Janus Henderson Puts a Nasdaq-100 Fund on Stellar

Janus Henderson has launched JQQQ, a fund that tracks the Nasdaq-100 index and is issued and run on a public blockchain. Built with the tokenisation company Centrifuge and launched only on the Stellar network, it is, the companies say, “the first blockchain native fund offering exposure to the Nasdaq-100 Index® through an issuer-sponsored investment strategy.”

The fund tracks the index “under license from Nasdaq”, according to the announcement published on 27 October by Janus Henderson, the Stellar Development Foundation and Centrifuge. It is not available to US persons.

In brief

JQQQ seeks to track the Nasdaq-100 under a licence from Nasdaq and launches exclusively on Stellar.
It is a segregated portfolio of a British Virgin Islands company, with Centrifuge’s Anemoy as investment manager and a Janus Henderson US unit as sub-investment manager.
It is open only to eligible investors where it can lawfully be offered, and not to US persons.
Janus Henderson says its onchain platform now holds more than $1 billion in institutional strategies.

How the fund is set up

The legal wrapper is offshore. The release describes JQQQ, formally the Janus Henderson NASDAQ-100 Index Fund Segregated Portfolio, as “a segregated portfolio of Anemoy Capital SPC Limited, a British Virgin Islands segregated portfolio company.” Anemoy Asset Management is the investment manager and Janus Henderson Investors US LLC is the sub-investment manager. Centrifuge’s site describes Anemoy as its own asset-management arm, and the release says the fund is “powered by Centrifuge’s full-stack infrastructure for onchain funds”.

The fund “is available only to eligible investors in jurisdictions where it may lawfully be offered and marketed,” the release says. The companies did not publish a fee, describing fees only as “competitive”, and gave no starting fund size.

The disclosures are careful about what a holder owns. The fund “provides indirect economic exposure” to a product tracking the index and does not give beneficial ownership of it. Its value “may deviate from that of the Nasdaq-100 Index®”. The release also warns that the failure of blockchain networks, smart contracts or wallets “could delay or prevent transfers or redemptions, or result in losses”.

What the companies say

Nick Cherney, head of innovation at Janus Henderson, said the fund expands the firm’s onchain platform, “which now includes more than $1 billion in institutional strategies across U.S. Treasuries, structured credit, and public equities”. He described Janus Henderson as “a top five global provider of tokenized funds”. The release puts the group’s assets under management at about half a trillion dollars.

Sean Wasserman, head of index product management at Nasdaq, said that “demand continues to grow for exposure to established, transparent benchmarks.” Anil Sood, Centrifuge’s chief strategy and growth officer, said: “Tokenization becomes much more powerful when the assets investors want to own can also become building blocks for an onchain financial system.”

Stellar says real-world assets on its network “surpassed $4 billion in 2026”. Denelle Dixon, the Stellar Development Foundation’s chief executive, said the launch “shows how far tokenization has come, from cash-equivalent assets to the benchmarks that define global equity markets.” Janus Henderson’s affiliate Victory Park Capital chose Stellar this month for VALTS, its tokenised private-credit feeder.

From cash funds to an equity benchmark

Many of the tokenised funds TSN has covered hold cash-like assets. In the past week alone, TSN has covered Franklin Templeton’s sgBENJI and Aviva Investors’ sterling liquidity fund on the XRP Ledger, and Hong Kong’s approval of 24/7 trading in two tokenised money-market funds. JQQQ moves the model to a large-cap equity index, and with an issuer-sponsored product rather than a token that mirrors shares held elsewhere.

That distinction is the companies’ main argument. A fund issued onchain can, they say, plug into “programmable vaults, onchain portfolios, collateral, lending, and structured products.” The release limits that pitch, though: any collateral or lending use “relates solely to functionality that may be made available by independent third parties”, which Janus Henderson “does not offer, facilitate or endorse”. In other words, the fund manager is selling index exposure, and any DeFi use is for others to build.

The limits matter too. Excluding US persons keeps the fund out of the country where the Nasdaq-100’s companies are listed, and the release confines it to eligible investors in jurisdictions where it may lawfully be offered. Centrifuge has used a similar licensed-index approach before with SPXA, which it calls “the first licensed S&P 500® index fund token”, on the Base network. Whether such funds attract real money depends on numbers the companies have not yet given: fees, minimums, assets and how closely the token tracks the index.

The next markers are a published fee and fund size, any onchain record of JQQQ’s supply on Stellar, and whether the fund opens to other networks or jurisdictions.