Woofun AI reports that the tokenized stock market has expanded from $327 million to nearly $1.5 billion within the past year, driven by three distinct structural models. This rapid growth signals a fundamental shift in how investors access U.S. equities through blockchain infrastructure, with traditional giants like DTCC and the New York Stock Exchange preparing to enter the space. The divergence in product mechanics creates varying risk profiles, ranging from direct legal ownership to synthetic derivatives that require no underlying custody.

The first model involves native equity registration, where issuers complete on-chain registration to grant holders full legal status, voting rights, and dividend eligibility. Superstate, an SEC-regulated transfer agency, executed this by registering equity on the Solana blockchain, establishing a compliant framework for digital ownership. In May 2026, Galaxy adopted this approach to tokenize its own equity, implementing on-chain proxy voting through Broadridge to streamline corporate governance. By December 2025, Superstate's compliant equity tokens were listed on Kamino, marking the first instance where registered equity tokens served as collateral within DeFi protocols. This structure provides the highest level of legal certainty but requires rigorous regulatory adherence and specific issuer participation.

A second category utilizes SPV-backed tokens, which are held by offshore entities and correspond 1:1 to real stocks without granting direct shareholder status. Backed's xStocks are issued via a Jersey-based SPV and cover more than 160 stocks, while Ondo employs a British Virgin Islands SPV to issue full-income bonds supporting over 200 tokenized stocks. Within 8 months of their launch, the total locked-up value for these products exceeded $1 billion, demonstrating significant capital attraction. These instruments deliver stock price appreciation and dividends automatically reflected in token balances, alongside high combinability; for instance, xStocks function as collateral for lending on Kamino and Morpho. Recently, Ondo opened 24/7 minting and redemption channels for its mainstream token stocks to enhance liquidity.

However, the inherent risk is that investors hold claims against the SPV rather than the underlying assets, a vulnerability highlighted by the collapse of PreStocks.

The third format consists of perpetual futures contracts that operate without underlying stocks, relying instead on price data feeds. Hyperliquid's HIP-3 framework enables anyone to create such markets, with TradeXYZ accounting for over 90% of open positions within this ecosystem. TradeXYZ offers perpetual contracts for blue-chip stocks like NVIDIA and Tesla, as well as the NASDAQ 100 index, while Ostium, deployed on Arbitrum, provides similar synthetic products. These instruments require no SPV or custody system, allowing for rapid deployment; TradeXYZ launched its perpetual contracts before SpaceX submitted its S-1 filing, achieving an open position value of $50 million. Consequently, the trading volume of these unbacked contracts far exceeds that of spot tokenized stocks, as they bypass the friction of asset custody and regulatory registration.

Woofun AI data shows that NVIDIA currently serves as a case study for all three models, with the first two types backed by more than 650,000 real stocks. Despite the substantial asset backing in native and SPV models, the trading volume of unbacked perpetual contracts remains 4 to 5 times higher than that of spot tokenized stocks. This disparity suggests that market participants currently prioritize liquidity and speed over direct legal ownership or dividend rights. The industry trajectory points toward further institutional integration, with DTCC announcing plans to launch a pilot program for tokenized securities in October 2026 and the New York Stock Exchange building a 24/7 trading platform. The coexistence of these three models indicates a maturing market where regulatory compliance and synthetic efficiency compete for dominance.