ARK Venture Fund moves onto Ethereum via Securitize platform

ARK Venture Fund will move its $1.3 billion closed-end interval fund onto Ethereum, testing blockchain rails for private-market access.

Ethereum gets ARKVX shares

ARK Invest is using Securitize Corp. to put the ARK Venture Fund on-chain, making it the firm’s first investment fund to use blockchain-based records. Securitize is a tokenization platform in which ARK Invest holds a stake, and Ethereum will be the network used for the fund.

The fund, launched in 2022, invests in public and private companies listed on its website, including Anthropic, Kalshi Inc., Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Stripe Inc. Its structure matters: ARKVX is not an exchange-traded fund, and its shares are not traded throughout the day on a public exchange.

Tom Staudt, president and chief operating officer of ARK Invest, framed the launch as a distribution and infrastructure test rather than a crypto product launch. "This is a milestone that’s been years and years in the making," Staudt said in an interview.

Interval funds meet wallet rails

Interval funds are bought directly from the fund and redeemed only during preset windows, unlike ETFs that trade on secondary markets. Staudt said that limitation reduces the kind of global accessibility ETFs can offer, which is why ARK focused first on ARKVX.

The blockchain version does not erase the fund’s underlying mechanics. It places ownership records and access rails onto Ethereum while the fund remains tied to the same private-market exposure and redemption structure that define interval funds.

ARK’s decision also follows better operational readiness across tokenization providers, digital wallets and compliance infrastructure, according to the company’s framing. The test is whether those rails can make a regulated fund easier to access without implying daily ETF-style liquidity.

Staudt said ARK does not view ARKVX as a one-off. "This is our first step. So I don’t see this as the end of the road," he said, adding that the goal is "to tokenize many" ARK funds.

Tokenized assets remain small

The launch places ARK alongside large financial firms using blockchains to represent traditional assets such as funds, credit instruments and money-market products. The pitch is less about speculation than plumbing: faster issuance, cleaner ownership records and settlement systems that can operate across digital wallets.

Tokenized real-world assets have grown by more than 400% since the start of 2025 to about $39 billion, according to RWA.xyz. That is more than five times the level at the start of the year, but still small compared with the trillions of dollars held in mutual funds and ETFs.

That scale gap is the restraint in the story. Tokenization is gaining institutional attention, but it remains a narrow layer beside the existing fund market, where distribution, custody, transfer agency and regulation still decide how fast new wrappers become mainstream.

Three paths for ARK

If Securitize delivers compliant wallet-based access with limited friction, ARK could use ARKVX as a template for other funds. The macro effect would still be modest at current tokenized-asset levels, but the company would gain a distribution channel and the industry would have another live case for regulated fund tokenization.

If wallet setup, custody rules or redemption expectations slow adoption, the global effect would be harder to see. ARK would still have a blockchain wrapper around a $1.3 billion fund, while the wider sector would treat tokenization mainly as back-office infrastructure rather than a mass-market access tool.

If regulators tighten rules around tokenized securities or investors mistake interval-fund windows for ETF liquidity, the experiment could face narrower distribution. The central open question is whether tokenized shares can expand access to private-market funds without changing the risk, liquidity and compliance limits that already govern them.