Janus Henderson and Centrifuge launch native tokenised Nasdaq-100 fund on Stellar
Key points
- Janus Henderson ($500bn AUM) and Centrifuge have launched JQQQ, a Nasdaq-100 index fund issued natively on the Stellar blockchain rather than as a wrapper around an existing ETF.
- The fund holds a direct Nasdaq index licence, distinguishing it legally from structures that inherit a licence by packaging the Invesco QQQ Trust.
- Minimum subscription is 100,000 USDC and the fund is restricted to non-US professional investors; Centrifuge's portal notes the fund is 'seeding soon.'
- Three competing onchain routes to Nasdaq-100 exposure now exist: the DTC-tokenised QQQ Trust (institutional), Backed's xStocks tracker certificate (crypto-native traders), and JQQQ (non-US professional, issuer-sponsored).
- JQQQ begins with zero assets under management, meaning the issuer-sponsored model's stated institutional preference has yet to translate into scale.
Janus Henderson, the asset manager with roughly $500 billion in assets under management, has gone live with JQQQ alongside infrastructure firm Centrifuge. The fund tracks the Nasdaq-100 index directly rather than wrapping an existing exchange-traded fund, and it is issued natively on the Stellar blockchain under a licence granted by Nasdaq. Non-US professional investors can subscribe with a minimum of 100,000 USDC, though Centrifuge’s investment portal describes the fund as “seeding soon.”
The Nasdaq licence is the detail that separates JQQQ from most competing structures. A fund that simply packages the Invesco QQQ Trust inherits Invesco’s existing index licence and needs no separate arrangement with Nasdaq. A fund that replicates the index independently must obtain its own, and that requirement draws a legal and structural line between an issuer-sponsored product and synthetic approaches such as tracker certificates aimed at crypto-native traders. Janus Henderson positions JQQQ as the first blockchain-native fund to offer Nasdaq-100 exposure through an issuer-sponsored strategy.
Three distinct routes to Nasdaq-100 exposure now exist onchain, each carrying different legal rights and serving different investor pools. The Depository Trust Company tokenised the Invesco QQQ Trust, a fund also close to $500 billion in assets, during a July production exercise, giving institutional participants a tokenised claim on the underlying ETF. Backed’s xStocks offers a tracker certificate wrapping QQQ for crypto-native traders. JQQQ is the issuer-sponsored option on a permissionless chain for non-US professionals, with the same benchmark but starting from zero assets. Same index, three architectures, and meaningfully different counterparty relationships for anyone holding a position.