Asset manager Janus Henderson and tokenization platform Centrifuge have launched JQQQ, a blockchain-based fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index on the Stellar network. The initiative provides eligible professional investors outside the United States with indirect exposure to the benchmark through a segregated portfolio of a British Virgin Islands investment company. According to reports, the fund requires a minimum investment of $100,000.
The launch marks an expansion of Janus Henderson’s onchain offerings beyond US Treasurys and structured credit into equity-index exposure. The asset manager stated that its institutional onchain strategies now exceed $1 billion in assets under management. JQQQ utilizes Centrifuge’s infrastructure and operates under a licensing agreement with Nasdaq, which expanded access to its index for additional asset managers in April.
This development contributes to the growing real-world asset (RWA) market on Stellar, which currently ranks fourth among blockchains by distributed RWA value with approximately $3.8 billion in tokenized assets. The network hosts products from issuers such as Franklin Templeton and Ondo. Additionally, Stellar is integrated into plans by the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), which announced in May that it would connect its tokenization service to the network, with DTCC-tokenized assets expected to become available in the first half of 2027.
The introduction of JQQQ signifies a maturation phase for tokenized equities, moving beyond experimental pilots to established asset managers offering regulated products on public blockchains. By leveraging a BVI structure for non-US investors, Janus Henderson navigates complex regulatory boundaries while providing liquidity and transparency advantages inherent to blockchain rails. This strategy allows traditional finance entities to test product-market fit in jurisdictions where crypto-native adoption is higher, without immediately confronting US securities laws.
For the broader market, this launch reinforces Stellar’s positioning as a viable settlement layer for institutional RWAs, distinct from Ethereum’s DeFi-centric ecosystem. The alignment with major players like Centrifuge and the pending DTCC integration suggests that legacy financial infrastructure is increasingly willing to utilize specific Layer-1 networks for compliance-heavy instruments. However, the divergence between the growth of tokenized assets on the network and the performance of its native token, XLM, highlights a disconnect between utility adoption and speculative valuation, indicating that institutional usage may not directly translate to immediate price appreciation for the underlying asset.
