FTSE Russell and Chainlink have collaborated in an unprecedented move to publish its flagship stock and digital asset indices directly onto blockchain networks through Chainlink’s DataLink service. PR Newswire +2 blockchainreporter
+2 According to this announcement, data for major benchmarks such as the Russell 1000 Index, Russell 2000 Index, Russell 3000 Index and FTSE 100 Index will soon be made available across 50 public and private blockchains. PR Newswire
PR Newswire
Why This Matters FTSE Russell Indices underlie over US $18 Trillion of assets worldwide, making them one of the most widely used benchmarks for traditional finance. And blockchainreporter has become an advocate for their use.
By bringing institutional-grade data sets onto blockchain infrastructure, this partnership aims to bridge traditional finance (TradFi) and decentralized finance (DeFi), and enable tokenised assets, exchange-traded funds (ETFs), and other next-generation financial products built using this blockchain infrastructure. AInvestor
Fiona Bassett, CEO of FTSE Russell, called this move a major milestone towards giving developers and institutions access to high-quality data that powers traditional financial markets — now in blockchain format. PR Newswire

How It Works
At the core of this initiative lies Chainlink’s DataLink — a turnkey service enabling data providers such as FTSE Russell to publish market data feeds across blockchains without needing to develop custom infrastructure themselves.
Blockchainreporter
Smart contracts on Ethereum, Solana-compatible chains or private networks will now have access to real-time values of Russell or FTSE benchmarks in real time (or near real-time), opening up possibilities such as index-tracking tokens, rule-based automated derivatives or decentralised asset pools benchmarked against traditional market indices.
AInvest Strategic implications could follow.
This partnership marks a shift in how financial infrastructure is evolving:

Enhance data integrity: Ensuring on-chain availability of benchmark data renders it tamper-evident and transparent, thus alleviating one major concern associated with DeFi protocols that rely on TradFi.

Reduced barriers to tokenised finance: With trusted benchmarks now readily available on-chain, asset managers and coders can more quickly build regulated or semi-regulated tokenised products that match traditional benchmarks.

Institutional Adoption: This move underscores mainstream finance’s increasing enthusiasm to adopt blockchain rails not just for digital assets but for core financial infrastructure as a whole.

Potential challenges and considerations

Although notable, integration also raises some important questions:

Regulatory Readiness: In many jurisdictions, tokenized ETFs and on-chain index-referenced products remain regulated gray zones.

Latency and Governance: For product reliability, real-time on-chain data collection will be of vital importance, along with how deviations or errors will be monitored and handled.

Market Adoption: On-chain indices will only become effective with rapid adoption by institutional and DeFi players in meaningful volumes.

Now that the partnership has become public, the next steps for AInvest and their partner companies include providing live feeds, ensuring smart-contract integration across chains and introducing first use-case products. Market watchers anticipate that such on-chain benchmark data could accelerate tokenised ETFs and structured products issuance in 2019.
Overall, the FTSE Russell-Chainlink partnership represents more than just technical progress – it marks an essential alliance between legacy financial benchmarks and programable finance. By making traditional indices available on chain, one step closer is taken toward merging conventional markets with DeFi