Market data providers have always sat at the core of capital markets, supplying the proprietary data that underpins how assets are priced, traded, and managed. As those markets now launch onchain variants, providers face a challenge to make their data usable in blockchain-based environments without compromising the controls, permissions, and commercial safeguards that made it valuable in the first place.
During a fireside chat at The Agora, Kaiko’s CEO Ambre Soubiran joined S&P Dow Jones Indices’ Cameron Drinkwater to discuss S&P DJI’s onchain approach and how it is distributing, protecting, and commercializing its data onchain.
Ambre raised a broader question about how data should function once it moves onchain, noting: “The more we bring capital markets applications onchain, the more we bring data onchain, especially private and IP-protected data, the more we need to treat data like a financial asset.”
In practical terms, this means that in institutional markets, proprietary IP-protected data like S&P DJI’s cannot be treated as a simple input or price feed. If this is used to power onchain financial products and applications, it needs to do so with clear controls around who can access it, how it can be used, and how its value is captured. In other words, the promise of onchain markets is not just about moving assets onto blockchain rails, but about ensuring the data that underpins those assets carries the same reliability as traditional capital markets.
S&P DJI has already started making this theory a reality; its recent collaboration with Kaiko to tokenize the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index on the Canton Network was the first time a major index provider has made a financial benchmark available as a native digital asset.
When asked why S&P DJI chose the iBoxx U.S. Treasuries Index, Cameron explained: “It’s a great moment because, with DTCC putting U.S. Treasuries natively on Canton, you have the underlying [U.S. Treasuries market that iBoxx tracks]. You also have a very active Treasury institutional trade landscape on Canton, with players committed to doing more. Plus, you have a real demand for the iBoxx Treasury Index to be used as an underlying for product issuance on the Canton chain. So for us, all of the ingredients were there for real use cases that drive utility and embed our IP in these transactions. It was a total no-brainer, and we had a great partner in Kaiko, helping us think through the creation of the token and the appropriate smart contracts to wrap our terms and conditions into.”
Cameron’s point highlights the important role of partnerships in bringing traditional financial benchmarks onchain. Index providers have the market recognition, proprietary IP, and client demand, but they do not always have the blockchain-native experience, so they look to infrastructure partners with deep blockchain expertise.
In the case of the iBoxx, Kaiko acts as the trusted intermediary between issuers, the index provider (S&P DJI), and end users of the product, helping turn proprietary index data into something that can be distributed onchain without breaking the licensing and compliance frameworks that govern its use offchain. For index providers, going onchain opens the door to significant commercial benefits, where access and usage of their data is tracked, and monetization is programmatically enforced. As Ambre explained, “Enabling the traceability of data through blockchain technology [as it moves through different financial products onchain], treating data like a financial asset, and tracing where that data goes is great from an IP protection standpoint. But it is also great for thinking about how you can programmatically approach all the monetization related to the use of your IP in a financial product.”
The discussion between Ambre and Cameron offered a great look into how leading index providers are approaching the challenge of bringing traditional capital markets onchain in a blockchain-based environment. It also highlighted the infrastructure needed to make that transition work in practice. That is where Kaiko Data Infrastructure comes in. Kaiko Data On-Ramp enables trusted, proprietary data to be distributed onchain with the right permissions, licensing, and access controls attached. Kaiko Data Off-Ramp allows institutions to bring onchain activity back into their offchain systems, for example, giving data providers visibility into how their data is being accessed and consumed. Kaiko Data Lifecycle Apps then connect these workflows, enabling institutions to build applications that send data onchain, retrieve relevant onchain activity, and act on it through offchain decisions, reporting, or monetization processes. Together, these solutions make the process of moving traditional capital markets data onchain fully traceable, governable, and commercially viable.
Watch the full interview with Ambre and Cameron or read more on our strategic partnership with S&P DJI.
