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ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX), tokenized by Securitize

Adverse research finding
Research assessment
adverse
Firm shelf
research only
Model-client eligibility
not assessed
Selection
not considered
Action and amount
Not set by research
Reviewed
2026-09-25 · v1
Next review
2026-12-25
Research basis
Individual research
Chains
Ethereum · sovereign
Symbols
ARKVX
Eligibility file
What the holder owns and who may hold it

Research, firm shelf, model-client eligibility, and advisor selection are recorded separately. The scheduled date is the outside bound; new evidence can reopen the file sooner.

ARKVX on Ethereum is a token that Securitize Markets, a broker-dealer, issues against Class D shares of ARK Venture Fund that it buys and holds at BNY Mellon. The fund is a registered closed-end interval fund run by ARK Investment Management; it held $1.18 billion on 31 July 2026, 62% of it in private companies such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Stripe. ARK and Securitize announced the token on 24 September 2026. The exposure is a venture and growth equity fund: the token’s value is the fund’s NAV, and the fund’s value is what its managers say its private stakes are worth. Any US investor may buy from $500, after Securitize verifies them and approves a wallet. Securitize takes 2% of each deposit before pricing. The only exit is the fund’s quarterly offer to buy back 5% of its shares, prorated when more is tendered, which the direct Class D shareholder gets on the same terms without the 2%. The assessment is adverse. The token adds a broker-dealer between the holder and the fund, a 2% entry charge the direct share does not carry, and single keys held by Securitize that can freeze, burn, and reissue the token. It adds nothing the direct share lacks: no faster exit, no market, and no DeFi use at launch. The SEC order of 21 September 2026 lets the fund issue a tokenized share class on its own record; that class is not registered and this token is not it.

The research file

What the holder owns

Securitize’s page says: “Each token is backed 1:1 by ARK Venture Fund shares that Securitize Markets buys and holds in custody at BNY Mellon. Your token is an entitlement to that underlying position.” The fund’s shareholder list is kept by BNY Mellon Investment Servicing (US) Inc., and the name on it is Securitize Markets, not the wallet. So the holder owns a claim on a broker-dealer’s custody position, the third-party custodial model in the SEC staff’s January 2026 statement. Securitize Markets is a SIPC member, so the shares in its custody carry SIPC cover against the broker’s failure; nothing covers the fund’s losses. The page names the class: “ARK Venture Fund, Class D (ARKVX).” Class D carries no sales load, a 0.15% distribution and service fee, and total expenses of 3.49%, or 2.90% after ARK’s reimbursement, on top of a 2.75% management fee inside that figure. Each share votes, and the fund distributes once a year, reinvesting by default; how the vote and the distribution reach a token holder through Securitize Markets is not stated. Etherscan showed 81.626 tokens in 10 wallets on 25 September 2026, about $4,900 at the $60.49 NAV Securitize posted for 24 September.

The fund

ARK Venture Fund is a Delaware statutory trust registered under the 1940 Act as a non-diversified closed-end interval fund. It began on 23 September 2022 and sells shares every day at NAV through platforms and intermediaries. Its Form N-PORT for 31 July 2026 reports $1,184,177,831 of net assets. Securitize’s page, citing ARK at 30 June 2026, lists SpaceX at 13.8% of the fund, OpenAI 6.3%, Anthropic 4.6%, Stripe 4.4%, and Kalshi 2.9%, with 62% in private companies. Private stakes are valued by the adviser’s procedures between rounds, so the daily NAV moves in steps when a company raises money or is marked, not with the market. The fund may borrow, and the prospectus budgets 0.04% a year of interest. The fund pays a management fee of 2.75% of net assets; no carried interest applies. Securitize’s page reports a 1-year return of 84.8% and 36.1% a year over three years for Class D to 30 June 2026, net of fees.

Who may hold, and how money gets out

The fund is open to anyone: its prospectus sets a $500 minimum for every class and lets the fund waive it, and IRAs and ERISA plans may buy. Securitize’s page says the token “is currently offered to US investors only” and that the fund “is open to investors regardless of accreditation or qualification.” The holder opens a Securitize account with a photo ID, approves a wallet, and deposits USDC; the order is priced at that day’s NAV after Securitize deducts 2%, and tokens arrive the next business day. Later deposits can be $5. Tokens move only between wallets Securitize has approved, and the page says open trading “isn’t available at launch.” The exit is the fund’s: each March, June, September, and December it offers to buy back 5% of its shares at NAV, may add 2%, prorates when more is tendered, and pays within seven calendar days of the pricing date. The September 2026 offer ran from 2 to 30 September. Securitize passes the holder’s request into that window and returns unfilled units to the wallet. A direct Class D shareholder gets the same window through a brokerage, with no 2% charge.

Who controls the token

ARKVX is Securitize’s DS-protocol token behind an ERC1967 proxy, verified on Sourcify on 15 September 2026. One plain key, 0x59c1…76ee, owns the token contract; it is the same key that owns Securitize’s Hamilton Lane feeder tokens. The verified code lets the owner issue tokens, pause every transfer, burn or seize any balance, and replace the implementation. A second plain key, 0x62c8…50f3, owns the wallet registrar and, through it, the blacklist and lock manager that decide which wallets may hold and which are frozen. Securitize’s own prospectus says its “smart contracts provide mechanisms to seize or burn tokens to remediate these situations.” No multisig or delay guards any of these powers. The page tells the holder the token “remains attributed to you and controlled by your wallet rather than by Securitize”; that is true of the private key and not of the contract, where Securitize can lock or take the balance without it.

The SEC order and what shipped

On 21 September 2026 the SEC granted ARK Venture Fund an amended multi-class order, Release IC-36333, that permits “a class of tokenized shares traded on one or more alternative trading systems.” The application describes that class: ownership “recorded using distributed ledger technology,” held only in whitelisted wallets, issued by the fund at NAV, and distributed “either by registered broker-dealers or directly by the Fund’s transfer agent.” That would be an issuer-direct share on the fund’s own record. It is not registered: the fund’s N-2 amendment filed 24 September 2026 lists classes D, S, U, and X only, and again postpones the amendment that adds Class X, an exchange-listed class bound for the Texas Stock Exchange, to 23 October 2026. The press release the same day says only that ARK and Securitize “announce the tokenization of the ARK Venture Fund (ARKVX) through Securitize,” and Securitize’s page settles what that means: a broker-dealer holding Class D shares against a token. The order changes nothing about this token today. If the fund later issues the Tokenized Class and moves holders onto its record, the claim model, the record keeper, and this memo all change.

Comparison and decision

Against the direct Class D share, the token costs 2% more at entry, puts Securitize Markets between the holder and the fund, and gives Securitize keys that can freeze or take the balance; it offers the same 5% quarterly exit, the same NAV, and the same fees inside the fund. It offers self-custody of a receipt, USDC funding, and a promise of DeFi use later, subject to relief the SEC has not given. Against the other Securitize funds on file, it is the first open to retail, and the first wrapping a registered fund the holder could simply buy elsewhere. The assessment is adverse and the program stays research-only. The client-eligibility question was not reached, because the wrapper is the problem, not the investor: a client who wants ARK Venture Fund buys Class D through a brokerage. The memo reopens if Securitize drops the 2% charge and moves the owner and registrar keys behind a multisig with a delay, or if the fund issues the Tokenized Class on its own record.

Sources

The claims above trace to these. Where a number could not be independently verified, the thesis says so.

Inherited controls

The research above describes the protocol layer. Every position also inherits the asset it holds and the chain it settles on. The most administered layer sets the position’s effective control grade; that is a control description, not a quality or suitability score.

ChainVerdictGradeControl constraint
EthereumFavorable sovereign No sequencer, no upgrade key, no operator who can be compelled — rule changes require social consensus.
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