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Tokenized real-world assets

Sygnum FIUSD (Fidelity Institutional Liquidity Fund, US Dollar Fund, Class G Acc)

Under review The evidence is not yet settled
Verdict
Under review
The evidence is not yet settled
Who can freeze it
Mixed control
Withdrawals
A holder deposits dollars, other fiat, or crypto at Sygnum and places a subscription.
Reviewed
2026-10-18 · next 2027-03-23
Researched memo

Summary

Ketju has not reached a verdict on Sygnum FIUSD: Sygnum Bank AG opens transfers only to professional investors it has onboarded under Swiss law, and it publishes no terms that say whether U.S. persons may hold. Sygnum buys Class G Acc units of Fidelity Institutional Liquidity Fund plc, The United States Dollar Fund, an Irish UCITS money market fund, and holds them in its own name. It issues one token per unit as a ledger-based security under Swiss law. The holder has “the right to demand the delivery” of the units, and Sygnum is the fund’s shareholder of record. Sygnum holds the units as a fiduciary under article 16 of the Swiss Banking Act, which keeps them out of its estate if it fails. Sygnum launched FIUSD in March 2024 as a $50 million treasury position for Matter Labs on zkSync Era, and a $5 million Arbitrum DAO allocation followed in 2025. The zkSync contract now holds 1,604.15 tokens, which at Fidelity’s NAV of $12,033.69 is about $19.3 million, less than CoinGecko shows. That supply matches Fidelity’s 1,604.66 Class G Acc units in issue. The Arbitrum contract is empty. We leave the research unresolved because Sygnum publishes no product terms beyond its Arbitrum application. On zkSync, a 3-of-6 multisig can upgrade the token and one key can mint. Sygnum can freeze, pause and confiscate tokens through functions in the contract.

Changes

2026-10-18The memo’s first sentence said Ketju does not approve Sygnum FIUSD, but Ketju has not reached a verdict on it. Sygnum publishes no terms that say whether U.S. persons may hold FIUSD. Ketju corrected the first sentence, and the verdict did not change. The prior memo

Research

How it works

The holder has two claims, one on top of the other. The first is on Sygnum: a ledger-based security under articles 973d and following of the Swiss Code of Obligations, a form of right that exists in and moves only through the ledger that records it. The second is Sygnum’s own holding of fund units, which J.P. Morgan Administration Services (Ireland) records in the fund’s register. The fund is an Irish UCITS authorized by the Central Bank of Ireland, run as a low-volatility NAV money market fund under EU rules, rated AAAm and Aaa-mf. Class G Acc (ISIN IE00BNKLND78) adds its income to the unit price. Sygnum says the token has “no direct product supervisory body”; FINMA supervises Sygnum as a bank. Sygnum holds the shareholder rights in the fund as the registered holder, and Sygnum has not published how a token holder would vote.

Withdrawals

A holder deposits dollars, other fiat, or crypto at Sygnum and places a subscription. Sygnum converts to dollars, buys units through J.P. Morgan, and mints one token per unit. To redeem, the holder asks Sygnum, which burns the tokens, sells the units, and credits the proceeds to the holder’s Sygnum account. The fund settles the same day and has several dealing cutoffs. Sygnum charges 0.20 percent to subscribe and 0.40 percent to redeem, on top of the fund’s 0.25 percent a year. A $1 million round trip costs $6,000 before a day of yield. For the Arbitrum allocation, Sygnum described a lending facility that raised round-the-clock redemption to about $25 million outside Swiss banking hours. Transfers run only between custodial wallets that Sygnum has whitelisted, so the token has no market outside Sygnum.

Who controls it

The zkSync token is a proxy over SygnumTokenLatest, verified on the zkSync explorer. We found a whitelist contract, a freeze, a pause, a confiscate function that moves tokens between addresses, and a role-gated mint. The proxy admin is a Gnosis Safe with 3 of 6 signers, and the issuer address, one key, holds the mint. On Arbitrum the proxy admin is a single key. Sygnum says only that its contracts “include functions that allow specific users to make necessary corrections in a fully auditable manner.” The documents do not say when Sygnum may freeze or confiscate.

Losses and comparison

In two and a half years we found no reported loss, suspension, or dispute. Supply has fallen from $47.5 million in March 2025 to about $19.3 million, held by three wallets. Fidelity International launched its own FILQ in May 2026. Compared with FILQ, FIUSD adds a bank between the holder and the fund and relies on a lending facility for redemptions outside banking hours, but it rests on a larger, older Irish fund. Compared with U.S. registered money funds on chain, FIUSD is a claim on a Swiss bank, sold to Swiss professional clients. A U.S. household cannot buy it.

Sources

Each claim above comes from one of these sources. Where Ketju could not verify a number, the memo states that.

The asset and the chain

This memo covers the protocol. A position also holds an asset and settles on a chain. Whichever of the three holds the most power over the position decides who can freeze it. These tables describe control and do not judge quality.

ChainVerdictFreezeWhat it can do
Arbitrum OneApproved with limits Mixed control a single sequencer orders more than 99% of transactions, and admin keys can upgrade bridge contracts on a timelock of about 7 days.
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