Glossary

Plain meanings for the words on this site. If a term here is new, this is the short, honest version. For the bigger picture, start with what a tokenized stock is.

Tokenized stock: A token on a public blockchain that tracks the price of a real share. The token is a wrapper issued by a company; it is not the share itself.
Stock on chain (on-chain stock): The same thing as a tokenized stock, said the way most people search for it. It means a share that now has a token following its price on a public blockchain.
Issuer: The company that creates the token and defines, in its own legal terms, what you hold. Different issuers use different wrappers, so the same stock can exist as more than one product.
Wrapper: The legal form an issuer puts around a share to make it into a token. The wrapper decides your rights. It is why a stock token is a claim of some kind, not the share.
Debt security: One wrapper an issuer can use. Robinhood states it issues its stock tokens as debt securities. A debt security is a claim on the issuer, not ownership of the share.
Tracker certificate: Another wrapper. Backed, through xStocks, states it issues tracker certificates that are backed one to one by the share, held with a custodian. The certificate carries the price, not the share itself.
dShare: Dinari's name for its product. Dinari states a dShare is backed one to one by a real share held in a treasury vault.
Custodian: The party that holds the real share while the token trades. In a one-to-one backed token, the share sits with the custodian and the token stands in for it on chain.
Street name: The normal way most shares are held. Your broker holds the share for you, and the company's register shows a nominee, not your name. You own the economic value without appearing on the register. The SEC explains this in its bulletin on holding your securities.
Direct registration (DRS): Recording a share in your own name on the company's books, held by the issuer or its transfer agent, rather than through a broker in street name. It is a different thing from a tokenized wrapper, not the on-chain version of it.
Transfer agent: The firm a company uses to keep its share register and record who owns shares in their own name. Relevant to direct registration, not to a token.
Contract address: The one address on a chain where a token lives. You look it up on a block explorer to confirm you are reading the real token, instead of taking a link on trust.
Block explorer: A public website that lets anyone read a chain: a token's supply, its holders, and every transfer. It needs no account and no wallet to read.
Holder: A wallet that holds a token. Holder counts are wallets, not people: one person can hold many wallets, and a large share of supply often sits in protocol contracts.
Transfer: One movement of a token from one wallet to another, recorded on the chain. A transfer is a real on-chain event. It is not proof that a trade happened, because a transfer can also be a deposit or a wallet moving its own tokens.
Supply: How many tokens of a given stock exist on chain. It measures tokens issued, not the company's full market value, so it is far smaller than the company's market capitalisation.
UI multiplier (ERC-8056): A number kept inside the token contract that handles dividends and splits without minting into every wallet. Your shares are your raw balance times the multiplier, and because the number lives on the token, a wallet shows the change by itself. On EVM chains this is the ERC-8056 Scaled UI Amount extension; Solana has an equivalent called Scaled UI Amount.
Synthetic share value (sValue): The same idea as a UI multiplier, kept in a separate contract instead of in the token. Ondo publishes one for each of its tokens: it says how many shares one token now counts as, and it rises as dividends are reinvested. Because the number is not on the token, a wallet balance does not change by itself; what changes is how many shares each token represents.
Total return tracker: A token that keeps dividends instead of paying them out, so the value of one token grows over time rather than the holder receiving cash. Ondo describes its tokens this way. It is why one of those tokens can come to represent more than one share.
Instrument: One product from one issuer, for one stock. It carries one legal wrapper, one eligibility rule, and one way of handling dividends. An issuer can put the same instrument on several blockchains, which gives it several contract addresses but does not make it several products.
Chain: The public blockchain a token lives on, such as Ethereum, Base, Solana or Robinhood Chain. The chain is a fact printed on the stock, not a choice this site asks you to make.
Wallet: Software that holds your tokens and lets you move them. This site lists wallets but never asks you to connect one. We never send a wallet prompt.

Glossary

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