Nasdaq has announced its equity token design, a framework for tokenizing public company shares that keeps issuers — not platforms or protocols — in control of their equity. The announcement, made on March 9, 2026, positions Nasdaq as a direct competitor to NYSE's tokenized securities platform and a counterweight to the crypto-native tokenization approaches being developed by Coinbase and Robinhood.
The program is expected to go live in H1 2027.
What Nasdaq Is Actually Building
The core idea is straightforward: when a token moves on-chain, it represents a transfer of the underlying security itself — not a synthetic wrapper or a derivative contract. Blockchain records are tied directly into the issuer's official share registry. There's no disconnect between what happens on-chain and what's legally recorded in the company's books.
This is a deliberate design choice. As tokenized equities proliferate across dozens of platforms — many of them unregulated — Nasdaq is positioning its token standard as the only model that preserves full legal and regulatory equivalence with traditional shares.
Tal Cohen, President of Nasdaq, framed it this way: "Public companies should always remain at the center of the equity market ecosystem."
The Kraken Partnership: Bridging Regulated and Permissionless Markets
The most concrete element of the announcement is Nasdaq's partnership with Payward, the parent company of crypto exchange Kraken and the infrastructure layer behind xStocks.
The two companies will build an "equities transformation gateway" — essentially a bridge that lets issuers and investors move tokenized shares between Nasdaq's regulated, permissioned environment and the open blockchain networks where xStocks operate. For international investors, this means accessing U.S. equities in jurisdictions where traditional distribution has been limited. For U.S. users, it opens the door to using stock holdings as collateral across trading and financing workflows.
Arjun Sethi, Co-CEO of Payward and Kraken, described the vision: tokenized equities functioning as "interoperable instruments across regulated financial systems and open blockchain networks while preserving issuer rights and price integrity."
Modernizing Proxy Voting and Corporate Actions
Beyond trading, Nasdaq is targeting the infrastructure that public companies use to communicate with shareholders. Proxy voting, corporate actions, and shareholder engagement — all processes still largely running on aging, paper-adjacent workflows — are explicitly in scope.
The equity token design aims to introduce programmable investor engagement, meaning corporate governance events could theoretically be handled on-chain with real-time transparency and participation. For large issuers managing hundreds of thousands of shareholders across multiple time zones, this is potentially one of the most practical near-term applications of tokenization.
The Regulatory Foundation
Nasdaq isn't improvising here. The initiative builds on a tokenization proposal filed with the SEC in September 2025, in which Nasdaq proposed enabling tokenized equities to trade on its markets and settle through the DTCC. The announcement is also consistent with the SEC's 2026 Staff Statement on Tokenized Securities, which classifies tokenized equities under the same federal rules as regular shares.
This regulatory grounding matters. The NYSE's competing tokenization platform still awaits approvals. Coinbase's tokenized stock roadmap is further out. Nasdaq's approach, built on an existing SEC filing and an aligned regulatory framework, has a clearer path to market.
Nasdaq vs. NYSE vs. Coinbase: A Three-Way Race
The tokenization of U.S. equities is shaping up as one of the defining infrastructure battles of 2026–2027. Three very different players are converging on the same end state — but from opposite directions.
The NYSE, through Intercontinental Exchange, is building a hybrid platform that combines its Pillar matching engine with blockchain-based settlement, backed by BNY Mellon and Citi for tokenized deposits. The model is institutionally anchored and focused on settlement efficiency.
Coinbase is approaching from the crypto side — first adding stocks to its platform, then planning tokenized equities that work natively on-chain, with collateral and payment use cases built in. Robinhood is pursuing a similar path in Europe.
Nasdaq's bet is different from both. Rather than building a new venue or starting from crypto rails, it's extending the authority of the issuer into tokenized environments — ensuring that no matter where a tokenized share circulates, its legal identity traces back to the same place it always has.
What This Means for the Always-On Market
Markets are moving toward 24/7 trading. As Nasdaq itself notes, the infrastructure underpinning how equities are traded, held, transferred, and governed has to evolve to support continuous operations. Traditional settlement windows, banking hours, and manual corporate action processes are incompatible with an always-on environment.
The equity token design is Nasdaq's answer to that shift — not by abandoning the regulated market structure it operates, but by extending it into the digital asset layer. For neobanks, crypto platforms, and international brokers looking to offer U.S. equities, the framework Nasdaq is building could become the standard they're required to plug into.
The program is voluntary for issuers and will evolve based on regulatory review. But with the SEC aligned, a crypto partner secured, and a launch window set for H1 2027, Nasdaq is no longer watching the tokenization race from the sidelines.