Overview
- ADI Chain and Shipfinex announced an exclusive partnership on Tuesday to target about 35 commercial vessels valued at roughly $500 million for tokenization, and no Maritime Asset Tokens have been issued yet.
- Shipfinex will source and structure the deals while ADI Chain will provide the blockchain rails and settlement layer, including support for the UAE dirham-backed DDSC stablecoin.
- Shipfinex currently holds only an In‑Principle Approval from Dubai’s Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority, so final issuance depends on full regulatory clearance and ongoing legal and deal structuring work.
- Each vessel is planned to sit in a separate special‑purpose vehicle and any token would represent an economic claim such as debt or a share of charter income, not legal title to the ship, with offerings aimed at qualified institutional investors.
- The move adds to earlier pilots by Galactica and Ethra Ship and could open part of the roughly $680 billion ship‑finance market to broader institutional capital while expanding the still small tokenized real‑world asset market, which stood near $38 billion.