A year ago, owning a share of a major US company was a privilege of geography.

In the right country, you could open a brokerage account, complete paperwork, meet capital requirements, and trade inside a window set by an exchange floor half a world away. Almost everywhere else, you waited, or you were locked out entirely. Billions of people sat on the wrong side of that line.

xStocks was built as the solution to that outdated system. The idea was to bring equities onto the same rails as the open financial system, so anyone, anywhere, could hold a tokenized piece of the companies shaping the global economy. They'd be available around the clock with purchases as small as $1.

What started as a partnership between Kraken and Backed turned that idea into a product. Tokenized equities, backed 1:1 by the underlying shares, moving at the speed of a blockchain instead of a settlement cycle.

It began on a small scale, intentionally. On day one, xStocks went live on Solana by tokenizing 60 of the most recognized US-listed companies and ETFs, a measured set carefully chosen to prove the model worked before scaling it. The market answered fast. Exchanges, wallets, and DeFi protocols integrated xStocks because they were exactly what their customers wanted.

A year later, that early answer has compounded into dominance: xStocks now make up 8 of the 15 largest tokenized stocks by market cap, according to Coingecko.* The framework became the market.

In the coming weeks xStocks will cross 500 listed tokenized equities, on a path to 1,000 shortly after, and is already integrated across 100+ partners. xStocks span centralized exchanges, self-custody wallets, and on-chain protocols, while embedded into seven blockchain ecosystems.

Total transaction volume has passed $35 billion, including $12.5 billion traded on-chain. Nearly 200,000 holders now sit across every corner of the world. That is real demand for a category that barely existed a year ago.

That growth unlocked the real value of xStocks. Assets reflecting deep capital markets are no longer bound to one platform's ledger. Globally accessible, these tokenized assets move between venues, into wallets, or can be lent into a protocol. That portability was the whole idea, and a year in, it works at scale.

This is what people mean when they say tokenization changes the asset itself. xStocks made equities programmable, on-chain, always-on, and global by design. The utility was always latent in the asset class. Tokenization unlocked it, and xStocks turned the offering into a mature, scalable market.

Because xStocks trade on-chain around the clock, they have become a primary trading vehicle when traditional equity markets are shut. Weekends, public holidays, and overnight hours are no longer untradable dead zones. They are active markets, trading real value in response to real-life events, powered by xStocks.

As a result, xStocks weekend pricing offers an early signal for where the underlying equities are likely to open on Monday mornings. They let investors act on news as it breaks instead of having to wait for markets to open. When Wall Street is closed, xStocks stay open, and so does the ability to trade and rebalance a portfolio.

This is also why the leading financial institutions are reshaping the future of capital markets using xStocks. Through Payward, xStocks established partnerships with Nasdaq, Franklin Templeton, Deutsche Börse Group and others, bringing the infrastructure, asset expertise, and credibility to accelerate the future of tokenized assets.

This past year was about proving tokenized equities could work. About demonstrating liquidity, and earning trust. The next twelve months are about scale and reach.

The Payward team will keep working to open xStocks to more investors across even more markets as regulations allow. Access has widened substantially in the first year, but it is not yet universal, and too many people are still on the outside looking in.

A truly global market should reflect companies from every major economy, not just one. Because of that, xStocks will soon expand beyond US-listed equities to include tokenized non-US equities, as we begin empowering investors to diversify globally. And equities are only the beginning, as xStocks will soon also be expanding into commodities, bringing the same always-on, globally accessible model to a wider set of asset classes.

Liquidity continues to deepen as well. Kraken is rolling out 24/7 liquidity on a significantly expanded set of assets, marking one of the most meaningful infrastructure unlocks in xStocks' history, and one that directly raises the bar for what seamless tokenized asset trading looks like.

xStocks will also soon be available as collateral, giving holders a new way to put their positions to work without exiting them. And for institutional or high-volume traders, Kraken's RFQ offering is coming soon, adding a dedicated execution layer that delivers tighter pricing and better fills on large orders, without moving the market.

Pre-IPO access remains one of the most important frontiers on the xStocks roadmap. Private markets have been intentionally closed to most of the world for far too long, and Payward is committed to changing that through xStocks. With Pre-IPO opportunities, xStocks are unlocking opportunities for billions of people around the world who have never had a seat at the table, and doing it one listing at a time.

Paired with the built-in dividend mechanism and continuous product development, xStocks is systematically closing the gap between what tokenized equity ownership delivers and what traditional shareholders have always taken for granted.

A year ago, owning the world's leading companies depended on where you happened to live. That line is fading. xStocks is here to erase it completely.