Kraken, a major cryptocurrency exchange, has announced a strategic partnership with Backed Finance and the Solana Foundation to launch xStocks, a new offering of tokenized U.S. and European equities on the Solana blockchain. These xStocks tokens are fully backed by real shares and aim to enhance global investor access by enabling 24/7 trading and fractional ownership of equities on-chain. This initiative targets overseas customers, providing a more accessible and flexible way to trade tokenized stocks. Separately, Evoq Finance and FDLabs have partnered to integrate the FDUSD stablecoin, backed by high-quality reserves, with Evoq's peer-to-peer lending optimizer on the Binance Smart Chain, aiming to improve liquidity and yield opportunities.