Superstate: sixth by size, and the only issuer that tells you what it earns

TL;DR

Superstate is among the smallest issuers in this series ($52.9M, 1.9% share, five instruments) and the only one whose earnings you can look up.

The public figures: $95.9k of daily fees, $6.5k a day to the protocol, roughly $2.4M annualised.

In this category, size and transparency are inversely related. Ondo in first, bStocks in second and xStocks in third publish no business-line fee data; Remora in fifth does not even disclose an issuing entity; and Superstate in sixth puts its revenue on DefiLlama.

My read: Superstate matters not for its size but because it is the only sample that lets anyone answer whether this business makes money. The answer, on the issuing side, is probably no.

Identity: the second US transfer agent

Same class as Securitize, and the legal identity sets the capabilities:

• US transfer agent
• Wrapper: direct security
• Voting: full
• Dividends: distributed in cash
• Instruments: 5
• Size: $52.9M (2026-09-04 basis, 1.9% share)
• Chains: Solana, Ethereum and others
• Distribution: Jupiter

The product is Opening Bell, aimed at putting shares of SEC-registered companies directly on-chain.

Like Securitize it is permissionless: no, with DeFi restricted — the unavoidable cost of transfer-agent status, which the Securitize piece works through: you cannot maintain a compliant shareholder register and simultaneously allow arbitrary anonymous addresses to receive the asset.

So the two belong together as two samples of one route, not as rivals. The real difference: Securitize's core business is funds (the BUIDL family) with only three equity instruments, while Superstate's Opening Bell is aimed squarely at equities.

The only fee data, and its methodology problem

This is the heart of the piece and the part that needs the most care.

Two figures are public:

• Daily fees: $95.9k
• Protocol revenue: $6.5k/day → roughly $2.4M annualised

First, what I am unsure of. DefiLlama's "fees" field means materially different things across protocols — total fees paid by users, pass-through of underlying yield, or trading fees. $95.9k a day against $52.9M of size annualises to about 66%, which is plainly not an asset-management fee. So the basis of that $95.9k cannot be confirmed and should not be used in any calculation.

What I am willing to use is the $6.5k/day of protocol revenue, because that field (protocol revenue) is defined relatively consistently on DefiLlama as the portion accruing to the protocol itself.

Annualised: roughly $2.4M.

Extrapolating to the whole category

A rough but meaningful estimate.

The tokenized equities market is about $3.5B (rwa.xyz, 2026-10-16). Assume the entire industry takes a full 20 bps:

$3.5B × 0.20% ≈ $7M per year

The whole category's annual fee pool is around $7M.

Set that against what it would need to support:

• Ondo's token market cap is about $1.79B
• Kraken raised at a $15B valuation and is pursuing an IPO
• Robinhood's market cap is $80B

A $7M annual fee pool cannot sustain any one of those valuations.

And Superstate alone shows $2.4M of annualised protocol revenue — a third of that estimated pool, on 1.9% of the market.

Two explanations are possible:

1. My 20 bps assumption is too low and real rates are higher
2. Superstate's revenue includes something other than a stock-token management fee — a share of the underlying securities' yield, for instance

I lean toward the second and cannot confirm it. Which is exactly why one data point cannot carry a conclusion — it can only sharpen the question.

The issuers are not the ones making money

One thing is clear regardless of that arithmetic.

xStocks has passed $25B in cumulative volume (2026-02). Those trading fees land with Kraken, not Backed. Likewise, bStocks' six million transfers ultimately monetise as spot fees in the BNB ecosystem.

Issuers earn issuance and management fees; exchanges earn trading fees — and the trading pool is an order of magnitude larger.

That explains the clearest industry trend of 2026: Coinbase, Robinhood, Binance and Backpack all began issuing their own tokens rather than only listing other people's. They are not after the issuance fee; they are keeping users and assets inside their own venue.

So the endgame most likely belongs to distributors, not issuers. Whatever the methodology, Superstate's $2.4M says issuing alone does not sustain a company.

Small and transparent versus large and opaque

Ten issuers into this series, a pattern is clear:

The larger you are, the less you need to explain yourself. Not a conspiracy — an incentive structure. Issuers with strong distribution acquire users through the channel, so disclosure earns them nothing at the margin. Superstate, competing for institutional trust on structure and compliance, has to open the books.

For a reader that means: do not treat full disclosure as compensation for small size, and do not treat large size as evidence of a sound structure. In this category the two are essentially uncorrelated.

What I could not verify

1. The exact basis of the $95.9k/day fee figure — explicitly excluded from any calculation here
2. Which five instruments these are
3. Redemption terms — minimum, KYC, settlement time
4. The access threshold — institutions only or accredited investors too (the same question as Securitize)
5. Current size on the October basis — $52.9M is a September figure

Risks

What I will watch

1. Whether protocol revenue scales linearly with size — the only way to judge whether the unit economics work
2. Whether it becomes one of the first TSVs — the same path as Securitize, and it is smaller and more nimble
3. How far past five instruments Opening Bell goes — the test of whether equities are a serious intention
4. Whether a second issuer starts disclosing fees — one is a sample, two is a trend
5. The share of the market held by exchange-issued tokens — a direct check on the distributors-win thesis

Bottom line. Superstate is not a product to use today: $52.9M, five instruments, permissioned, no DeFi.

But it is the only issuer in this series that puts the question of issuer economics on the table. On a rough estimate the category's annual fee pool is about $7M — not enough to sustain any participant's valuation.

The real business model is not earning fees on tokenized stocks but using them to keep users and assets inside your own venue. Once that is clear, it is obvious why every new entrant in 2026 is an exchange rather than a new issuer.

Size and share on a 2026-09-04 basis; fee data from public DefiLlama disclosure, where the basis of the $95.9k/day figure could not be confirmed and is excluded from all calculations here. The $3.5B market size is rwa.xyz on 2026-10-16. The 20 bps rate is my own assumption, not an observation. Research, not investment advice.