3 hours ago
32
ARK Invest has moved its Venture Fund onto the Ethereum blockchain, giving eligible investors a way to subscribe and redeem their holdings entirely onchain using USDC. The fund, listed under the ticker ARKVX as a Class D share, processed its first tokenized subscriptions through Securitize’s platform on September 24, 2026.
A $1.3 billion actively managed fund, one holding stakes in private companies like SpaceX and OpenAI, is now accessible through a crypto wallet and a stablecoin transfer.
How the mechanics actually work
The subscription flow borrows from the ERC-7540 standard, which handles asynchronous vault requests. An investor submits a USDC subscription request and it gets recorded onchain right away. The actual fund tokens land in the investor’s wallet only after end-of-day net asset value calculations are complete, meaning the price you pay reflects that day’s officially calculated NAV rather than a spot market quote.
NAV stood at $60.49 per share just before the token launch on September 23, 2026. The 2% subscription fee is deducted before NAV is applied, so investors are effectively paying that fee on the gross amount sent before their share count is determined.
Each tokenized interest represents a 1:1 claim on shares of the underlying ARK Venture Fund. The actual fund shares sit at BNY Mellon as custodian, preserving the legal and regulatory structure investors would expect from a traditional interval fund.
Redemptions follow the same onchain logic. Investors submit requests through Securitize’s platform, those requests are recorded immediately, and settlement happens post-NAV. There is no secondary market planned for the tokenized assets, so liquidity remains what it was before tokenization: quarterly repurchase offers capped at 5% of outstanding shares, with the possibility of proration if demand for redemptions exceeds that limit in any given quarter.
The fund underneath the token
ARKVX’s portfolio targets disruptive innovation, with concentrated exposure to sectors like artificial intelligence and aerospace. Holdings include private market names that most retail investors cannot normally access, SpaceX and OpenAI among them.
The fund reported a 20.35% return in the second quarter of 2026, outpacing the S&P 500’s 15.20% gain over the same period. Year-to-date through mid-2026, performance reached 26.71%. Assets under management stood at approximately $1.3 billion as of June 30, 2026.
Annual expenses run at approximately 3.49%. The minimum investment is $500, a deliberately low floor designed to bring in investors who would normally be priced out of private market exposure. Most interval funds and alternative vehicles aimed at accredited investors set minimums in the tens of thousands of dollars.
What this means for tokenized funds broadly
ARK made a direct investment in Securitize in October 2025, so this product is partly an expression of that strategic bet paying out in product form.
Carlos Domingo, Securitize’s chief executive, framed the significance around moving established financial products onto blockchain rails rather than building new crypto-native products from scratch.
Cathie Wood described the launch as evidence of ARK’s commitment to the evolution of capital markets.
The quarterly liquidity structure is worth watching closely. Running redemption requests onchain adds transparency to the queue, since pending requests are visible on the blockchain, but it does not add liquidity. Investors who need to exit quickly in a stressed market will face the same constraints they would in a traditional interval fund structure, just with a cleaner digital record of the line they are standing in.
Disclosure: This article was edited by Editorial Team. For more information on how we create and review content, see our Editorial Policy.
English (US) ·