- Nasdaq is designing tokenized shares that keep issuers in control while trading on blockchain-connected markets.
- Strategic alliances with Payward (Kraken) and Seturion aim to link regulated venues with tokenized settlement infrastructure.
- The xStocks framework already moves billions in tokenized volume and will underpin Nasdaq’s future equity tokens.
- First Nasdaq equity tokens using DLT could go live around the first half of 2027, pending regulatory approvals.
The race to bring traditional securities onto blockchain rails is entering a new phase, and Nasdaq is moving to accelerate the tokenization of assets across its markets. Through a mix of in-house developments and strategic alliances, the exchange operator is laying the groundwork for a future in which listed shares can also exist as programmable tokens that circulate on distributed ledgers.
Rather than treating tokenization as a side experiment, Nasdaq is positioning it as an evolution of its core market infrastructure. The company is developing a design for tokenized equity that preserves issuer control and regulatory safeguards, while at the same time exploring new ways to handle corporate actions, proxy voting and shareholder engagement in a more automated, digitally native fashion.
Nasdaq’s blueprint for tokenized shares
At the heart of Nasdaq’s plan is a model for tokenized stocks that grew out of a proposal filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in September 2025. Under this approach, securities would continue to trade on Nasdaq’s regulated venues as usual, but their settlement could take place in token form through distributed-ledger infrastructure.
In practical terms, this means conventional orders and matching on Nasdaq, followed by token-based settlement coordinated with the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). By separating trading and settlement layers, Nasdaq aims to plug blockchain technology into existing market plumbing without disrupting established regulatory protections.
Each equity token would be a digital representation of a real share, designed to mirror the economic and governance rights of the underlying security. That includes eligibility for dividends, participation in corporate actions and the right to vote at shareholder meetings, all reflected consistently between the on-chain and off-chain records.
The architecture also seeks to keep issuers firmly at the center. Nasdaq’s concept is that companies remain in control of their cap table even when shares circulate in tokenized form, with blockchain registries tightly synchronized to official shareholder records. The goal is legal and economic equivalence between the token and the traditional entry in the issuer’s register.
Beyond mirroring today’s processes, the exchange sees an opportunity to overhaul them. By leveraging distributed ledgers, routine operations such as proxy voting, entitlement processing and investor communications could be streamlined, potentially reducing errors, costs and settlement times while supporting more continuous market access across time zones.
Nasdaq currently anticipates that its DLT-based equity token design could start going live in the first half of 2027, subject to regulatory sign-off and successful integration with key post-trade infrastructures.
Strategic deals to scale tokenized asset infrastructure
To move from pilots to something closer to market scale, Nasdaq is not building everything on its own. The company has entered into two strategic agreements focused on trading and settlement of tokenized assets, one with Payward, parent company of crypto exchange Kraken, and another with Seturion, part of Boerse Stuttgart Group.
The collaboration with Payward is aimed at developing an infrastructure based on the xStocks framework, a platform for tokenized equities that already operates across multiple blockchain networks. This framework is intended to serve as a bridge between regulated capital markets and decentralized financial ecosystems.
In parallel, Nasdaq’s agreement with Seturion focuses on the post-trade side of tokenization in Europe. Seturion is being positioned as a paneuropean settlement layer for tokenized securities, designed to break down existing national silos in clearing and settlement. Connecting Nasdaq’s European trading venues to Seturion should make it possible to handle tokenized settlement for a growing range of structured products and, over time, additional asset classes.
Executives at Boerse Stuttgart Group have described Seturion as an open, industry-wide platform for tokenized-asset settlement, intended to be used by multiple market participants rather than as a closed system. For Nasdaq, this kind of shared infrastructure could help standardize the way tokenized positions are processed after trading.
On both fronts, the underlying objective is similar: to ensure that tokenized instruments can move smoothly between established institutional systems and blockchain-based networks, without sacrificing regulatory compliance, investor protections or the integrity of price formation.
Connecting regulated markets with blockchain ecosystems
The partnership with Payward is especially focused on building a secure gateway between regulated stock markets and open blockchain environments. Through the xStocks-based infrastructure, tokenized shares linked to Nasdaq-listed companies could, in time, circulate across different decentralized networks while remaining anchored to the underlying listed security.
According to both firms, the vision is to let tokenized equities travel between institutional infrastructures and global on-chain systems, and to bring stock data on-chain, so that the same asset can be used in more than one technological environment. In theory, a share could be held through a conventional broker, represented as a token on a public blockchain, and deployed in various financial applications, all while maintaining the same ownership rights.
Arjun Sethi, co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, has emphasized that tokenization reshapes market infrastructure by turning shares into programmable financial instruments. In his view, this programmability makes it possible for equities to interact directly with decentralized applications, automated market makers or lending protocols, alongside their traditional role on regulated exchanges.
Sethi has also been clear that infrastructure is the decisive factor. As he puts it, “tokenization by itself does not create markets”; what actually matters is whether there is sufficient liquidity, robust risk management and reliable operating frameworks around the tokens. The alliance with Nasdaq is about combining the exchange’s experience in building and supervising large-scale markets with Payward’s digital-asset technology stack.
This combined setup is expected to deliver compliance features such as KYC and AML checks through the Kraken platform, ensuring that participants who move assets between regulated venues and decentralized networks meet the relevant requirements in their jurisdictions. In regions where xStocks is already active, Payward is initially set to act as a primary settlement layer for early Nasdaq equity tokens.
xStocks: early traction in tokenized trading
The technical backbone of the Payward-Nasdaq collaboration is xStocks, a framework built for issuing and managing tokenized representations of publicly traded shares across multiple chains. Although still relatively young, the platform has already generated a notable level of on-chain activity.
Project data cited by the companies indicate that xStocks has handled more than 25 billion dollars in total transaction volume since launch, with over 4 billion dollars settled directly on blockchain networks, complementing initiatives such as the tokenized money-market fund on Ethereum. This suggests that investors are already using tokenized equities for a variety of trading and liquidity strategies.
The ecosystem currently brings together more than 85,000 unique token holders across compatible networks, signalling a growing base of users experimenting with tokenized securities. For Nasdaq, plugging into a framework that already sees this level of real-world use shortens the path from concept to practical deployment.
Within this environment, tokenized shares can be issued, transferred and integrated into different DeFi protocols while staying aligned with the reference prices and characteristics of the underlying securities. The idea is that the token is not a synthetic derivative but a direct, digitally native representation of the actual share.
In this context, tokenization is framed as a set of tools to improve interoperability between financial infrastructures and broaden investor access, rather than a parallel market detached from existing rules. Nonetheless, both companies recognize that there are still technical and regulatory questions to resolve before such models can scale globally.
Liquidity, collateral and new use cases for tokenized assets
Beyond simply moving existing shares onto blockchains, Nasdaq and Payward are exploring how tokenized equities could be used more flexibly as collateral within unified trading systems. In theory, a single pool of tokenized assets could support activity across spot markets, derivatives, perpetual futures and funding venues.
By allowing collateral to move programmably between strategies and platforms, market participants could make more efficient use of their capital. Rather than locking shares in segregated accounts for each product or venue, investors might allocate the same tokenized positions across several forms of exposure, with smart contracts automating margin and risk parameters.
Sethi has argued that most traditional shares remain “trapped in brokerage systems with limited utility”, constrained by legacy account structures and siloed infrastructure. Through xStocks and the collaboration with Nasdaq, Payward aims to make those same shares interoperable across regulated venues, DeFi applications and blockchain networks, while still preserving issuer rights and price integrity.
For international investors, particularly in regions where brokerage services are less developed, tokenization could lower barriers to accessing major public markets. Ownership of tokenized shares might be obtained and managed via digital wallets, with fewer intermediaries and around-the-clock market access, subject to local regulations.
In more mature markets, tokenized shares could support more granular trading, lending and hedging strategies, potentially enabling continuous collateral re-use and unified liquidity pools that cut across traditional and on-chain platforms. Whether such models gain broad adoption will depend heavily on oversight frameworks and risk controls.
Tokenization as a broader shift in market structure
The initiatives around Nasdaq, Payward and Seturion sit within a wider transformation in how financial institutions view blockchain technology. Over recent years, banks, exchanges and market-infrastructure providers have been testing tokenization as a way to represent conventional assets on distributed ledgers.
In the equity space, this means converting shares into digital tokens that can be transferred, cleared and settled via blockchain networks. If implemented at scale, such systems could shorten settlement cycles, reduce reconciliation workloads and enable markets that operate with fewer geographic and time-based constraints.
Nasdaq’s tokenization roadmap also touches on the possibility of nearly 24/7 trading windows and faster, more automated corporate action processing. A token-based model can, in principle, embed rules for entitlements and voting directly into the asset, simplifying how rights are exercised across multiple jurisdictions.
At the same time, both regulators and market operators remain cautious. The new infrastructures must align with existing securities law, investor protections and systemic-risk safeguards, which means extensive testing and incremental rollouts rather than overnight change. For now, most initiatives are framed as enhancements to established markets, not replacements.
Looking ahead to the planned 2027 launch window for Nasdaq’s equity-token design, the coming years are likely to be focused on regulatory reviews, technical integration with DTCC and Seturion, and controlled market pilots. How these experiments perform will shape whether tokenized assets become a mainstream feature of global capital markets or remain a specialized niche.
Taken together, Nasdaq’s push to tokenize assets, its work with Payward’s xStocks framework and its alignment with Seturion in Europe point to a market structure that looks familiar on the surface but is increasingly underpinned by blockchain-based rails. If the technical and regulatory pieces fall into place, investors could end up holding the same shares they know today, but with new ways to move, use and access them across both traditional venues and decentralized networks.
