Ondo Finance hires former Invesco ETF chief to expand on‑chain

Ondo Finance announced the appointment of John Hoffman, a veteran of Invesco’s ETF and index‑strategy business and most recently a managing director at Grayscale Investments, as its managing director and head of product portfolios【1】. The hire signals the platform’s shift from building token‑creation infrastructure to offering fully managed, on‑chain investment products.

Key takeaways

• John Hoffman joins Ondo as Managing Director, Head of Product Portfolios, bringing nearly two decades of ETF experience from Invesco and a recent stint at Grayscale【1】.
• Ondo’s tokenized stock and ETF offerings have surpassed $1 billion in total value locked across more than 250 assets in under eight months【2】.
• The company plans to develop custom tokenized baskets and Ondo‑native strategies that could compete with traditional asset managers on blockchain rails【1】.
• Sources differ on the identity of the former Invesco executive hired; one report cites Eric Pollackov, not Hoffman, as the new hire【4】.

Building the next generation of on‑chain portfolios

Ondo Finance has spent the past year constructing the Global Markets platform, which tokenizes U.S. stocks and ETFs and makes them tradable on public blockchains such as Solana, Ethereum and BNB Chain【2】. With its tokenized assets fully backed by the underlying securities and cash in transit, the platform now supports wallets, exchanges and custodians including Binance, MetaMask and Ledger【2】. Hoffman’s mandate is to leverage this infrastructure to launch “intelligently managed, on‑chain investment portfolios,” a phrase he used to describe the firm’s ambition to create the world’s most trusted platform for such products【1】.

The move follows a broader industry trend of traditional finance talent moving into crypto. While Hoffman’s hiring is highlighted in three sources, a fourth source reports that Ondo recruited Eric Pollackov, formerly Invesco’s global head of ETF capital markets, for a similar role【4】. The discrepancy suggests either multiple hires or reporting confusion; the exact executive leading the portfolio effort remains unclear from the available information.

Why it matters

Ondo’s transition from infrastructure provider to product developer could broaden access to tokenized securities, offering investors outside the United States exposure to U.S. equities and ETFs through blockchain‑native tokens【2】. By aiming to compress the three‑decade timeline it took ETFs to become mainstream, Hoffman (or Pollackov) argues that on‑chain finance could accelerate market democratization【1】. The company’s $1 billion TVL milestone places it among the few real‑world‑asset tokenization platforms with significant scale, positioning it to compete with both crypto‑native protocols and established asset managers such as BlackRock and Franklin Templeton【1】【4】.