A group of core market-infrastructure firms has formed a working group to push tokenized public stocks that stay legally tied to the companies that issue them. On September 24, 2026, Bullish and Equiniti announced the Issuer Sponsored Token Coalition, with Alpaca, Apex Fintech Solutions, and DriveWealth among the first participants.
The coalition’s purpose is to design technical standards, operating models, and market plumbing so tokenized securities can grow beside traditional capital markets rather than sit apart from them.
The organizing idea is straightforward. In an issuer-sponsored structure, an on-chain token would connect directly to a company’s authoritative shareholder register.
That link is meant to keep ownership rights, corporate-action entitlements, and investor protections intact while still capturing the speed and programmability of blockchain rails.
The firms argue that the next generation of tokenized public securities should not weaken the relationship between an issuer and its shareholders.
The launch follows the USSecurities and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) September 17 Innovation Exemption, which allows limited on-chain trading of US-listed equities.
That order requires venues to confirm that a tokenized stock confers the same rights and privileges as the equivalent traditional share. Coalition members see that requirement as a signal that models anchored in the official register, rather than in synthetic wrappers, are better positioned as the market develops.
The group says it will work on several fronts at once: preserving legal rights associated with traditionally held shares; building interoperability across clearing, settlement, blockchain networks, wrapped-token structures, and entitlement-token frameworks; and studying smart-contract designs, compliance obligations, and early product pilots.
The coalition is described as open and non-exclusive. Additional firms that share the same approach are expected to join later.
Bullish and Equiniti are already combining transfer-agent and digital-asset infrastructure through Bullish’s pending acquisition of Equiniti.
The coalition extends that work by bringing in firms that sit between issuers and investors—brokerage platforms, clearing providers, and trading infrastructure.
Alpaca has said tokenization can connect companies and investors in ways legacy systems never allowed, provided on-chain markets stay linked to the markets they represent.
Apex and DriveWealth add scale in regulated brokerage and clearing operations that any interoperable model will need.
Members plan to meet public-company issuers and other capital-market leaders at the New York Stock Exchange on October 27.
That session is expected to cover how listed companies should approach tokenization, what infrastructure they would require, and how issuer-sponsored tokens can move between traditional books and blockchain networks without breaking the official record of ownership.
Further participants and workstreams are slated to be announced in the coming weeks.
The practical stakes are high.
Many existing tokenized-stock products already circulate on public chains, but they often rely on a broker or custodian holding the underlying shares while a separate token trades elsewhere.
That structure can deliver price exposure without delivering full shareholder status.
By starting from the register itself, the coalition is trying to make the token the share—or at least keep it tightly bound to the same legal title—so voting, dividends, splits, and other corporate actions remain intact.
It now remains to be seen if those standards become industry defaults.
It will depend on issuer participation, regulatory follow-through, and the ability of traditional and on-chain systems to interoperate without fragmenting ownership records.
For now though, the announcement marks a coordinated attempt by several firms at the center of brokerage, registry, and digital-asset infrastructure to define tokenized equities from the issuer outward.
