Kraken Adds Proxy Voting Rights for Eligible xStocks Holders

Payward, the parent company of cryptocurrency exchange Kraken, is giving holders of its tokenized equities — known as xStocks — a route to participate in corporate proxy voting through a tie-up with Broadridge. The move narrows a long-standing gap between tokenized equities and conventional share ownership, in which xStocks holders previously had no voting rights attached to their positions.

Under the arrangement, eligible investors can submit voting preferences on the same types of corporate matters that are normally put to shareholders. Payward said token holders will not necessarily become direct registered owners of the underlying shares. Instead, Broadridge’s proxy-voting infrastructure will collect their preferences and feed them into the voting process. How much influence those preferences carry will depend on the way they are transmitted, the proposals covered, and whether participation is available across all supported xStocks.

“The endgame for tokenization was never just building faster programmable capital markets. It’s about giving people across the world everything that comes with owning a piece of a company, including a voice in how it’s run,” said Mark Greenberg, chief commercial officer at Payward. Greenberg said the collaboration is intended to bring tokenized equities closer to traditional shares by adding a corporate-governance component.

Proxy voting is one of the main rights investors commonly lose with tokenized stocks. While such products provide exposure to price movements and payouts, users often sit outside the legal ownership chain used in conventional proxy processes, leaving them without a say on board appointments, executive compensation, mergers or shareholder proposals. Adding a voting channel could make tokenized equities more appealing and help answer criticism that they offer only a limited form of share ownership.

xStocks are issued by Backed and are available only to eligible investors outside the U.S., and not to U.S. persons or investors in the U.K. Payward is seeking broader distribution: last month it announced a partnership with fintech infrastructure provider GTN to add Hong Kong-listed stocks to the xStocks offering, and it plans to pursue access in the U.K., Europe, South Korea and other markets. Each expansion remains subject to local securities laws and the legal treatment of tokens linked to publicly traded shares.

As of 22 July 2026, xStocks had handled more than $35 billion in cumulative volume across over 500 tokenized securities, with nearly 200,000 holders. The collaboration with Broadridge gives Payward access to governance infrastructure already used by traditional markets. Still, the practical impact will depend on participation rates, the breadth of companies covered and whether investors view the voting preferences as equivalent to direct-shareholder voting. Larger institutional players, including JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs, are also exploring onchain securities, so the next phase of tokenization competition is likely to center on rights and operational features rather than token issuance alone.