ARK Invest plans to put the ARK Venture Fund on a blockchain and list it on Ethereum, with Securitize Corp. carrying out the transition. The fund, a closed-end interval vehicle with $1.3 billion in assets that began in 2022, invests in both public and private names including Anthropic, Kalshi Inc., Elon Musk's SpaceX, and Stripe Inc., per its website. ARK zeroed in on the interval fund with the ticker ARKVX for this first step.
Tom Staudt, ARK Invest's president and chief operating officer, said in an interview, "This is a milestone that's been years and years in the making." Interval funds are simpler to stand up than ETFs but do not offer exchange-traded funds' global accessibility, he noted, which drove the choice to start with ARKVX. Like money-market funds, investors buy shares directly from the interval fund and redeem them during a set window rather than trading on a secondary market.
"This is our first step. So I don't see this as the end of the road," he said. "The goal is certainly to tokenize many" of ARK's funds. The timing reflects improving conditions for tokenization, from clearer rules to better digital wallets and more prepared service providers.
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ARK's move adds it to a growing roster of large financial firms experimenting with putting traditional assets on blockchains, a shift that could reshape the issuance, trading, and settlement of securities. Tokenized real-world assets have surged by over 400% from the beginning of 2025 to about $39 billion, according to RWA.xyz, although that is still tiny next to the multi-trillion sums in mutual funds and ETFs.
Backers say blockchain rails could help cut costs, speed up settlement, enable fractional trading, and nudge markets toward 24/7 access. Skeptics are not quiet: the International Monetary Fund warned in an April report that tokenization could intensify financial crises. Staudt was candid about the balance: "There are risks. I want to make that very clear." Yet he also argued that innovation "that opens up financial services to more people has been criticized by those who have an entrenched interest in keeping things the way they are."
If ARK executes as planned, a mainstream, 2022-vintage interval fund would live on blockchain rails and be accessible on Ethereum, with Securitize Corp. - in which ARK Invest is an investor - facilitating the shift. Staudt says it remains early days, noting that nearly all leading ETF providers are working on tokenization, and he attributes today's modest asset totals to a limited set of products, the friction of shifting cash from legacy platforms, and the fact that the market is still in its infancy.
If the promised benefits show up in practice - quicker settlement, potentially lower costs, and easier fractional access - everyday investors could see new ways to own slices of funds that do not trade like ETFs today. That does not guarantee better outcomes, but it might change how and when you can buy or redeem.
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