Social Graph Ventures: Trends and Opportunities in Stock Tokenization
Author: Social Graph Ventures
Compiled by: Jiahua, ChainCatcher
In the past sixty days, changes in the structure of the U.S. capital markets have surpassed those of the past decade. The SEC has outlined a blueprint for tokenized securities. Nasdaq has been approved for token settlement trading. DTC has received a no-action letter. The NYSE announced a partnership with Securitize to launch a tokenized platform.
The closed-end fund VCX, held by @fundrise, which owns @AnthropicAI, @OpenAI, and @SpaceX, has seen its premium soar to over 1900% of its net asset value (NAV). Retail investors are paying 26 times the actual value of the underlying assets to gain exposure.
This is not rational pricing; it is a failure of market structure. The global stock market is valued at approximately $140 trillion. And what about today's tokenized stocks? About $1 billion. The penetration rate is only 0.0007%.
How Stocks Are Tokenized: Four Models, Participants, and User Pathways
The SEC's statement in January 2026 not only reiterated that "tokenized securities are still securities," but also established precise classifications regarding how tokenization actually works. Researcher Borja Neira (@borjaneira_) created one of the clearest visualizations of this framework, illustrating the evolution from issuer-sponsored to third-party synthetic.
Model A: Issuer-Sponsored Tokenized Securities (Direct Registration)
How it works: The company itself integrates blockchain into its main securities holder registry. When tokens are transferred on-chain, ownership on the official registry is also updated. What you own is a security registered in your name, not a claim right, not an equity certificate, but real stock.
Who is doing this: Galaxy Digital is the first publicly traded company to tokenize its equity registered with the SEC. By partnering with the Opening Bell platform (acting as an SEC-registered transfer agent), GLXY shareholders can now tokenize their shares on Solana, store them in their own crypto wallets, and even use them as collateral in DeFi protocols like Kamino.
Pain points: Model A requires the issuer to actively choose to participate. Galaxy chose to do this for its stock, but Apple, Tesla, and Nvidia did not. This is the fundamental limitation: Model A is only effective when the company itself decides to participate. You cannot tokenize someone else's stock under this model.
User pathway: You need to become an investor who completes KYC (Know Your Customer) on the Superstate platform. You verify your identity, connect your wallet, and then you can tokenize the GLXY stock you already hold (or acquire). You can transfer it between whitelisted wallets and use it in permitted DeFi protocols.
Omnibus Account
Before explaining Models B, C, and D, it is essential to understand the omnibus account, as it is the core architecture underlying most tokenized stock platforms today.
What is an omnibus account? Simply put, it is a consolidation of multiple clients' assets into a single account. Brokers or intermediaries hold this mixed asset on behalf of all clients, presenting it externally (and to custodians) as a large pool of funds, while internally keeping track of each client's respective share.
Why is this important for tokenization: When platforms like @OndoFinance, @DinariGlobal, or @xStocksFi tokenize stocks, they typically purchase the underlying stocks, store them in a broker-dealer's or custodian's omnibus account, and then issue blockchain tokens representing each user's proportional indirect claim to that pool of funds.
You hold the tokens, the platform holds the stocks, and what you own is an indirect claim, not direct ownership.
Model B: Tokenized Securities Equity Certificates (Custodial / Third-Party)
How it works: A regulated third party (DTCC, broker-dealers, custodians) holds the actual shares and issues blockchain tokens representing equity certificates (referred to by the SEC as "digital custody receipts"). This token represents your indirect interest in the underlying securities through the intermediary chain.
There are two variants:
- Variant (i): The blockchain itself is the ownership record, directly integrated into the equity holder's ledger.
- Variant (ii): Records are kept in a traditional database off-chain, with tokens used to update that database.
Who is doing this: This is the direction of institutional infrastructure development. Nasdaq (approved for token settlement trading, expected to launch in Q3 2026), the NYSE (building a platform in partnership with Securitize), and DTC (received a no-action letter in December 2025) are all constructing Model B systems.
Your broker holds your stocks as usual, but the settlement layer has moved to the blockchain. The ownership structure remains unchanged, but settlement is faster.
User pathway: For institutional-level Model B, the experience will ultimately be identical to buying stocks at Schwab or Fidelity; you may not even know it is settled on the blockchain.
For retail investors, it is not yet live. When Nasdaq launches token settlement trading in Q3 2026, it will be a seamless experience for existing brokerage clients.
Model C: Linked Securities (Omnibus Account Model / Structured Notes)
How it works: A third party issues a financial instrument, usually structured notes, debt instruments, or contract claims, whose value is linked to the referenced stock. You do not own the stock; you own a promise from the third party to pay you based on the stock's performance. There are no voting rights and no direct claim to the underlying assets.
Most of the tokenized stock platforms operating today fall into this category. They purchase stocks, store them in an omnibus fund pool, and issue tokens representing your claim to that pool.
Who is doing this:
Ondo Global Markets (@OndoFinance) is the market leader by market cap (with a total market cap exceeding $650 million across Ethereum, BSC, and Solana). It has over 200 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs, including Walmart, Tesla, Visa, UnitedHealth, etc.
User pathway: KYC is required, open to non-U.S. users, and the tokens are ERC-20 tokens that can be traded on DEXs and used in certain DeFi protocols. Ondo holds the underlying assets in an omnibus structure through licensed partners.
xStocks (@xStocksFi) is the second-ranked platform, with a market cap of $205 million, operated by infrastructure associated with Kraken. It has over 100 tokenized assets and has processed over $25 billion in cumulative trading volume, capturing 95-99% of all tokenized stock trading activity on Solana.
User pathway: KYC is required, using a Solana wallet to buy and sell on the Jupiter DEX.
Dinari (@DinariGlobal) is the first registered broker-dealer specifically targeting tokenized stocks. It has over 200 dShares assets and partners with Flow Traders to provide liquidity for institutions. Built on Avalanche.
User pathway: KYC, connect wallet, purchase dShares tokens, 24/7 trading.
Backed Finance (@BackedFinance) focuses on the EU and is regulated in Switzerland. It tokenizes stocks (bTSLA, bNVDA, bGOOGL) and ETFs into ERC-20 tokens on Ethereum. The target audience is institutions/qualified investors.
Robinhood EU (@RobinhoodApp) offers about 500 tokenized U.S. stocks on Arbitrum, limited to the EU region. The on-chain market cap is $11.6 million. Important Note: These are clearly classified as derivative contracts, not equity. No voting rights.
User pathway: Use the Robinhood app in Europe, and the tokens will appear in your crypto wallet.
The risks of Model C are real: if the platform collapses, you are a creditor, not an owner. Your claim is against the omnibus fund pool of the tokenized issuer.
Most of these platforms do not have SIPC (Securities Investor Protection Corporation) insurance. The SEC's statement is also clear, introducing significant counterparty risk that blockchain was supposed to eliminate.
Model D: Securities Derivative Contracts (Purely Synthetic)
How it works: A swap that provides purely synthetic exposure to the referenced securities. (Simply put, you and the counterparty agree: you receive the price appreciation of the stock, while the counterparty receives a fixed fee you pay, and both parties swap cash flows, but neither actually holds the stock.)
No ownership. No voting rights. No information access rights. No form of claim to the underlying assets. What you own is a bet on the price.
If the instrument meets the SEC's definition of a swap, it can only be offered to qualified contract participants and must be traded on a national securities exchange.
Who is doing this: Mainly offshore platforms and crypto-native derivatives protocols. Ventuals occupies this space, built on @HyperliquidX, offering perpetual contracts that track private company valuations.
User pathway for Ventuals: No KYC, no authentication required. Log in with an email or social account, automatically generate a wallet, deposit stablecoins, and trade positions with up to 10x leverage on valuations of OpenAI, SpaceX, and xAI.
Price discovery occurs through "optimistic oracles" (an optimistic oracle is a mechanism that operates on the principle of "report first, and if no one disputes it, it is taken as true": it assumes the submitted data is correct unless someone stakes a bond to challenge it during the disclosure period). Anyone can propose valuations by staking collateral. Cumulative trading volume has reached $200 million, with 5,342 independent traders.
Key warning about Ventuals, funding rates: Like all perpetual contracts, Ventuals charges funding rates to anchor the contract price to the reference valuation. When demand for long positions is overwhelmingly dominant (which is indeed the case for companies like OpenAI and SpaceX), longs must pay fees to shorts.
Based on a typical rate of 0.05% per 8-hour interval, holding a $10,000 long position costs about $15 per day, or $450 per month, which is 4.5% of your position, annualized at about 54%.
Holding a long position in private companies through Ventual
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