In September, Superstate Opening Bell brought the first SEC-registered, exchange-listed public equities onto Solana as tokenized shares. Since then, we’ve been building toward the next step: enabling those assets to function as usable building blocks in DeFi.

This week, we’ve activated the first major utility.

Tokenized securities issued through Opening Bell – including live assets and newly announced issuers such as Forward Industries (FWDI), Exodus (EXOD), and Solana Company (HSDT) – are now permitted for use as collateral as they go live on Kamino, one of the leading lending protocols on Solana. Eligible investors can borrow stablecoins against their tokenized equity, accessing liquidity while maintaining exposure to the underlying shares.

This marks the first time regulated public equity can be used directly inside an onchain borrowing market.

How It Works

Kamino allows users (not available in the US) to supply assets as collateral and borrow against them. With this integration, Opening Bell tokenized equities are qualified to be supplied as collateral alongside other onchain assets.

For ex-US investors, the flow is straightforward:

1. Hold Opening Bell tokenized shares in an allowlisted Solana wallet
2. Supply those tokenized shares as collateral in Kamino
3. Borrow stablecoins against that position while continuing to hold economic exposure to the equity

This unlocks a familiar DeFi pattern of borrowing against long positions, but applied to tokenized equities instead of purely crypto-native assets.

Compliance and Ownership

Even when tokenized equities move into DeFi protocols, Superstate’s compliance infrastructure remains intact.

Allowlisted ownership only: Tokenized equities can only be held or received by approved addresses on the Superstate allowlist (eligible, KYC’d investors, whether in a wallet or inside a protocol like Kamino)

Real-time shareholder record updates: When tokenized shares are posted into or withdrawn from Kamino, Superstate maintains the investor as the shareholder of record. The protocol never appears on the cap table, and beneficial ownership stays with the investor throughout the entire onchain interaction.

Here’s what makes this possible: Superstate tracks underlying ownership even after shares leave an investor’s wallet and enter a DeFi protocol. As the SEC-registered transfer agent, we maintain accurate, continuously updated shareholder records across all onchain interactions.

This results in investors getting onchain collateral utility, while issuers and regulators get accurate, real-time shareholder tracking.

What This Enables

By connecting Opening Bell tokenized equities to Kamino, investors can:

• Borrow stablecoins against tokenized public equities
• Maintain exposure to the underlying shares while accessing liquidity
• Use equity positions as programmable collateral within DeFi

This is a first step toward broader tokenized equity utility as we continue to build the bridge from TradFi to DeFi. As additional Superstate equities go live and more collateral venues emerge, investors will have more ways to put their shares to work onchain.

Source: Superstate