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Most tokenized funds on the market today are mirrors. A token is created to represent shares in a fund that continues to run on legacy infrastructure, with ownership records maintained offchain by transfer agents, reconciled on a delay, and updated only during business hours.
The blockchain sits alongside the fund, not inside it. On June 22, Baillie Gifford launched a product that rejects that model entirely.
The Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund, trading as BAGEY, is a dollar-denominated, actively managed short-duration corporate bond fund issued natively on both Ethereum and Solana. The blockchain is not a secondary record.
It is the legal register of record. When a token moves, ownership moves with it. There is no separate transfer agent to reconcile and no offchain register to catch up.
Today we introduce $BAGEY: the Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund. An actively managed bond fund, issued natively onchain, with the blockchain as the legal source of truth.
Most tokenised funds are wrappers: a tokenised claim on a fund whose structure and ownership record live… pic.twitter.com/KKjB26gX10
— Baillie Gifford Digital Assets (@BGDA_UK) June 22, 2026
Theo Golden, head of digital assets and tokenization at Baillie Gifford, set out the company’s standard plainly. “Tokenisation will only matter if it makes finance fundamentally better. A digital wrapper around yesterday’s infrastructure is not enough.” He added that BAGEY is “not a token placed on top of a fund. It is a fund issued onchain, with the blockchain serving as the register of record. Investors hold the fund directly: direct ownership, direct recourse.”
BAGEY operates under a UK-regulated open-ended investment company (OEIC) framework, meaning it carries the same investor protections as any other regulated UK fund vehicle. That regulatory foundation matters because it answers the most obvious concern about onchain ownership: that native digital issuance creates legal ambiguity around investor recourse. Under an OEIC, it does not.
BNY provides the tokenization and wallet infrastructure. NatWest Trustee and Depositary Services acts as the depositary. Both Baillie Gifford and BNY are on the Financial Conduct Authority’s register of crypto companies.
Eligible professional investors in the UK, Switzerland, and the Cayman Islands can subscribe and redeem daily using USDC (USDC) on either chain or through traditional fiat. The fund is daily-dealt with a daily net asset value, targeting 7% yield from a short-duration corporate bond portfolio with roughly a two-year duration and an average BBB credit rating.
The choice of two chains is deliberate. Solana’s lower transaction costs suit smaller institutional and retail-adjacent subscribers. Ethereum’s deeper institutional integration serves larger allocators already operating on that network. Baillie Gifford manages 286 billion British pounds in assets and has operated for 118 years. This is its first publicly available tokenized product.
The total real-world asset tokenization market crossed $32 billion in May 2026, with BlackRock’s BUIDL fund and Franklin Templeton’s BENJI among the most cited institutional products.
Both use wrapper structures in varying degrees. Baillie Gifford’s native issuance model is structurally different in a specific way: Because ownership lives entirely onchain, there is no operational gap between when a trade settles and when the register updates. That gap, small in normal conditions, becomes a risk in high-volume or stressed environments.
Katey Neate, global head of investor solutions at BNY, described the launch as proof that tokenization has crossed from concept to application. “Tokenisation has moved from concept to real world application, and this launch shows how regulated fund structures can evolve to meet the needs of a more digital, connected marketplace,” she said.
One complication emerged hours after launch.
A separate token also trading as BAGEY appeared on Solana with no verified connection to the Baillie Gifford product. It had approximately 132 holders and traded at a near-zero value. The episode underscores a structural problem for institutional tokenization on public chains: Brand names and tickers can be copied immediately, and unsophisticated buyers may not distinguish the regulated product from an imitation.
Baillie Gifford has made no public statement on its longer-term tokenization roadmap beyond BAGEY, but Golden’s vision, grounded in a client outcome test rather than a technology thesis, suggests the company intends to expand only where the structure genuinely improves on the conventional alternative.
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