Tokenized shares: two models, the same rights?

On July 2, 2026, two companies launched identical-looking but structurally opposite tokenized stock models in the United States on the same day. Ondo Finance, using Broadridge infrastructure, put tokenized versions of BlackRock's IVV ETF (the iShares Core S&P 500) and Micron (MU) stock on Ethereum, granting holders proxy voting rights (the mechanism by which a shareholder delegates their vote in meetings without attending) through the traditional system. That same day, Securitize began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker SECZ and tokenized its own stock on Solana and Avalanche, registering holders directly on its cap table. Both models grant shareholder rights — dividends and voting — but through structurally different paths, while a third, older model, offshore synthetic tokens, grants neither. The tokenized stock sector reached a $5.5 billion market cap in early June 2026, up 147% from the beginning of the year. This article breaks down the three structures and answers the question almost no one clarifies: when you buy a "tokenized stock," what rights are you actually purchasing?

What exactly happened on July 2, 2026?

Two launches occurred hours apart with nearly identical headlines. Ondo Finance announced what it describes as the first production deployment of a third-party custodial tokenization model aligned with U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) guidance: it tokenized BlackRock's IVV ETF and Micron stock on Ethereum, and activated with Broadridge — the largest provider of proxy voting infrastructure in the U.S. market — to provide holders with issuer communications and meeting votes. In parallel, Securitize rang the opening bell of the New York Stock Exchange as a listed company under the ticker SECZ and, on the same day, put tokenized versions of its own stock into circulation on Solana and Avalanche, valued at nearly $295 million at launch (approximately $270.6 million on-chain in the following days), making SECZ the largest tokenized stock in the world.

The coincidence is not accidental. In January 2026, the SEC confirmed that issuer-sponsored tokenized securities fall under existing securities legislation, and its staff published guidance for the third-party custodial model. This double regulatory green light opened the door to two legitimate and very different architectures that had been in preparation for months. Launching on the same day is a battle for the narrative: each wants to be remembered as "the first" in its category. The problem for the investor is that the label "tokenized stock" no longer says anything useful on its own.

Our six-dimension framework for evaluating a tokenized fund — legal structure, custody, yield mechanics, liquidity, issuer risk, and composability — covers almost everything to look for in a real-world asset brought on-chain (if you need the basics, start with what is RWA tokenization). But it leaves out a dimension that is everything for a stock and almost irrelevant for a Treasury bill fund: voting rights. Ondo and Securitize solve this in opposite ways on the same day.

A note to avoid product confusion: here we are talking about Ondo's tokenized stocks (IVV, Micron), not its tokenized Treasury bonds — USDY and OUSG — which we analyzed separately in Ondo's tokenized treasuries. These are different product lines with different legal structures.

What does an Ondo/Broadridge token represent and where does the vote come from?

Ondo's model is third-party tokenization: Ondo acts as an intermediary that wraps third-party securities — it neither issues BlackRock nor Micron shares. The actual IVV and Micron shares never leave the conventional U.S. chain of custody — they are not transferred to any blockchain. What Ondo does, through Oasis Pro TA (an SEC-registered transfer agent and indirect subsidiary of Ondo), is mint tokens on Ethereum backed 1-to-1 by those held securities. The role of a transfer agent — the entity that maintains the official record of security ownership — and its move to the chain is detailed in the Equiniti case; what is relevant here is that the token is not the share itself, but an entitlement that grants rights over the share held by the custodian.

The vote arrives as an added layer, and that is Broadridge's contribution: it connects the same proxy voting plumbing that already powers U.S. shareholder meetings to the on-chain world. It integrates its ProxyVote.com platform so that the token holder receives the same issuer communications and exercises the same vote they would have with that share in a traditional brokerage account. In a conventional brokerage account, you do not appear as the registered shareholder either; the share is held in the intermediary's name (what is known in the U.S. as street name) and you are the beneficial owner, with the vote channeled accordingly. Ondo's model replicates that indirect ownership scheme and connects the vote through the same traditional rails. The result is that an Ondo token holder votes and collects dividends exactly as they would with that share in a conventional brokerage account, nothing more and nothing less.

How does the Securitize (SECZ) model differ?

Securitize — the infrastructure provider we previously saw as a tokenization partner in the ICE, OKX, and NYSE alliance — did the opposite in two ways. First, it tokenized its own stock — it is issuer-sponsored tokenization, not a wrapper for a third-party security. Second, and more importantly, the SECZ token represents the same class of common stock that trades on the NYSE, not a separate class or a derivative. According to the company, holders are recorded with legal ownership on the issuer's capitalization table (the official shareholder registry) and retain shareholder rights — dividends, proxy voting, and participation in corporate actions — natively, without an intermediate layer to channel them. Furthermore, they can custody the token in their own wallet instead of through a broker.

The price mechanics reflect this direct integration. During U.S. market hours, the token price follows the National Best Bid and Offer (NBBO, the official price reference under U.S. stock market regulation); outside those hours, the price is set by on-chain supply and demand. In other words: tokenization changes the form of ownership — an entry in a smart contract instead of a notation in a transfer agent's book — without changing the nature of the asset or bypassing legal, contractual, or transfer restrictions. In practice, the SECZ holder appears in the same shareholder registry as any NYSE investor, without the custodian and agent layer that intermediates in the Ondo model.

Does having a tokenized stock give you the same rights as a normal stock?

It depends on the model, and that is the whole point. The following table compares the two July 2nd structures and adds a third: offshore synthetic tokens (such as those popularized by xStocks), which dominated the first wave of tokenized stocks and provide price exposure but no shareholder rights. This is the comparison that directly answers "do I get to vote if I buy this?".

The quick takeaway: the two new U.S. models do provide voting and dividends; the offshore synthetic model, which most people have used until now, does not. And between the two new ones, the difference is not "vote yes / vote no," but how you hold title: indirect beneficial owner with channeled voting (Ondo) versus direct shareholder recorded in the registry (Securitize).

Why does it matter if you are a direct holder or an indirect beneficiary?

It seems like a legal nuance, but it determines what happens when something breaks. Three specific scenarios illustrate this:

• The token is paused due to a technical failure. In SECZ, your status as a shareholder lives in the issuer's registry, not in the contract: you remain registered even if the token is frozen. In Ondo, your entitlement remains with the custodian, but recovering it requires going through Oasis Pro TA, the transfer agent.
• The token issuer goes bankrupt. In Ondo, the Micron stock remains custodied off their balance sheet, so it doesn't fall with them. In SECZ, the issuer and the company are the same entity: your stock is worth whatever Securitize is worth.
• There is a meeting tomorrow. Ondo's vote depends on the custodian → Broadridge → ProxyVote chain; Securitize's vote comes directly from the registry.

How much has the market grown and why has it skyrocketed?

The context explains the rush. Tokenized stocks went from being a curiosity to a multi-billion dollar segment in just over a year, driven by U.S. regulatory clarity and the entry of institutional names. The dated timeline:

The underlying multiplier is institutional. Ondo joined the DTCC tokenization group — the infrastructure that settles virtually all U.S. securities — alongside BlackRock, JPMorgan, and Goldman Sachs, with a live deployment planned for July 2026 to tokenize stocks from the Russell 1000 index and Treasury bills. When these pipes are activated, the debate stops being "is it legal?" and becomes "under which model?". The same rights question that separates Ondo from Securitize will be multiplied across hundreds of securities. For the price discovery angle of a stock before its IPO, our analysis of SpaceX price on Hyperliquid shows the other side of the phenomenon.

Who can buy each model and what risks remain?

Access is the first practical dividing line. The two regulated U.S. models —Ondo and Securitize— are open to eligible U.S. investors who pass identity verification and meet securities law requirements; their virtue lies precisely in being within the regulatory perimeter. The offshore synthetic model does the opposite: it is offered outside the U.S., without accreditation, with more reach and less protection. There is a trade-off between accessibility and rights that each investor resolves according to their jurisdiction. If the criterion is how many links can fail between you and your rights, Securitize's direct registration has fewer; if the criterion is not concentrating issuer, agent, and action in the same entity, the Ondo/Broadridge/custodian split diversifies the failure. It is also worth remembering that MiCA —the European crypto-asset framework— does not cover these tokenized securities as such, so an EU investor operates under their country's securities regulations, not under the crypto umbrella.

Risks remain that no prospectus highlights. The first is capacity versus actual use: the fact that voting infrastructure exists does not mean it has been exercised at scale yet; for now, it is primarily a ready technical rail, not a history of on-chain voted meetings. The second is liquidity: one week after launch, there is no secondary volume history to back up the "exit whenever you want" claim, so "24/7 exit" may remain theoretical when there is no buyer on the other side. The third is overlapping layers: smart contract, custodian, transfer agent, and, where applicable, voting platform — every link that adds function also adds a point of failure. For the institutional broker-dealer model following a third path, see our analysis of the ICE, OKX, and NYSE alliance.

What should you verify before buying a "tokenized stock"?

The operational conclusion is that the label is no longer enough and there are three questions to answer before clicking "buy." First: what does the token represent — a direct stock recorded in the registry, a title to a custodied security, or just a replicated price? That answer tells you if you are an owner, a beneficiary, or a counterparty. Second: do you have voting and dividends, and through what channel — native to the registry or channeled by a proxy provider? The two U.S. models say yes; the offshore synthetic says no. Third: who is the registered transfer agent and under what jurisdiction is it offered? That is the real legal backing of your right.

Ondo and Securitize proved that two products with the same name can build ownership in opposite ways, and that both can be legitimate: for the buyer, the commercial name does not say under which model their vote or dividend falls — that is in the structure, and it must be read before signing. July 2, 2026, was not the day tokenized stocks "arrived": it was the day they stopped being just one thing.

Sources and links: Broadridge — Shareholder Voting for Tokenized Securities (July 2, 2026) · CoinDesk — Ondo SEC-aligned tokenized stock model · PR Newswire — Tokenizing SECZ at listing day · Tech Times — Two rival U.S. models, different investor rights · SEC — Staff Statement on Tokenized Securities (Jan 2026)