Kraken expands its tokenized xStocks to Tron in latest expansion of Backed partnership

With tokenized stocks all the rage within the crypto industry, Kraken is taking the next step to expand its own offering of so-called xStocks by moving these onchain assets onto Tron, according to an announcement on Wednesday.

The move is being made in partnership with TRON DAO and Backed, the tokenization startup behind xStocks — i.e., representations of equities like Apple, Nvidia, and Tesla — used by centralized exchanges like Bybit, Gate, and, of course, Kraken.

"Expanding xStocks to three blockchains in under 60 days shows what’s possible when you design for openness from the start," Kraken co-CEO Arjun Sethi said in a statement, referencing the Solana and BNB Chain networks already tapped for xStock deployment.

xStocks enable 24/7 trading, fractional ownership, and integration with DeFi protocols like Kamino, Raydium, and Jupiter on Solana and PancakeSwap and Venus Protocol on BNB Chain. Not yet available in the U.S., these digitized stocks offer investors access to U.S. markets without traditional brokerage barriers.

Notably, xStocks are structured as debt instruments for regulatory compliance and do not confer traditional shareholder rights like governance voting.

"Tokenized equities represent a natural evolution for crypto, bridging traditional markets with blockchain," Tron founder Justin Sun said in a release. "As demand for popular equities meets a global base of previously excluded users, we’ll see a more efficient, flexible, and accessible market."

As part of the latest integration, Backed will deploy xStocks on TRON as TRC-20 tokens and maintain full 1:1 backing for each tokenized asset listed on Kraken’s platform. In the coming weeks, users will be able to deposit and withdraw xStocks directly through the TRON ecosystem.

According to Backed’s Adam Levi, xStocks have already surpassed $2.5 billion in combined CEX and DEX volume since launching in late June.

Backed is far from the only startup looking to provide tokenized access to traditional assets. Notably, Robinhood tapped the Arbitrum Layer 2 network to deploy its own version of onchain stocks, including for some pre-public firms like OpenAI and SpaceX, a move that caused some amount of controversy.