Monolith and Ascend Partner to Build the End-to-End US Solution for Institutional Commodity Derivatives

The partnership brings together Monolith's highly performant perpetual futures architecture and Ascend's clearing infrastructure in an end-to-end architecture designed to put eligible real-world assets to work in institutional derivatives markets.

NEW YORK, Oct. 27, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Commodity markets move continuously. The capital behind them often doesn't.

Across the commodities sector, significant value sits in physical inventory while the capital tied to those assets can remain difficult to mobilize. At the same time, collateral, margin, clearing, custody and market execution often sit across separate systems and institutions.

Monolith and Ascend are partnering to connect those functions onchain, enabling increased capital efficiency across the full stack.

The objective is to create an institutional architecture in which eligible real-world assets can be collateralized and put to work on the secondary market while maintaining a clear separation of market functions.

Two Layers, One End-to-End Architecture

Monolith and Ascend bring different, complementary functions to the partnership.

Monolith operates the markets. Ascend sits at the clearing layer.

Monolith is pursuing CFTC registration as a Designated Contract Market (DCM) and is developing an onchain institutional derivatives venue, with energy and commodities perpetual futures  as an early focus.

Leveraging the team's deep quantitative market experience, including executive leadership positions in FICC at Citi and energy trading at Citadel, these cash-settled perpetual futures are designed to provide continuous exposure to energy benchmarks, complementing dated futures used for calendar-specific hedging.

Ascend intends to act as a clearing layer for the venue through its onchain tri-party clearing model. Together with its parent company, Ascend enables tokenization, collateralization, and clearing - enabling idle capital to become eligible collateral on Monolith.

End-to-end does not mean concentrating every function inside one entity. It means connecting distinct institutional functions so assets, collateral, clearing and markets can operate as part of the same architecture.

"Execution and clearing are two different problems, and this architecture needs both. Monolith is solving execution across tailored commodity contracts. We hold the collateral, extend credit against it, and carry the accountability when a position moves against someone. That is clearing work, and it is why this had to be built with a regulated broker-dealer rather than around one."

— Dennis O'Connell, CEO of Ascend

Idle Assets to Efficient Collateral

The partnership is designed to address a fundamental capital-efficiency problem in physical markets.

Consider an eligible oil cargo in transit. The cargo already represents substantial economic value, but the capital associated with that inventory may remain difficult to use while title, financing, insurance and settlement processes are completed.

The solution being developed by Monolith and Ascend is designed to make eligible assets usable as collateral through the clearing layer, with collateralization designed to happen in hours instead of weeks.

Ascend provides the clearing infrastructure around that collateral. Monolith provides the venue  where the collateral can be put to work.

This drives a core shared thesis: all capital should be efficient collateral.

"Institutions do not need another demonstration that an asset can be tokenized. They need a venue where these assets can be unlocked on the secondary market. Together, Monolith and Ascend are building this end-to-end solution, where tokenized assets can be collateralized and put to work." 

— Kaleb Nunn, CEO of Monolith

Learn more: monolith.finance

SOURCE Monolith