In the Eastern Eight Time Zone this week, one of the main characters in the on-chain securities narrative, Superstate, announced the completion of $82.5 million in Series B funding (according to a single source), with the scale of assets under management disclosed to have exceeded $1.2 billion (also according to a single source), rapidly amplifying its presence in the crypto-based financial infrastructure sector. Unlike most "on-chain asset" projects, Superstate's entry point is not the issuance of new tokens, but rather acting as an SEC-registered transfer agent, directly connecting to the core equity registration and transfer processes in traditional securities issuance, attempting to transport Wall Street's equity rules onto the Ethereum and Solana public chains. The core question surrounding it has become sharp: when the equity registration logic behind Nasdaq is replicated on public chains, what will the corporate financing and listing processes be rewritten as? The true significance of this round of financing points to a long-term experiment in reconstructing the corporate financing and listing tech stack from within the regulatory system.
$82.5 Million Invested in On-Chain Equity Factory
● Funding volume and sources: Superstate secured $82.5 million in this Series B funding round, led by Bain Capital Crypto and Distributed Global (information from a single source), providing relatively ample "fuel" for its expansion of on-chain securities infrastructure. Although there is still a gap in publicly available information regarding the composition of investors, the deep involvement of traditional dollar funds is enough to indicate that its business and compliance path has a certain degree of interpretability and imaginative space within the Wall Street context.
● Trust endorsement of asset management scale: It has been disclosed that Superstate currently manages assets totaling over $1.2 billion (according to a single source), a scale far from that of a "laboratory project," and closer to real financial tools being used by institutional funds. For the on-chain securities sector, this is not just a numerical amplification, but also signifies that a group of institutions is willing to entrust assets to a "on-chain issuance + traditional regulation" hybrid structure within a compliance framework, validating its balance point between risk, cost, and efficiency.
● Positioning of financing in the RWA wave: Over the past two years, market attention to so-called RWAs has been increasing, from the tokenization of government bond yields to various on-chain note products, with funds attempting to package existing assets through tokenization. However, compared to this type of "asset on-chain packaging," Superstate's financing is more like being placed in the dimension of "reconstructing the underlying infrastructure of the securities market": it does not focus on the yield story of a specific asset class, but rather bets on the underlying issuance, registration, and circulation architecture, positioning it more towards the "infrastructure" end of the RWA narrative.
● Key logic of funding bets: The institutions' bet this time is not on a brand new asset class, but on the migration and upgrade of the existing securities market's technical base. If equity issuance, shareholder registry maintenance, transfer clearing, and other processes can be replaced by public chains, the market will not gain a "new story," but rather potential cost reductions, accelerated settlements, and enhanced global accessibility. Thus, the $82.5 million is more like a deposit for the "next-generation equity factory," rather than merely high-risk speculation.
Obtaining SEC Pass: From Tokens…
● Position of transfer agents in traditional securities: In the traditional securities market, SEC-registered transfer agents are key players in the equity issuance ecosystem of listed companies, responsible for maintaining shareholder registries, handling equity registration and transfers, coordinating dividends and corporate actions, and other "dirty work." They serve as the technical and compliance hub between issuers and investors, ensuring that every equity has a clear legal record from issuance to transfer. This process has long been viewed as a highly regulated infrastructure layer, rather than a "front-end business" easily touched by innovators.
● Compliance threshold differences for Superstate: Superstate has entered this system as an SEC-registered transfer agent, meaning it is legally qualified to handle equity issuance and registration for listed companies, which sets it apart from ordinary crypto projects and even some RWA platforms, creating a compliance gap of one level. For companies attempting to issue securities on public chains, this qualification directly relates to whether they can avoid the compliance risk of "illegal securities issuance," and it also earns them a ticket to dialogue with traditional institutions.
● Moving traditional back-end processes on-chain: Traditional investment banks, brokerages, and trust institutions slice various processes in securities issuance, from bookkeeping to equity registration, custody, and transfer, with each step relying on closed IT systems and manual operations. Superstate's ambition is to rewrite these back-end processes using on-chain logic, allowing equity registration, transfer records, dividends, and voting to operate directly on the smart contract layer, compressing intermediary levels and operational costs while maintaining legal validity, thereby rewriting the technology stack of the securities market.
● External expectations for the infrastructure role: There are already voices in the market describing Superstate as "building a complete on-chain issuance infrastructure" (quoted from Jinse Finance), rather than a single product provider. This positioning implies that it is expected to become the "underlying interface" between traditional markets and public chains, undertaking complex functions such as identity verification, asset registration, clearing and settlement, and compliance reporting. If this role is solidified, it will resemble a new generation of "clearing and registration houses," rather than the operator of a token project.
Moving Nasdaq on-chain: Ethereum…
● Choice of Ethereum and Solana as issuance bases: Superstate plans to build securities issuance infrastructure on Ethereum and Solana, directly serving SEC-registered companies. This choice itself is a declaration of intent: rather than building a consortium chain or private network, it embraces public chains that are already highly financialized and recognized for their security, embedding Wall Street's equity and bond logic into an open network, reserving interfaces for cross-border investment and global liquidity from the outset.
● Technical path differences provided by the two public chains: Ethereum, with its mature security model, extensive DeFi ecosystem, and more conservative scaling path, is seen as a "high-security, high-value settlement layer," suitable for carrying high-value, low-frequency equity settlements and registrations. In contrast, Solana, with its higher throughput and lower transaction costs, is suitable for high-frequency trading and fragmented asset circulation, providing technical space for potential granular equity splits, instant dividends, and on-chain voting in the future. Superstate's simultaneous bet on both chains essentially designs multi-track technical channels for different types of securities.
● On-chain scenarios from roadshows to issuance: Some market commentators believe that this type of infrastructure will "reshape corporate financing and listing processes" (quoted from Planet Daily), meaning that in the future, companies may complete everything from roadshows, qualified investor registration, to subscriptions, allocations, and listings entirely through on-chain processes. Roadshow materials can be traced on-chain, subscription funds can enter smart contract pools through compliant wallets, and equity allocations can be automatically settled to on-chain addresses, making the entire process highly transparent for auditing and regulation, while also opening seamless interfaces for subsequent circulation in the secondary market.
● Impact on retail thresholds and global liquidity: Once securities issuance and registration operate entirely on public chains, it could theoretically significantly lower the participation threshold for retail investors and geographical restrictions. Investors traditionally segmented by regional regulations and account systems would have the opportunity to participate in global corporate equity and bond issuances simply by using wallets and identity verification that comply with local regulatory requirements. In terms of liquidity, a unified on-chain settlement layer could reduce friction in cross-market transfers, improving the efficiency of securities circulation across countries, although this also depends on the final recognition of the legal validity of "on-chain registration" by regulators in various countries.
Regulatory Red Lines and Gray Areas: Compliance Advantages…
● Tension between securities law and public chain openness: U.S. securities law has extremely detailed regulations regarding public offerings, investor protection, and information disclosure, while the openness, anonymity, and programmability of public chains naturally pursue permissionless access, creating structural tension between the two. What Superstate is attempting to do is to carve out a finely-tuned path between strict regulation and complete openness: maintaining compliant investor identification and issuance approval at the front end, while migrating registration and settlement to public chains as much as possible at the back end, allowing regulation and code to coexist within the same process.
● Compliance advantages and risk isolation: As an SEC-registered entity, Superstate has the advantage of designing products within the regulatory framework, allowing it to provide enterprises and investors with legally accepted shells similar to traditional ETFs and private equity funds, and then embed on-chain registration and circulation mechanisms within those shells. This "growing from within regulation" path helps enterprises avoid being classified as "unregistered securities issuance," while also providing institutional investors with clearer compliance boundaries, reducing their policy uncertainty costs in participating in on-chain securities.
● Grounding challenges in a public chain environment: Even with a clearer compliance path, actual implementation will still face numerous technical and institutional challenges. How to maintain the legal "identity" of cross-chain assets across multiple networks, how to embed KYC and anti-money laundering rules into open wallet systems, how to synchronize information disclosure and announcements between on-chain and traditional media, and how to implement investor suitability management for securities of different risk levels—these issues far exceed the simple "tokenization of equity," requiring a balance acceptable to all three parties among legal texts, technical implementation, and market practices.
● Will regulators recognize the equivalence of on-chain registration?: A key question hanging over this model is: Will regulators accept "on-chain equity registration" as a compliant form equivalent to traditional registration systems? Only when the holding records on public chains are legally regarded as final proof of ownership can the issuance and circulation processes of on-chain securities be considered truly complete. Otherwise, public chains can only serve as a "shadow ledger," with all key rights still needing to be confirmed by traditional registration systems, which would significantly weaken the disruptive potential of on-chain infrastructure.
Traditional Investment Banking Roles, Public Chains, and Smart Contracts…
● Financing process segments that can be replaced on-chain: In the corporate financing and listing process, many segments are essentially programmable registration and rule execution, such as equity registration, dividend distribution, lock-up and release of restricted shares, and shareholder meeting voting and tallying. What Superstate envisions is to abstract these segments into a set of smart contracts and on-chain records, allowing every share transfer, every dividend, and every vote to be automatically registered and settled on the public chain, thereby reducing manual reconciliation and dispute space.
● Role compression and smart contract takeover: If the on-chain issuance infrastructure is mature enough, the roles of traditional investment banks, registration institutions, transfer agents, and others may be compressed into several groups of smart contract processes at the operational level, with human resources shifting more towards front-end design, risk control, and compliance review. For enterprises, going public and issuing additional shares will no longer mean interfacing with a whole set of dispersed IT and service teams, but rather invoking a standardized on-chain template; for the market, the time from issuance to circulation is expected to be significantly shortened, and the cost structure will also undergo redistribution.
● Impact on vested interests and collaboration: This model poses clear pressure on exchanges, custodians, registrars, and other vested interests: some traditional fee items maintained by process complexity and information asymmetry may be eroded by the transparency and automation of on-chain systems. However, in the reality where regulators are unwilling to abandon existing frameworks, these institutions may also become collaborators with Superstate, maintaining licensing and market organization roles at the front end while adopting on-chain infrastructure to enhance efficiency, forming a hybrid structure of "traditional licenses + on-chain foundation."
● Rewriting the underlying tech stack, not just issuing tokens: The narrative surrounding Superstate can easily be misread as another story of "on-chain token issuance replacing IPOs," but its true direction is: rewriting the underlying tech stack of IPOs, additional issuances, and refinancing using public chains. Securities remain securities, and the regulatory framework still exists; what changes is how equity is recorded, how it circulates, and how it is opened to global investors. In this logic, tokens are merely the surface manifestation of technical implementation, while the foundational infrastructure logic of the securities market is what is truly being rewritten.
From a Financing Round to a Rewrite of Order…
Returning to this $82.5 million Series B funding and SEC-registered transfer agent qualification, Superstate offers an on-chain securities path that extends from within the regulatory system: it does not bypass regulation or start anew, but seeks technological upgrade space within the existing legal framework, transforming public chains into an extension layer of the traditional securities system. The significance of this path lies in providing on-chain securities with a narrative starting point that is more acceptable to institutions and regulators.
It is foreseeable that, in the short term, traditional exchanges and clearing systems will not be easily overturned; the enormous existing market and complex interest structures determine that they will continue to exist for a long time. However, for the new generation of enterprises, the "on-chain first" financing route is beginning to become conceivable: designing issuance structures for global investors from the outset, using public chains as the native registration and circulation base, and then accessing existing markets through compliance packaging and regulatory connections will become one of the paths attempted by a few leading-edge enterprises.
Looking ahead, the upper and lower limits of this path will be determined by multiple variables: the SEC's attitude, the evolution of public chain performance and security, and the speed of global regulatory follow-up will all affect whether the on-chain equity model is merely a localized experiment or the embryonic form of a new order. Between optimistic narratives and the pace of real-world advancement, investors and participants need to learn to distinguish: technological prototypes, compliance breakthroughs, and large-scale adoption often do not occur on the same timeline. While maintaining continuous attention to on-chain securities, it is also essential to be wary of the risks brought by excessive expectations and timing mismatches.
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