Author: Prathik Desai
Compiled by: Saoirse, Foresight News
If you live overseas and want to buy SpaceX or Nvidia stock, it's not easy. You need a brokerage that allows account opening for residents of your country, a compliant cross-border transfer channel, and often must meet qualified investor requirements. The vast majority of ordinary people cannot directly trade US stocks.
Blockchain offers an alternative: today you can gain exposure to US-listed companies through tokenized stocks, but "tokenized stock" is just a broad term. It actually encompasses three completely different products.
The first is native equity registered on-chain by the issuing company. The second is a collateralized token backed 1:1 by real stocks held by an offshore entity. The third is a perpetual futures contract with no underlying stock support at all. The ownership, voting rights, and price return rights enjoyed by holders of these three types of products are vastly different.
Currently, Nvidia has all three types of token products. The first two categories have over 650,000 real shares as underlying backing. However, the trading volume of perpetual contracts with absolutely no stock backing is 4 to 5 times that of the other two spot token categories.
Last week, Vaidik outlined some industry background: since 1973, the vast majority of stocks (whether tokenized or not) have operated under a single custody structure. He also explained a core fact — most people who nominally "hold stocks" do not actually own the corresponding shares. For details, see "Who Really Holds Your US Stocks? 83% of the Market's Stocks Are Nominally Held by This Institution".
In this article, I will dissect the ownership structures of different on-chain stock tokens and analyze the underlying logic of why the market is still willing to trade these tokens even when investors are completely detached from real equity.
What is Stock Tokenization?
Tokenized stocks are digital representations of corporate shares on a blockchain. These tokens are programmable, can be freely transferred between wallets, traded 24/7, and integrated into various decentralized finance protocols. Economic attributes of the stock, such as price appreciation and corporate dividends, are embedded within the token's mechanism.
The market for tokenized stocks has grown significantly: over the past year, the sector's total market capitalization has surged nearly fivefold, from $327 million to $1.5 billion.
The most noteworthy aspect of this tokenization wave is the experimentation by traditional giants. DTCC, the clearing, settlement, and custody institution for the vast majority of US and global securities transactions, announced last month that it will launch a tokenized securities pilot project in October 2026. The New York Stock Exchange also revealed earlier this year that it is building a 24/7 tokenized stock trading platform. These established institutions, with decades of experience in securities infrastructure, are re-evaluating the existing trading system.
Currently, various stock tokenization solutions have emerged. Different on-chain products make trade-offs in ownership, redemption mechanisms, DeFi composability, and price return rights. Let's break them down one by one.
The Trade-offs of Tokenized Products
Model One: Complete Real Equity, Holders Enjoy Full Ownership
SEC-registered transfer agent Superstate directly registers equity on the Solana public chain. Holders' names are recorded in the company's official shareholder register, granting them full voting rights, dividend eligibility, and legal shareholder status.
In May 2026, Galaxy adopted this model to complete equity tokenization and achieved on-chain proxy voting through Broadridge. As early as December 2025, Superstate's compliant equity tokens were listed on Kamino, becoming the first registered equity usable as collateral in DeFi protocols.
Model Two: Surrendering Full Ownership for DeFi Composability
Backed's xStocks issues tracking certificates through a Jersey-based Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), covering over 160 stocks, with underlying stocks matched 1:1. Ondo issues Total Return Notes through a British Virgin Islands SPV, supporting over 200 tokenized stocks, with Total Value Locked exceeding $1 billion within just 8 months of launch. Both products allow investors to enjoy stock price appreciation and dividends, but dividends are not paid in cash; instead, they are automatically added to your token balance.
The biggest advantage of this model is high composability: xStocks can be used as collateral for lending on Kamino and Morpho. Less than 24 hours before this article's publication, Ondo opened 24/7 minting and redemption channels for its mainstream tokenized stocks, making primary market access available around the clock.
However, risks are also prominent: you only hold a claim against the SPV, not direct ownership of the underlying stock. The PreStocks collapse serves as a cautionary tale: in May 2026, the transfer of its underlying shares was deemed invalid. Tokens valued at a staggering $1.3 trillion were backed by only $23 million in real stock, ultimately leading to the product's complete collapse. Although Backed and Ondo mitigate risk through segregated custody and proof-of-reserves, the risk is not eliminated; it's merely transferred from the corporate entity to the SPV wrapper layer.
Model Three: Completely Abandoning Equity Ownership, Purely a Price Speculation Tool
Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework allows anyone to build a perpetual contract market, requiring only a price oracle and a funding pool to operate. The leading project, TradeXYZ, accounts for over 90% of the open interest within the HIP-3 framework, listing perps for Nvidia, Tesla, Google, Amazon, and the Nasdaq 100 index. Ostium, deployed on Arbitrum, also offers similar products.
The platform charges a funding rate hourly to balance long and short positions, thereby anchoring the perpetual contract price to the spot stock price.
Perpetual contracts' trading volume far exceeds that of spot tokens for practical reasons: building a spot token market requires a supporting system of SPV, broker, custodian, and proof-of-reserves. Launching a perpetual contract only requires connecting to a price data source. TradeXYZ even listed a SpaceX perpetual contract before the company filed its S-1 registration statement, with open interest reaching $50 million directly. Spot tokens relying on an SPV simply cannot match this speed because the entity cannot quickly purchase sufficient underlying stock.
The Core Value of Tokens: Not Needing to Attach to Real Shares
The vast majority of retail investors never exercise their voting rights. Research data from the Harvard Law School Forum shows that, on average, only 12% of retail accounts in a company participate in shareholder meeting votes. For global traders looking to gain exposure to blue-chip stocks like Nvidia, Google, SpaceX, and Tesla, giving up a voting right they would never use is irrelevant.
Tokens themselves possess independent asset value and do not need to be completely equivalent to native stock. The three types of tokenized products cater to three types of investment needs: long-term institutional capital seeking full shareholder rights, on-chain users valuing DeFi collateral and liquidity, and short-term speculators preferring high leverage and 24/7 trading. Tokenization is not a replacement for traditional stocks; it is a new type of financial tool layered to adapt to different needs.
