Tokenized equity products have reached $3.2 billion in aggregate value in 2026, a 357% increase over 2025 levels, according to data compiled by RWA.xyz and DefiLlama. On October 27, Janus Henderson and Centrifuge launched JQQQ, the first tokenized fund licensed to track the Nasdaq-100 Index, issu...
"As investors explore new ways to access markets through digital infrastructure, demand continues to grow for exposure to established, transparent benchmarks." — Sean Wasserman, Head of Index Product Management, Nasdaq
Tokenized equity products have reached $3.2 billion in aggregate value in 2026, a 357% increase over 2025 levels, according to data compiled by RWA.xyz and DefiLlama. On October 27, Janus Henderson and Centrifuge launched JQQQ, the first tokenized fund licensed to track the Nasdaq-100 Index, issued natively on the Stellar blockchain. The fund expands Janus Henderson's onchain platform past $1 billion in institutional strategies spanning Treasuries, structured credit, and now public equities.
The launch arrives amid a broader shift in the $38.8 billion tokenized asset market. For two years, tokenized U.S. Treasuries dominated the category, growing to $15.4 billion. Now, three distinct models for onchain equity exposure — issuer-sponsored funds, tracker certificates, and DTC-tokenized entitlements — are competing to move the next asset class onto blockchain rails. The SEC's five-year Innovation Exemption, granted September 17, creates conditional regulatory clearance for tokenized NMS stock trading. DTCC's ComposerX platform, built with input from 50-plus firms including BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, and Citadel Securities, began limited production trades in July and reached full commercial launch in October.
The question is no longer whether equities will trade onchain, but which structural model will scale first.
Janus Henderson, which oversees approximately $500 billion in assets, issued JQQQ as a blockchain-native fund — not a tokenized wrapper around an existing product. The legal vehicle is a segregated portfolio within Anemoy Capital SPC Limited, domiciled in the British Virgin Islands. Nasdaq Global Indexes licenses the benchmark. Centrifuge provides the onchain infrastructure.
Key parameters:
| Detail | Value | |---|---| | Index tracked | Nasdaq-100 | | Blockchain | Stellar | | Legal vehicle | Anemoy Capital SPC Limited (BVI) | | Minimum subscription | 100,000 USDC | | Eligibility | Non-US professional investors | | Status at launch | Seeding |
Nick Cherney, Janus Henderson's Head of Innovation, described the firm as "a top five global provider of tokenized funds" and stated the onchain platform "now includes more than $1 billion in institutional strategies across U.S. Treasuries, structured credit, and public equities." The firm's existing tokenized products include JTRSY (a Treasury fund) and a AAA CLO fund.
The issuer-sponsored model is the critical structural distinction. Unlike synthetic wrappers or third-party tokenized certificates, JQQQ is managed directly by the asset manager under a licensing agreement with the index provider. According to Anil Sood, Centrifuge's Chief Strategy and Growth Officer: "Tokenization becomes much more powerful when the assets investors want to own can also become building blocks for an onchain financial system."
Three distinct approaches to putting equity exposure on a blockchain have emerged. Each carries different regulatory, structural, and counterparty risk profiles.
1. Issuer-Sponsored Funds (JQQQ, Franklin Templeton/Ondo)
Janus Henderson's JQQQ and the Franklin Templeton–Ondo partnership represent the issuer-sponsored model. In March 2026, Franklin Templeton and Ondo Finance announced plans to tokenize five ETFs: a growth equity fund (FFOG), a large-cap equity fund (FLQL), a gold fund (FGDL), a high-yield bond fund (FLHY), and an income equity fund (INCE). Ondo acquires ETF shares and issues corresponding tokens through a special-purpose vehicle. Investors receive economic exposure, including income rights, rather than direct share ownership.
Both JQQQ and the Franklin Templeton products are restricted to non-US investors. A US launch, according to Franklin Templeton, requires further regulatory clarity around on-chain distribution of registered funds by third parties.
2. Tracker Certificates (Backed/xStocks)
Backed Finance's xStocks platform, launched June 30, 2025, offers tracker certificates — bearer debt instruments issued by a Jersey SPV under an EU base prospectus approved by the Liechtenstein FMA. Each token is collateralized 1:1 by the underlying share held with regulated custodians.
As of October 26, 2026, xStocks reported approximately $1.014 billion in onchain AUM, up 802.5% year-over-year. The platform covers more than 1,300 assets across 11 blockchains, with cumulative trading volume exceeding $40 billion. Solana leads chain distribution at $523.1 million, followed by X Layer ($304.1 million) and Ethereum ($165.1 million).
xStocks tokens are not registered under the U.S. Securities Act of 1933 and are unavailable to U.S. persons.
3. DTC-Tokenized Entitlements (DTCC ComposerX)
DTCC's ComposerX platform represents the infrastructure-layer approach. Rather than creating new financial products, DTCC tokenizes entitlements to existing securities held at DTC. Legal ownership records remain at DTC; the blockchain layer handles minting, management, and settlement.
Eligible assets include Russell 1000 equities, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasury instruments. DTC received an SEC No-Action Letter in December 2025 authorizing a three-year pilot. Limited production trades began in July 2026, with full commercial launch in October.
The tokenized asset market reached $38.8 billion in 2026, according to aggregate data from RWA.xyz. The composition:
| Asset class | 2026 YTD value | YoY change | |---|---|---| | U.S. Treasuries | $15.4B | +69% | | Private credit | $14B+ | +42% | | Tokenized equities | $3.2B | +357% | | Other (gold, real estate, sovereign debt) | ~$6.2B | Varies |
Tokenized equities, while still the smallest of the three primary categories, show the fastest growth rate. The $3.2 billion figure includes issuer-sponsored funds, tracker certificates, and DTC-tokenized instruments. By comparison, tokenized equity totaled approximately $700 million at year-end 2025.
Within the equity category, the three largest platforms by AUM:
BlackRock's BUIDL remains the single largest tokenized fund at approximately $2.85 billion in AUM across eight-plus networks, but BUIDL is a money-market fund, not an equity product. Its dominance in Treasuries underscores why the equity migration matters: it represents the next addressable asset class.
JQQQ's choice of Stellar is consistent with a pattern. Real-world assets on the Stellar network surpassed $4 billion in 2026, up from $1 billion in January — a 300% increase in eight months. The top five issuers on Stellar by value: Spiko ($1.55B), Realiz ($559M), Tradable ($548M), Franklin Templeton ($546M), and Ondo ($535M).
Denelle Dixon, CEO of the Stellar Development Foundation, stated the network "was purpose-built for regulated finance." The claim has data support: Stellar hosts a concentration of regulated issuers not replicated at similar scale on other L1s.
DTCC's planned integration reinforces this position. In May, DTCC announced it would connect ComposerX to the Stellar network, with tokenized assets — including U.S. Treasuries, major index ETFs, and Russell 1000 stocks — expected to begin trading on Stellar in H1 2027.
ComposerX itself runs across multiple pre-approved blockchains with cross-chain interoperability built into the design spec. The 50-firm working group that shaped the platform spans custodians (BNY, State Street, UBS), asset managers (BlackRock, Franklin Templeton, Invesco), brokers (Charles Schwab, Robinhood), trading venues (Nasdaq, NYSE, Tradeweb), and crypto-native infrastructure providers (Anchorage Digital, BitGo, Circle, Fireblocks, Ripple).
The inclusion of firms from both sides of the traditional-crypto divide signals the collapse of any remaining boundary between TradFi tokenization and DeFi-native issuance. The plumbing is converging.
On September 17, 2026, the SEC issued its Innovation Exemption — a five-year conditional order permitting limited onchain trading of tokenized National Market System (NMS) stocks through Tokenized Securities Venues (TSVs). The exemption runs through September 17, 2031.
Key conditions:
The exemption enables investor self-custody, around-the-clock trading, fractional ownership, and near-instantaneous settlement — features that existing equity market infrastructure does not support simultaneously.
However, the regulatory framework remains incomplete. The CLARITY Act, which would have codified the approach with statutory authority, failed a Senate cloture vote in September 2026. Without legislation, the Innovation Exemption stands as an administrative action that a future Commission could reverse.
Separately, several issuers have encountered corporate resistance. Multiple companies, including Microsoft, McDonald's, and Verizon, have objected to platforms tokenizing their stock without issuer consent, creating an unresolved legal question about the scope of permissible tokenization.
Geographic fragmentation. JQQQ, xStocks, and the Franklin Templeton/Ondo products are all restricted to non-U.S. investors. The SEC's Innovation Exemption creates a US pathway, but through permissioned TSVs — not the permissionless DeFi venues where much of the existing tokenized equity volume trades. The largest potential market (US retail) remains largely locked out.
Liquidity concentration. xStocks' $40 billion cumulative trading volume is spread across 1,300 assets and 11 chains. Per-asset, per-chain liquidity is thin. JQQQ launched in "seeding" mode with no disclosed AUM. Tokenized equities remain a fraction of their traditional equivalents: Invesco's QQQ Trust alone holds approximately $300 billion. The tokenized Nasdaq-100 market is, at present, a rounding error.
Legal structure risk. Each model carries distinct counterparty exposure. Tracker certificates (xStocks) are bearer debt instruments — if the issuing SPV fails, holders are unsecured creditors. Issuer-sponsored funds (JQQQ) depend on the fund manager's solvency and the BVI legal framework. DTC-tokenized entitlements (ComposerX) maintain the existing DTC custody chain but add a blockchain settlement layer that remains in pilot.
Composability vs. compliance. Centrifuge's Sood described the goal of making tokenized assets "building blocks for an onchain financial system." In practice, compliance requirements — KYC, accredited investor verification, jurisdictional restrictions — limit composability. A JQQQ token cannot be freely deposited into a permissionless lending protocol without violating its terms of issuance.
No comprehensive legislation. The CLARITY Act's failure leaves the entire framework dependent on SEC administrative discretion. A change in Commission composition or priorities could narrow or revoke the Innovation Exemption before 2031.
The tokenized asset market spent 2024-2025 proving it could handle Treasuries. The $15.4 billion now onchain in government debt demonstrates production-grade capability. The 2026 shift into equities — driven by Janus Henderson's JQQQ, Backed's $1 billion xStocks platform, and DTCC's October launch of ComposerX — represents the next phase.
The economic logic is straightforward: equities are a larger addressable market than short-duration government debt, and the settlement, custody, and trading inefficiencies that tokenization addresses are more pronounced in equity markets that still settle on T+1 cycles with fragmented global access.
The structural barriers are equally clear. No model yet serves U.S. retail investors at scale. Per-asset liquidity is orders of magnitude below traditional venues. The regulatory framework rests on administrative exemptions, not statute. And corporate issuers have begun pushing back against unauthorized tokenization of their shares.
Nick Cherney of Janus Henderson stated: "Eventually we won't talk about DeFi and TradFi. We'll just talk about finance." The data suggests that timeline is measured in years, not months. But the direction — equity markets moving onto blockchain infrastructure — is no longer speculative. It is underway.