RWA tokenization platforms compared

Fifteen platforms, four functions, and no single firm doing all of them. This compares primary regulator, licence status, asset classes, jurisdictions served and — the column most comparisons omit — what each platform does not do. Our own entries are recorded on the same terms.

Who are the real tokenization platforms in 2026?

Fifteen platforms account for most genuine real-world asset tokenization activity in 2026, and they are not doing the same thing. Grouping them by what they are licensed to do, rather than by marketing category, produces four types: licensed issuers, technology providers, venues and registrars, and custodians. Very few firms are more than one of these, and no firm on this list is all four.

The list below covers Securitize, Ondo Finance, Superstate, Tokeny, ADDX, Taurus, Centrifuge, Backed, Archax, InvestaX, Obligate, Nyala, Assetera, Black Manta Capital Partners and COSIMO Digital. Two of those are in our own group, and the table does not weight in their favour: their limitations are recorded in the same column as everyone else’s.

One framing point before the detail. The word "platform" flattens a real distinction. A technology provider that supplies a permissioned token standard is doing valuable, well-defined work and holds no licence, because it needs none. A licensed issuer carries regulatory responsibility for the offering. Comparing the two on features misses the only question that matters operationally: when something goes wrong, which authorised entity is accountable?

What does each one actually do — issuance, custody, transfer agency or venue?

Four functions, and each platform occupies one or two of them. Issuance means structuring an offering and placing it with investors, which in the EU requires a MiFID II investment firm. Custody means holding assets under an authorisation that permits it. Transfer agency means maintaining the authoritative register of holders. A venue means operating a market where the instruments trade.

Licensed issuers and placement firms

Black Manta Capital Partners (BaFin-licensed, MiFID II) and Securitize (through its US broker-dealer and ATS affiliates, with SEC transfer-agent registration) are the clearest examples. They carry regulatory responsibility for the offering itself. ADDX and InvestaX play this role under Singapore MAS licences, and Archax under UK FCA authorisation.

Technology providers

Tokeny is the reference case: a Luxembourg technology company supplying permissioned token infrastructure to licensed institutions. It does not issue, place, custody or settle, and does not claim to. Centrifuge sits adjacent, providing protocol infrastructure for private credit where the licensed issuer is a separate party on top.

Registrars and venues

Nyala operates as a crypto-securities registrar under the German Electronic Securities Act, a narrow and specifically authorised role. Assetera operates a MiFID II-authorised secondary market in the EEA. Both are essential and neither is an issuer.

Product issuers and custodians

Ondo Finance, Superstate and Backed are best understood as product issuers: they create tokenized instruments, principally short-duration government debt exposure or tracker certificates, rather than providing infrastructure to third-party issuers. Taurus is primarily a FINMA-supervised custody and infrastructure provider serving banks, with tokenization capability attached.

Reading the four categories together produces a useful discipline. For any structure, write down which named entity performs issuance, which maintains the register, which holds custody, and where the instrument can trade — then check that each of those four names holds an authorisation covering the work, in the jurisdiction where it is performed. Most proposals in this market fill two boxes convincingly and leave two implied. The implied boxes are where the operational risk lives, and they are also where the cost appears later, because the missing role has to be filled by someone at whatever price they ask once the project is committed.

The categories also explain why platform comparisons published by platforms tend to mislead. A technology provider compares on features, because features are its product. A licensed issuer compares on permissions, because permissions are its product. A venue compares on liquidity. Each is describing the axis on which it wins, and none is lying. The only comparison that helps an issuer is the one that asks what a provider does not do, which is why that column exists in the table below and why our own rows carry the same treatment as everyone else’s.

Which are regulated, and by whom?

Nine of the fifteen hold a financial-services authorisation of some kind; the rest are technology providers, protocols or offshore product issuers. Supervision is spread across BaFin, the Central Bank of Ireland, the Austrian regulator, the UK FCA, Singapore's MAS, Swiss FINMA and the US SEC. There is no single EU tokenization licence, and any firm implying otherwise is worth a second look.

The distinction that matters most in Europe is between a MiFID II authorisation, which permits issuance and placement of financial instruments, and a MiCA authorisation, which covers crypto-asset services and expressly does not extend to financial instruments. A firm can hold one, both, or neither, and each covers different work. Registration as a Virtual Asset Service Provider under national anti-money-laundering law is a third and narrower thing again: it is an AML supervision status, not permission to provide investment services.

This is where our own group's position should be stated precisely rather than favourably. Black Manta Capital Partners is BaFin-licensed and operates under MiFID II for regulated issuance and placement of tokenized securities; that is live. Fortuna is registered as a Virtual Asset Service Provider with the Central Bank of Ireland (register ref C459043, under s.106A of the Criminal Justice (Money Laundering and Terrorist Financing) Acts), with MiCA CASP authorisation in process and not yet effective. Custody and payments are therefore a capability in authorisation, not a capability in operation.

Which can serve EU issuers, and which cannot?

Five of the fifteen can serve an EU issuer directly today: Black Manta Capital Partners, COSIMO Digital through it, Tokeny as a technology supplier, Nyala for German-law crypto securities, and Assetera as an EEA venue. Taurus and Obligate can serve EU clients for specific functions within the Swiss perimeter. The remainder require an EU-licensed counterparty to sit between them and the issuance, or serve EU investors only on a reverse-solicitation or case-by-case basis.

That is not a criticism of the others. A US transfer agent with SEC registration is exactly the right provider for a US offering, and a Singapore licence is the right one for Singapore distribution. The error is assuming a licence travels. It does not: MiFID II passporting works within the EEA, MAS authorisation works in Singapore, and neither substitutes for the other.

For an EU issuer the practical consequence is a two-part question for any shortlisted provider. First, which EU-authorised entity will be responsible for issuance and placement — named, with its licence reference and supervisor. Second, where does the register legally sit, and is that register recognised under the law of the fund’s domicile. A provider that cannot answer both in one email is not yet a candidate.

How do I shortlist for my asset class?

Start from the asset and the investor base, not the technology. Four common cases cover most enquiries, and each has a different answer.

A European private fund for professional investors

You need an EU-licensed issuance firm, an authorised AIFM, a depositary and a register whose legal standing is recognised in the domicile. Shortlist: Black Manta Capital Partners for issuance, Tokeny or an equivalent for the token layer, Assetera if you want an EEA secondary venue, and a depositary from your domicile. Ondo, Superstate and Backed are not relevant to this case.

Tokenized short-duration government debt exposure

Ondo Finance, Superstate and Backed are the established product issuers here, and none is an EU fund. If you need an EU wrapper for a treasury strategy, you are commissioning a fund issuance, not buying a product, and the first case applies.

Private credit or receivables

Centrifuge for protocol infrastructure with a licensed issuer on top; Obligate for debt instruments in the Swiss perimeter; an EU issuance firm with a securitisation compartment where the investors are European institutions.

Secondary liquidity for an existing tokenized instrument

This is a venue question, not an issuance question. Assetera in the EEA, Archax in the UK, ADDX or InvestaX in Singapore. Confirm that your instrument’s transfer restrictions can be enforced on the venue, because a venue that cannot enforce eligibility cannot admit a restricted instrument.

Then apply three filters, in order: is there a named EU-authorised entity accountable for issuance; is the register legally recognised in the domicile; and does the provider’s answer to "what do you not do" match ours in the table above. The third filter is the most informative, because a provider who lists their limitations unprompted is describing a real perimeter.

One practical sequencing note. Select the issuance firm and confirm the register’s legal standing before selecting the token technology, not after. Projects that begin with a technology decision routinely discover that the licensed parties they then need to appoint have their own requirements about standards, identity frameworks and reporting, and the technology has to be re-configured to satisfy them. Beginning with the permissions and the domicile constrains the technology choice usefully — usually to two or three established permissioned standards — and that constraint is cheaper to accept at the start than to discover in week nine.

What is still missing from every platform on this list?

No platform on this list offers regulated issuance, qualified custody, settlement and asset management as one authorised, integrated stack in the EU. Every structure in the market today is assembled: an issuer here, a custodian there, a register somewhere else, a venue if you are lucky. The issuer carries the coordination burden and the operational risk that lives in the seams between providers.

That gap is not evidence of incompetence. It is a consequence of how the permissions are drawn. MiFID II issuance, depositary duties, MiCA custody and payment services are separate authorisations with separate capital, governance and reporting requirements, and holding several of them at once is slow and expensive. Most firms sensibly specialise. The result is that the market’s standard product is an integration project.

Three further gaps are worth naming because no vendor volunteers them. The cash leg is unsolved for most European structures: without tokenized cash on the same ledger, delivery versus payment is aspirational. Secondary liquidity is thin almost everywhere — venues exist, order books largely do not. And legal recognition of an on-chain register still varies by member state, so the same structure has different standing in different domiciles.

COSIMO Digital is building toward the integrated case and is not there yet either. Issuance is live and BaFin-licensed. Custody and payments are in authorisation with the Central Bank of Ireland and not yet effective. Settlement and identity infrastructure is built and not operating at scale. Asset management has a four-year live record through COSIMO X, a tokenized evergreen venture fund listed on Securitize Markets in December 2021. Two of six layers are operational, which is more than most and less than the whole. Read the group’s regulatory authorisations and their exact status rather than taking that summary on trust, and if it is useful, read how to tokenize a fund in Europe step by step or the definitions of the terms used in this table.