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Tl;dr: Plume has earned SEC approval as a registered transfer agent, advancing onchain RWAs and uniting DeFi's efficiency with TradFi compliance.
The Plume Transfer Agent will manage digital securities, handle on- and offchain shareholder records, share issuance, transfers, and dividends—with interoperability with DTCC. It will help launch digital securities for public companies, public offerings for small-caps, and future onchain IPOs, as well as supporting onchain funds as a part of a new fund administration business.
Behind every public company, from Coca-Cola and Apple to Samsung, there’s a transfer agent keeping shareholder records, issuing and transferring shares, and distributing dividends. Investment funds and ETFs rely on them too, with every U.S. transfer agent ultimately connecting through the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC), the clearinghouse that settles stock nationwide.
That’s why today’s milestone matters.
Plume has secured a U.S. SEC transfer agent license, marking a major step forward in our alignment with smart global regulation.
Just as the U.S. evolved from local to national capital markets in the 20th century, public blockchains now unlock global markets accessible to anyone with a wallet. These global markets demand modern regulatory architecture, starting with a new role for transfer agents.
"Regulatory certainty is essential to cementing (the United States) as the crypto capital of the world." - U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
At Plume, we share the Treasury Secretary's view and believe transfer agent regulation exists to protect investors’ rights as shareholders.
Plume is streamlining the issuance of digital securities with a fully onchain transfer agent protocol, built in partnership with regulators.
Continuing Momentum and Accelerating Distribution
Our SEC transfer agent license advances Plume’s vision: scaling permissionless innovation built on regulatory clarity.
Since before our Mainnet launch in July 2025, Plume’s leadership has actively engaged regulators worldwide—from the SEC, U.S. Treasury, and CFTC to hubs like Singapore, Hong Kong, Bermuda, and the UAE—aligning with the World Economic Forum’s 2025 call for global, onchain capital markets.
This is about more than compliance. It’s about shaping the next era of financial infrastructure. By working hand-in-hand with regulators, Plume is helping design frameworks that balance the openness of DeFi with the safeguards of TradFi—accelerating RWA adoption and expanding access to compliant onchain markets.
And, we continue to see this shift onchain.
Nasdaq has already filed with the SEC to list digital and traditional securities on the same order books. Their CEO, Adena Friedman, noted that "post-trade" (including transfer agency services) is where tokenization shines by reducing friction and managing capital flows.
Plume’s transfer agent protocol provides fully onchain infrastructure that integrates with settlement networks like DTCC while unlocking global scale.
By merging DeFi’s speed, automation, and composability with TradFi’s regulatory guardrails (anti-illicit tools, accurate disclosures, investor protections), Plume is bridging the two worlds with clarity and certainty.
And we’re only accelerating from here.
We expect to announce additional licenses, exemptions, and regulatory partnerships that will make IPOs truly onchain. All underpinned by Plume’s infrastructure.
Bridging DeFi & TradFi
Our network is already proving demand for RWAs. Nest, our flagship staking protocol, has grown to $62M in tokenized assets and 200K holders in just three months. Now, with the SEC license in hand, we’re extending that momentum: Institutions have tapped into net-new inflows through Plume’s network, and our Transfer Agent will give curators and issuers the compliance and distribution tools to scale globally.
The broader RWA market surged 260% in the first half of 2025, from $8.6B to over $23B.
Our transfer agent is both a regulatory and commercial milestone.
We're ensuring issuers, public companies, and asset managers can capture RWA growth safely, compliantly, and at speed.
Unlocks for Issuers
Onchain capital raising is now possible through regulated pathways.
The Plume Transfer Agent supports tokenizing traditional common stock into onchain securities—an approach pioneered by Superstate. For small-cap issuers, we’re enabling compliant onchain fundraising through pathways like Regulation A+.
We’re also working closely with the SEC’s “Make IPOs Great Again” initiative to design direct onchain IPO rules, where Plume’s Transfer Agent and broader ecosystem will play a central role.
Unlocks for Asset Managers
Registered investment funds can now go fully onchain.
Aligning our platform with smart regulation is central to our strategy: bridging DeFi and TradFi through regulatory alignment, not avoidance.
By working with regulators, we’re shaping frameworks that ensure investor protection and accelerate institutional adoption of RWAs.
The countries that develop onchain capital markets will lead the global national economies for decades. The SEC is taking major steps in this direction. Plume's first entry into the SEC regulatory umbrella is another step in modernizing their approach to oversight.
“Plume’s Transfer Agent will also make it possible to create fully compliant registered investment companies (think along the lines of BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Fidelity, Franklin Templeton, and Invesco). We are working closely with the SEC and funds to make that happen.” - Plume General Counsel, Salman Banaei
Efficiency is the unlock for trillion-dollar markets. Starting in Q1 2026, Plume’s Transfer Agent will power Nest’s fund administration services for select institutional adopters. Unlike traditional transfer agents, our infrastructure is fully onchain, with mirror cap tables reporting directly to DTCC and the SEC.
This model collapses fund tokenization timelines from six months to 2–3 weeks, at zero cost for institutional issuers. That efficiency is a precondition for scaling RWA markets into the trillions by 2030.
Plume: Unique Incentives for Global Scale
We’re building what incumbents cannot.
Our incentives are aligned with creating a new global financial network, not protecting legacy systems.
The Plume Transfer Agent bridges American settlement networks and global onchain markets, interoperating with future DTCC integration to support U.S. issuers at global scale.
“The GENIUS Act provides the fast-growing stablecoin market with the regulatory clarity it needs to grow into a multitrillion-dollar industry." - U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent
Plume’s Transfer Agent embodies that same certainty by delivering compliance, speed, and scale for the next generation of global finance.
Just as tokenization is revolutionizing capital markets, Plume is reinventing the transfer agent itself, replacing offchain ledgers with fully onchain cap tables and smart-contract settlement: automated, composable, compliance-first, and DeFi-fast.
With 200K+ RWA holders and 200+ protocols live, it’s clear that Plume is already building the bridge between DeFi and Tradfi and with it, the highways into onchain capital markets.
The SEC’s embrace of onchain compliance approaches like Plume’s will not only propel RWA growth globally, it will ensure the U.S. remains at the center of this financial transformation.
