Janus Henderson Launches Nasdaq-100 Fund JQQQ on Stellar (XLM), Platform Tops $1B

Janus Henderson Puts the Nasdaq-100 Onchain

Janus Henderson, the London-based asset manager overseeing roughly $500 billion, has launched JQQQ, a blockchain-native fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index, on the Stellar network (XLM). The firm built the product with tokenization platform Centrifuge, while Nasdaq licensed the index the fund follows, a benchmark anchored by Nvidia, Apple and Microsoft. The launch was announced on Tuesday. The product gives onchain investors exposure to the same large-cap technology basket that anchors conventional index funds.

The Stellar (XLM) price is not the load-bearing part of this story; the fund's structure is. JQQQ follows the issuer-sponsored model: Janus Henderson issues and manages the fund itself, Centrifuge supplies the blockchain infrastructure, and Nasdaq licenses the benchmark it tracks. That design separates the product from third-party tokenized stock, which is created without the underlying companies' involvement and can leave holders with no claim on the underlying shares or their shareholder rights. It also moves Wall Street's onchain push, until now concentrated in Treasuries, money market funds and private credit, into stock-market products, at a moment when the debate over who gets to tokenize traditional securities has sharpened. Nasdaq's own product side framed the demand. Sean Wasserman, head of index product management at Nasdaq, said in the launch announcement that demand keeps growing for exposure to established, transparent benchmarks as investors explore access to markets through digital infrastructure. Anil Sood, chief strategy and growth officer at Centrifuge, added that tokenization becomes far more powerful when the assets investors want to own can also serve as building blocks for an onchain financial system. JQQQ is the most concrete result yet of Stellar's institutional pitch, which the network has been building all year around compliance-first issuance.

Issuer-Backed Tokens and the Custody Line

JQQQ is the firm's second licensed index product on public blockchains. Last year Janus Henderson introduced the Janus Henderson Anemoy S&P 500 Fund (SPXA), the first tokenized index fund licensed by S&P Dow Jones Indices. With JQQQ added, the manager's onchain investment platform now carries more than $1 billion across Treasuries, structured credit and equities, per the company's own disclosure. The growth path is explicit in the company's own dates: the S&P product arrived last year, the Nasdaq-100 product this quarter, and the $1 billion total spans both.

The line between issuer-backed products and third-party tokens has hardened as tokenization spreads. Tokens created without a company's involvement may be backed by shares held in custody, or structured as separate instruments tracking stock prices, but investors in those products do not necessarily own the underlying shares or receive shareholder rights. The question turned confrontational when 22 companies objected to plans for blockchain-based trading of their shares on the OKX-ICE venue, a dispute running alongside the faster growth of tokenized Treasuries, money market funds and private credit. For a fund, the difference shows up in what a holder actually owns. In the issuer-sponsored setup the claim sits with the fund's own manager and the index licensor is named; in the third-party version the link to the underlying company runs through a custodian or a derivative structure, and the company itself has no role. Neither company disclosed an eligibility gate or jurisdiction limits for JQQQ investors; what the disclosure does state is the three-way division of roles. Janus Henderson and Centrifuge pitch issuer sponsorship as the answer. Because the manager issues the fund itself, the product is built to operate on blockchains from the start rather than imitating an existing instrument. The companies note such funds could eventually let investors post holdings as collateral for loans or move them between blockchain-based financial applications, or DApps, subject to regulatory requirements and platform support.

Our read: Stellar (XLM) keeps collecting the issuance side of institutional tokenization. Earlier this month the first institutional repo on Stellar settled with 72 rollovers, the Stellar Development Foundation has set operator software requirements ahead of the Bell Protocol 30 vote, and the Meridian 2026 conference in Lisbon opens on October 28 and 29. JQQQ adds a $500 billion manager's index product to that pipeline. The issuer-sponsored shape, with the manager, the infrastructure provider and the index licensor each named in the fund's own disclosure, gives holders a rights-bearing claim third-party tokens cannot match. Whether that carries into sustained network demand is a separate question, one our XLM technical analysis tracks level by level rather than through issuance headlines.