Bullish and Equiniti announced the formation of the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, a multi-stakeholder industry working group bringing together leading firms across brokerage, trading and market infrastructure to advance issuer-sponsored tokenized securities.

Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions and DriveWealth are among the first market infrastructure participants joining Bullish and Equiniti in the Coalition, which is being established to help develop the technical standards, market infrastructure and operating frameworks necessary for tokenized securities to scale alongside, and interoperate with, the existing capital markets ecosystem.

The Coalition is founded on the belief that the next generation of tokenized public securities should preserve the fundamental relationship between an issuer and its shareholders. Under an issuer-sponsored model, tokenized securities can be directly connected to the issuer’s authoritative shareholder register, helping preserve ownership rights, corporate-action entitlements and investor protections while enabling the benefits of blockchain-based market infrastructure.

The launch follows the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s Sept. 17 Innovation Exemption, which permits limited onchain trading of U.S.-listed equities. The order requires venues to verify that a tokenized stock gives holders the same rights and privileges as the equivalent traditional share, which highlights the leadership role that ISTs are positioned to have as the new market evolves. The relief runs for five years, and the Commission is seeking public comment on how the framework should evolve.

“Tokenization will turn static, opaque assets into active, transparent digital shares. The architecture we establish now matters and that is why we are bringing together this group of leading firms to chart the course,” said Tom Farley, CEO of Bullish. “Public companies should remain at the center of the relationship with their shareholders as we combine the advantages of blockchain technology with the protections and market structure that make public markets work.”

The Coalition will focus initially on four areas:

• Preserving issuer and shareholder rights: advancing a regulated model for tokenized securities that maintains the legal rights, corporate-action entitlements and investor protections associated with traditionally held shares.
• Building interoperability: developing common technical and operational approaches that allow issuer-sponsored securities to move across traditional clearing and settlement infrastructure, blockchain networks, wrapped-token models and emerging entitlement-token frameworks.
• Creating the infrastructure for adoption: addressing the regulatory, operational and commercial requirements surrounding issuance, transfer, settlement, custody and secondary-market trading.
• Growing an open market ecosystem: bringing together issuers, broker-dealers, exchanges, transfer agents, custodians, market makers, liquidity providers and technology companies to support a scalable tokenized securities market.

The Coalition expects its work to include evaluation of blockchain and smart-contract architectures, development of interoperability standards, analysis of regulatory and compliance requirements, product prototyping and pilots, and engagement with policymakers, industry bodies and standards organizations. The group is intended to be open and non-exclusive, with additional market participants who share the vision invited to join over time.

“Tokenization creates an opportunity to connect issuers and investors in ways that weren’t possible with traditional market infrastructure,” said Arush Sehgal, Head of Digital Assets at Alpaca. “Getting it right means preserving shareholder rights and ensuring onchain markets remain connected to the markets they’re built on. We’re joining the Coalition to help advance the interoperability between traditional and onchain markets that allows tokenized equities and their traditional counterparts to be converted through Alpaca’s Instant Tokenization Network.”

“Tokenized securities will only scale if they preserve the relationships and protections that market participants rely on today,” said Travis McGhee, Global Head of Digital Markets at Apex Fintech Solutions. “Apex operates across issuers, broker-dealers and investors, so we see firsthand how important connective infrastructure is. We’re joining the Coalition to help advance standards that allow tokenized markets to scale responsibly.”

“Much of what’s marketed today as ‘tokenized equity’ isn’t equity at all. Investors think they own the share, and they don’t. That’s the gap this Coalition is built to close,” said Naureen Hassan, CEO of DriveWealth. An issuer-sponsored model preserves real ownership with the same shareholder rights, voting and corporate-action entitlements investors have today, even as the rails move on-chain. Innovation and genuine ownership have never been competing goals. They’re both what make a market worth investing in, and we’re glad to help build it that way from the start.”

Bullish and Equiniti are developing infrastructure designed to support issuer-sponsored tokenized securities while maintaining an authoritative shareholder register and enabling interoperability with traditional capital-market infrastructure and blockchain-based markets. The Coalition expands that effort by bringing together participants responsible for many of the critical functions between issuers and investors.

Coalition members will convene with issuers and other capital-market leaders at the New York Stock Exchange on October 27 for a discussion focused on how public companies can approach tokenization, what infrastructure is required to support it, and how issuer-sponsored models can connect traditional securities markets with emerging blockchain-based rails.

Additional Coalition participants and initiatives will be announced in the coming weeks.

‍Source: Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition