Tokenized Nasdaq-100 Fund Launches on Stellar as Janus Henderson’s Onchain Assets Top $1 Billion

Janus Henderson and the tokenization platform Centrifuge have launched a tokenized Nasdaq-100 fund on the Stellar blockchain, putting one of Wall Street’s best-known equity benchmarks onto crypto rails through a manager-issued product. The fund, called JQQQ, was announced Tuesday and is aimed at eligible investors outside the United States.

Centrifuge supplies the tokenization infrastructure, and the fund seeks to track the index under a licensing agreement with Nasdaq. Janus Henderson, a London-based manager overseeing roughly $500 billion, said its institutional onchain strategies now exceed $1 billion. Those strategies span Treasurys, structured credit and now equities.

How the tokenized Nasdaq-100 fund is structured

JQQQ is not a token that gives holders direct ownership of Nvidia, Apple or Microsoft shares. According to Cointelegraph, it is a segregated portfolio of a British Virgin Islands investment company and provides indirect exposure to the index. The Wall Street Journal reported that it targets professional investors and carries a minimum investment of $100,000, which puts it well out of reach for ordinary retail buyers.

The more interesting distinction is who is behind the product. CoinDesk framed the launch as an issuer-sponsored fund: Janus Henderson issues and manages it, Centrifuge provides the plumbing and Nasdaq licenses the index. That contrasts with third-party stock tokens created without the involvement of the underlying issuer, a category at the center of a growing debate over who gets to tokenize traditional securities.

A licensing shift opens the door

The timing follows a change at Nasdaq. In April, the exchange said it would license the Nasdaq-100 to additional asset managers, including BlackRock and State Street, while keeping its long-standing relationship with Invesco. Invesco runs the QQQ trust, which Cointelegraph put at a $499 billion market cap. JQQQ shows that the wider licensing push now extends to blockchain-based vehicles as well as conventional funds.

It is also not Janus Henderson’s first move of this kind. CoinDesk noted that the firm introduced the Janus Henderson Anemoy S&P 500 Fund last year, which it described as the first tokenized index fund licensed by S&P Dow Jones Indices. The new launch applies the same playbook to a second major benchmark.

Why Stellar keeps landing institutional products

For Stellar, the launch adds to a steady run of institutional activity. Citing RWA.xyz, Cointelegraph reports that the network ranks fourth by distributed real-world asset value, with about $3.8 billion in tokenized assets. Only Ethereum, BNB Chain and Solana rank ahead of it. Issuers on the network include Spiko, Franklin Templeton and Ondo.

More is lined up. Tradable said in July that it plans to bring up to $1 billion of private credit to Stellar, with $500 million expected at launch. The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation said in May that it would connect its tokenization service to the network, with DTCC-tokenized assets expected in the first half of 2027. Those could include Treasurys, major index ETFs and Russell 1000 stocks.

Yet the market has not rewarded the token. XLM has fallen about 16% this year and traded near $0.17 on Tuesday, according to CoinGecko data cited by Cointelegraph. That gap shows that growth in tokenized assets does not automatically lift the price of the underlying blockchain’s native coin.

For now, the tokenized Nasdaq-100 fund is a narrow product with a high entry bar and a geographic restriction. Its significance is less about immediate scale than about the model it demonstrates. Established managers are using licensed benchmarks and their own issuance to bring equity exposure onchain, rather than leaving that space to third-party tokens.

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