BlackRock has made its first formal entry into decentralised finance, enabling on-chain trading of its tokenised Treasury fund BUIDL through a strategic integration with Uniswap Labs and Securitize — a development that Robert Mitchnick, BlackRock's Global Head of Digital Assets, described as a major leap forward in the interoperability of tokenised USD yield funds with stablecoins.
The integration makes BUIDL shares available to eligible investors via UniswapX, Uniswap's request-for-quote trading protocol. Securitize Markets facilitates trading for any BUIDL investor who elects to participate, with the automated system identifying the most competitive quote from a curated ecosystem of whitelisted market participants including Flowdesk, Tokka Labs, and Wintermute. Trades settle atomically on-chain through immutable smart contracts. All participating investors are pre-qualified and whitelisted through Securitize — maintaining the compliance architecture that has characterised BUIDL's distribution from launch.
The integration unlocks a specific and persistent friction in institutional on-chain markets: the difficulty of exiting tokenised fund positions quickly and at competitive prices. Prior to the UniswapX integration, BUIDL holders seeking liquidity faced limited secondary market options. The RFQ framework with named institutional market makers provides genuine price discovery and near-instant liquidity between BUIDL and USDC — a meaningful operational improvement for institutional treasury management.
Alongside the trading integration, BlackRock has made a strategic investment within the Uniswap ecosystem, purchasing an undisclosed amount of UNI tokens. The combination of operational integration and balance sheet commitment signals that BlackRock's DeFi engagement is strategic rather than experimental.
Hayden Adams, Uniswap Labs founder and CEO, said enabling BUIDL on UniswapX creates efficient markets, better liquidity, and faster settlement. Carlos Domingo, CEO of Securitize, described the integration as bringing the trust and regulatory standards of traditional finance to the speed and openness of DeFi — allowing institutions and whitelisted investors to trade tokenised real-world assets with self-custody for the first time.