Chainlink has announced a major collaboration with FTSE Russell a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group and provider of the popular Russell indices to publish key global financial benchmarks on blockchain for the first time.
This partnership, revealed on November 3, 2025, leverages Chainlink’s DataLink service—an institutional-grade tool that enables secure, standardized data publishing from traditional finance (TradFi) to onchain ecosystems.
It’s a significant step toward bridging the gap between legacy markets and decentralized finance (DeFi), potentially unlocking trillions in tokenized assets and new regulated products.
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Data from major benchmarks including the Russell 1000 (large-cap U.S. stocks), Russell 2000 (small-cap U.S. stocks), Russell 3000 (broad U.S. market), FTSE 100 (U.K. blue-chip stocks), WMR FX benchmarks (foreign exchange rates), FTSE DAR digital asset prices, and FTSE digital asset indices will be made available.
These indices collectively benchmark over $18 trillion in assets under management (AUM) globally. FTSE Russell feeds its data via standard APIs like REST or WebSocket into DataLink, which then distributes it to Chainlink oracle nodes.
This makes the data tamper-proof, verifiable, and accessible across 60+ public and private blockchains—without requiring FTSE Russell to build custom blockchain infrastructure. Smart contracts can now directly reference these trusted feeds for applications like tokenized funds, ETFs, derivatives, and DeFi protocols.
This is FTSE Russell’s first foray into onchain data publishing, joining over 2,000 Chainlink-powered applications used by banks, asset managers, and protocols. It enhances trust in onchain benchmarks, enabling institutions to create compliant products while reducing settlement times and costs.
As Sergey Nazarov, Chainlink co-founder, noted: “FTSE Russell bringing its trusted benchmarks to blockchains via Chainlink is a landmark moment for the industry.” This move signals accelerating TradFi integration with blockchain, following similar efforts like JPMorgan’s tokenized private equity on its Kinexys platform and BlackRock’s tokenized money market funds.
For Chainlink (LINK), it boosts oracle demand and utility, potentially driving token value as more data flows onchain—Chainlink has already secured nearly $100 billion in DeFi total value locked (TVL) and enabled $25 trillion in transactions.
On X (formerly Twitter), the news has sparked excitement, with users highlighting its role in “index-based DeFi use cases” and “unlocking institutional finance.”
The Russell 1000 Index is a market-capitalization-weighted stock market index that measures the performance of the 1,000 largest publicly traded companies in the United States by total market cap.
It is widely regarded as a key benchmark for large-cap U.S. equities and is part of the broader Russell 3000 Index family, maintained by FTSE Russell (a subsidiary of the London Stock Exchange Group).
Top 1,000 companies from the Russell 3000, ranked by total market capitalization. Includes both growth and value stocks across all sectors. Represents large-cap segment though the smallest members may overlap with mid-cap in other indices.
Russell 1000 has twice as many stocks ? broader coverage. S&P 500 is more concentrated (top 10 = ~35% of index). Russell uses objective rules; S&P uses a selection committee.
Institutional Standard Tracks $10+ trillion in assets benchmarked to Russell indices. FTSE Russell partnered with Chainlink to publish Russell 1000 data onchain via Chainlink DataLink.
Enables smart contracts to reference real-time Russell 1000 levels for: Tokenized index funds. High trading volume as index funds rebalance ? known as the “Russell Reconstitution Effect”
The Russell 1000 is the gold standard for tracking America’s largest companies—and now, thanks to Chainlink, it’s available on blockchain, opening the door to institutional-grade DeFi, tokenized real-world assets (RWAs), and smart contract automation at scale.