Janus Henderson and Centrifuge Launch Issuer-Sponsored Nasdaq-100 Onchain Fund

Janus Henderson, the London-based asset manager overseeing roughly $500 billion, has launched JQQQ alongside tokenisation platform Centrifuge: an issuer-sponsored fund tracking the Nasdaq-100 Index and built on the Stellar blockchain. Nasdaq licenses the index to the fund, and Centrifuge provides the underlying blockchain infrastructure, creating a structure distinct from third-party stock tokens where the original issuer plays no role.

JQQQ follows SPXA, the Janus Henderson Anemoy S&P 500 Fund introduced the previous year as the first tokenised index fund licensed by S&P Dow Jones Indices. With JQQQ, Janus Henderson’s onchain investment platform now spans Treasuries, structured credit, and equities, surpassing $1 billion in assets across those categories. The Nasdaq-100’s well-known constituents, including Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft, give the product a degree of benchmark recognition that may ease institutional adoption.

Operationally, the issuer-sponsored model carries implications that third-party token structures do not. Investors in JQQQ hold a position managed by the issuer rather than an instrument created without the underlying manager’s involvement, a distinction that has become sharper as 22 companies recently objected to blockchain-based trading of their shares on the OKX-ICE venue. Looking further out, both Centrifuge’s chief strategy officer and the fund’s structure point toward assets that could serve as collateral or interact with other onchain financial applications, though such uses remain subject to regulatory requirements and platform support.