets will be able to access faster updates through Data Streams .
The latter service will also identify the market session associated with each quote, allowing applications to adjust their risk parameters based on the source of the pricing data .
