After the SEC’s “Innovation Exemption,” Who Captures the Tokenized-Stock Bull Run? A 20-Project Watc
Today, we’re going to talk about one of the hottest topics in the crypto market right now:
After the SEC introduced the Innovation Exemption,they could tokenize U.S. stocks become the next major narrative in the crypto market?
When we talked about RWA in the past, the first things that came to mind for many people were U.S. Treasuries, money market funds, and short-term bonds.
But now the market is asking a different question: Can the U.S. stocks go on-chain?
Can Apple, NVIDIA, Tesla, and S&P 500 index ETFs be represented as regulatory-compliant tokens and traded on-chain?
Once these assets are brought on-chain, can they enter wallets, stablecoins, DEXs, liquidity pools, and even become collateral for DeFi?
If this entire chain gradually becomes viable, the crypto market narrative will no longer be simply about “how much a particular token has gone up.” Instead, it could become a much bigger question:
Who will issue the assets of the future capital markets? Who will provide the trading infrastructure? Who will provide pricing data? Who will provide liquidity? Who will provide lending and settlement?
That is the core issue we’re going to explore today.
But before we begin, let me make one thing clear: This is not about recommending 20 coins that are “guaranteed to go up tomorrow.” What we are building today is a research map.
Because regulatory tailwinds do not guarantee a project’s success, and a project’s success does not necessarily mean its token price will rise. In crypto, narratives can rally first while the fundamentals may never materialize.
Today, we’ll break this down into several parts.
First, what exactly does the SEC’s Innovation Exemption allow?
Second, what sectors are actually needed for tokenized U.S. stocks?
Third, what is the logic behind each of the 20 specific projects and tokens?
Fourth, given the current Bitcoin market environment, how should investors prioritize their research and manage risk?
Finally, I’ll give you a practical framework for evaluating these projects:
Has the policy actually been implemented? Is the business growing? Can the token capture value? Has the price already priced in too much expectation?
Once you understand these four questions, you won’t have to approach every RWA project by simply “following the news, chasing the rally, and guessing which one will double.”
Part One: What Exactly Has the SEC’s Innovation Exemption Changed?
1. First, Let’s Understand the Policy Itself
Let’s start with the most important part: the policy.
On September 17, 2026, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, or SEC, announced a temporary, conditional regulatory exemption called the Innovation Exemption.
The key point in the SEC’s official document is that eligible Tokenized Securities Venues, or TSVs, can, under specified conditions, use permissioned automated market makers and liquidity pools to trade certain tokenized U.S. NMS stocks.
There are three keywords everyone needs to remember.
The first keyword: temporary.
This is not a permanent law, nor does it mean that all U.S. stocks can simply be turned into tokens starting today.
According to the SEC’s formal document, the exemption runs through September 17, 2031.
So, fundamentally, this is a time-limited regulatory experiment. Regulators want to observe how this trading model works, collect data, and then determine how longer-term rules should be structured.
The second keyword: conditional.
Not every DEX, project, or liquidity pool can automatically take advantage of this policy.
The trading venue, liquidity providers, participants, and traded assets must all satisfy applicable requirements.
The SEC specifically emphasizes requirements involving permissioned access, transaction-data disclosure, technological safeguards, recordkeeping, and coordination around trading halts.
In other words, we could eventually see a new type of trading structure: the efficiency of DEX-style trading combined with the regulatory access controls of traditional finance.
This does not necessarily mean a completely open, permissionless market in which any wallet can participate directly.
The third keyword: tokenized securities.
This is also where the market is most likely to misunderstand the policy.
A genuine Tokenized Stock is not simply a token designed to track Apple’s share price.
If it represents a compliant tokenized version of an actual stock, there should be an underlying arrangement representing genuine securities interests. Where applicable, holders should receive economic rights corresponding to those of traditional securities, such as dividends and voting rights.
A synthetic token that merely tracks a stock’s price is therefore not necessarily equivalent to a genuine tokenized stock.
So remember one sentence:
Putting stocks on-chain does not eliminate their securities status; tokenization does not eliminate regulation.
2. Why Does It Matter?
So here is the question: If this is only a limited regulatory exemption, why is the market paying so much attention?
Because this is not simply about another crypto product. It touches the infrastructure of financial markets themselves.
What does traditional stock trading generally look like?
An investor places an order through a broker. The order goes to an exchange for matching, followed by clearing, custody, and settlement, ultimately completing the recording and delivery of ownership.
This system has operated for decades and has highly developed rules and processes.
Blockchain is attempting to provide an alternative model:
Wallets hold assets, blockchain networks record transfers, smart contracts manage transactions, and blockchains handle parts of settlement and ownership records.
If more compliant financial assets eventually enter this system, the changes could extend far beyond trading hours.
They could affect:
Asset issuance, trading venues, liquidity provision, asset transfers, settlement, ownership records, and even how financial institutions coordinate with one another.
This is also central to the significance discussed in the SEC’s official policy framework.
But we need to be very clear about one thing:
Opening a regulatory pathway does not mean the market has already migrated.
The real questions come afterward.
How many trading venues will apply?
How many platforms will actually be able to meet the regulatory requirements?
How many publicly listed companies will be willing to have their shares tokenized?
How much actual trading volume will develop?
Will investors really want to use wallets and on-chain trading?
These questions will determine whether the policy remains a headline or develops into genuine financial infrastructure.
There is another extremely important risk I want to highlight here.
In the future, we may see two very different types of products existing side by side.
The first category consists of tokenized stocks backed by genuine underlying securities and issued and custodied according to applicable rules.
The second category consists of synthetic assets that merely track stock prices.
For example, a project could issue a token and tell you that it tracks NVIDIA’s share price.
You may think you are buying NVIDIA stock, but in reality, you may only have price exposure, without any ownership of the underlying shares, dividends, or voting rights.
These two types of products could be completely different in terms of economic rights, custody, redemption, legal responsibilities, and risks.
So when you see something called an “Apple Token,” “Tesla Token,” or “NVIDIA Token” in the future, don’t just look at the name.
You need to ask:
Who issued it?
Who holds the underlying assets?
Is it backed 1:1?
Do holders have dividend and voting rights?
Who is responsible for redemption?
What happens to the token if the underlying stock is halted?
If a dispute occurs, which jurisdiction handles it?
These questions matter far more than the token’s candlestick chart.
Moreover, under the SEC’s policy framework, the relevant stock issuer has the right to object. A third party cannot simply decide to put shares of any publicly listed company into a trading pool just because it wants to issue a token.
Therefore, don’t interpret “tokenized stocks” as completely unrestricted, permissionless issuance.
Part Two: Breaking Down 20 Projects and Tokens, One by One
Note: These categories are organized according to business narratives and use cases. They are not a ranking of expected returns or an investment rating.
Tier One: ONDO — The Gateway for Asset Issuance
The first project is ONDO.
If we imagine the future on-chain capital market as a city, ONDO is more like the asset issuance and management platform responsible for bringing real-world assets into that city.
Its core focus is RWA, or the tokenization of real-world assets.
Early RWA products primarily focused on assets such as U.S. Treasuries and short-term Treasury funds. As its products and ecosystem have developed, Ondo has expanded into tokenized stocks and ETFs.
According to public information from Ondo and its ecosystem, Ondo Global Markets now offers more than 200 tokenized U.S. stocks and ETFs on Solana, covering assets such as NVIDIA, Apple, and Meta, as well as products such as SPY and QQQ.
Here is the important shift:
In the past, when people talked about RWA, they usually thought of Treasuries.
Now, tokenized stocks and ETFs are emerging as a new asset category.
If this market continues to grow, asset issuance, custody, redemption, compliant access, and asset management will become increasingly important.
That is the primary reason ONDO is worth researching.
But don’t confuse ONDO with Apple stock.
Buying ONDO does not mean buying Apple stock, nor does it mean directly owning any U.S. stocks.
What you are researching is whether Ondo’s asset issuance business, product scale, user demand, and ecosystem position can continue to grow — and whether that growth can ultimately translate into value for the ONDO token.
Key metrics to monitor:
First, the size of tokenized assets.
Second, the number of products and their actual usage.
Third, the mechanisms for issuance, redemption, and asset management.
Fourth, whether there is a genuine connection between project revenue and the ONDO token.
Fifth, token unlock schedules and circulating market capitalization.
In one sentence: ONDO represents the asset-issuance layer, but business growth does not automatically mean the token price will rise.
Second: LINK — The Data Pick-and-Shovel for On-Chain Finance
Second is LINK.
If ONDO is responsible for bringing assets on-chain, the oracle sector represented by LINK solves another fundamental problem:
How does a blockchain know what an asset is worth?
For example, if a tokenized NVIDIA stock enters DeFi, a smart contract needs to know its price.
If a tokenized Treasury enters a lending protocol, the protocol needs to know its net asset value and risk parameters.
If a tokenized ETF is used as collateral, it also needs a reliable source of data.
All of this requires price data, asset-status data, and infrastructure connecting off-chain information with on-chain systems.
Therefore, the investment research logic behind LINK is straightforward:
The more real-world assets enter blockchain-based financial systems, and the more sophisticated on-chain finance becomes, the greater the potential demand for reliable data infrastructure.
However, the oracle industry is not without competition.
LINK is also already a highly watched asset, meaning its valuation, market expectations, and competitive landscape all need to be examined.
Don’t conclude that “because oracles are important, LINK must go up.”
Instead, ask:
Is demand for real-world data actually increasing?
Is the scale of protocol services expanding?
Are institutional clients and supported assets growing?
And can that business growth translate into greater usage or economic value for the LINK token?
Those are the things we really need to track.
Third: ETH — The Settlement Layer for On-Chain Finance
Third is ETH.
ETH is not a pure RWA token.
But when researching on-chain capital markets, it is a foundational asset that cannot be ignored.
Why?
Because the Ethereum ecosystem encompasses smart contracts, DeFi, stablecoins, Layer 2 networks, and a huge range of financial applications.
If tokenized stocks, bonds, funds, and other real-world assets continue moving on-chain in the future, those assets will need to operate on some form of blockchain infrastructure.
Whether Ethereum can continue to serve as an important settlement network will therefore become a long-term question.
But we need to distinguish between two concepts.
First, industry growth.
Second, value capture by the ETH token.
Even if the RWA industry grows, that does not mean all of the resulting value will automatically flow to ETH.
We also need to examine transaction fees, network usage, Layer 2 development, ETH’s supply dynamics, staking demand, and the competitive landscape.
So I would rather think of ETH as:
A broad Beta exposure to on-chain financial infrastructure, rather than a short-term trading asset tied to a single headline.
If you believe more financial assets will move on-chain in the future, ETH is worth researching. But if you are simply chasing the price because of the SEC news, you need to be particularly careful.
Fourth: SOL — High-Performance On-Chain Trading Infrastructure
Fourth is SOL.
If ETH is more like a broad smart-contract and financial infrastructure ecosystem, one of Solana’s key areas of interest is high-performance trading and user experience.
If tokenized stocks genuinely reach the mainstream market in the future, users may demand several things:
Fast transactions, low fees, simple wallets, sufficient liquidity, and stable trading venues.
Especially for stocks, ETFs, and other financial products, if more frequent on-chain trading develops, the performance and user experience of public blockchains will become increasingly important.
Ondo’s tokenized stock and ETF products have already expanded into the Solana ecosystem, giving Solana a real-world-asset use case.
However, we also need to recognize that large-scale adoption of tokenized stocks still needs to be demonstrated.
Solana faces competition from other public blockchains, as well as questions surrounding network reliability, ecosystem risks, regulatory applicability, and the actual scale of tokenized assets.
So the research logic for SOL is:
If on-chain financial trading continues to expand, can Solana secure an important position through performance, liquidity, and user experience?
What we need to watch is actual trading volume, stablecoin supply, real users, RWA asset scale, and network revenue — not simply whether Solana has a popular narrative.
Fifth: AVAX — The Institutional Custom-Blockchain Approach
Fifth is AVAX.
The research logic behind AVAX is different from that of ETH and SOL.
One area worth watching is institutional and customized blockchain infrastructure.
Imagine that a bank, brokerage, or asset-management firm wants to put its financial assets, trading processes, compliance permissions, and internal settlement systems on a blockchain.
It may not want all of its operations running in a completely open environment shared by everyone.
It may instead require customized chains, permission management, compliance controls, privacy arrangements, and specialized business logic.
That is the potential demand for institution-specific blockchain infrastructure.
AVAX is therefore worth researching in areas such as institutional RWA, customized blockchains, and enterprise financial applications.
But there is one very important risk here:
Institutional adoption of a particular blockchain does not necessarily mean that the blockchain’s native token will capture value on the same scale.
Some businesses may use customized networks, others may use consortium chains, while others may settle through completely different mechanisms.
Therefore, when researching AVAX, don’t stop at the words “institutional partnership.”
Look at the specific technology being adopted, whether there is genuine business activity, how the network generates fees, what role the AVAX token actually plays, and whether the commercial scale can continue to expand.
Sixth to Ninth: XLM, HBAR, XDC, and POLYX
XLM: Connecting Payments and Financial Institutions
Sixth is XLM.
The core areas to research with XLM are payments, cross-border transfers, connections with financial institutions, and real-world asset applications.
If financial markets gradually expand from the Crypto Native ecosystem toward greater integration between traditional finance and blockchain, payments, fund transfers, and the movement of assets between institutions could become important infrastructure.
The research logic for XLM is therefore how traditional financial institutions could use blockchain to improve the efficiency of asset transfers and settlement.
But what we need to observe is not the narrative, but actual usage:
How many financial institutions are using it?
How much genuine payment and settlement volume is being processed?
Is business growth creating additional network demand?
And can XLM’s token economics establish a reasonable connection between network usage and token value?
These questions will determine whether XLM becomes a long-term area of research or remains primarily a market narrative.
HBAR: Enterprise-Grade Distributed Ledger
Seventh is HBAR.
The research thesis around HBAR primarily revolves around enterprise applications, distributed ledgers, institutional finance, and the digitization of real-world assets.
If banks, brokerages, funds, and large enterprises increasingly begin using distributed ledgers to manage asset records, settlement, or business collaboration, the market for enterprise-grade ledger infrastructure could expand.
One of the areas that makes HBAR worth researching is its positioning toward enterprise and institutional applications.
But again, keep in mind that an enterprise using a particular technology does not necessarily mean that the enterprise will accumulate large amounts of the network’s native token.
You need to examine actual customers, real-world deployments, network usage, fee mechanisms, token demand, and the competitive landscape.
Enterprise adoption and token value capture are two different questions.
XDC: Trade Finance and Real-World Assets
Eighth is XDC.
RWA is absolutely not limited to stocks, ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries.
The real world also contains a huge range of trade-finance assets: trade contracts, accounts receivable, invoices, supply-chain financing, credit arrangements, and cross-border trade settlement.
These assets also have needs around digitization, ownership verification, transfer, financing, and settlement.
The reason XDC is worth researching is its focus on trade finance and enterprise financial applications.
If blockchain adoption in trade finance continues to increase, related infrastructure could gain access to a new market opportunity.
But XDC’s thesis is different from ONDO’s.
ONDO is more focused on capital-market asset issuance and tokenized financial products.
XDC is more focused on trade finance and enterprise applications.
So don’t treat every RWA project as if it were the same type of asset.
Their customers, business models, commercial cycles, and token value-capture mechanisms can be completely different.
POLYX: A High-Beta Watchlist Candidate for Tokenized Securities
Ninth is POLYX.
POLYX is more closely connected to regulated securities, RWA, and infrastructure for tokenized securities.
The reason it can attract market attention is straightforward: if securities tokenization becomes a long-term theme, projects specializing in this area could receive greater attention.
But there is one particularly important reminder here:
Small market cap does not mean low risk, and it does not mean high certainty.