Fairmint Launches Onchain Transfer Agent Services to Move Public Equity Records to DLT

Fairmint has launched onchain transfer agent services for public companies, enabling the migration of official shareholder records to a blockchain. For fintech professionals, this marks a critical evolution in U.S. equity market structure, integrating SEC-registered record-keeping with distributed ledger technology while ensuring that legal ownership and shareholder rights remain fully intact under existing regulatory frameworks.

What was announced

Fairmint TA LLC, an SEC-registered transfer agent (file no. 084-06901), is now facilitating the move of master securityholder files for public companies onto the blockchain. This service extends Fairmint’s existing infrastructure for private equity to the public markets, allowing issuers to maintain their official records of ownership onchain. The system is designed to handle issuances, transfers, cancellations, and restrictions in a single environment, ensuring that tokenized stocks represent actual shares rather than synthetic exposures or custodial claims.

The offering is supported by the SEC’s September 2026 Innovation Exemption, which established a temporary framework for trading tokenized listed stocks on specific onchain venues. Fairmint utilizes the Open Cap Table Protocol, an open-source framework for equity events that operates on the Canton Network. As a governing member of the Open Cap Table Coalition, the firm is working to standardize these processes across the industry. Once appointed as a transfer agent, Fairmint manages the reconciliation of existing records and the handover from previous agents, while allowing issuers to set specific requirements for onboarding and transfer controls. This transition aims to preserve investor protections and issuer control by building on established U.S. regulatory foundations rather than offshore wrappers.

The companies involved

Fairmint is a fintech firm focused on building an onchain Equity Capital Markets platform to integrate issuance, ownership, financing, and liquidity. The company has spent eight years developing regulated infrastructure for programmable equity, where transfer controls and official ownership records are built into the same system. Its primary technical contribution is the Open Cap Table Protocol, which is currently live on the Canton Network and serves as a standard for recording equity events and sharing permissioned data.

The firm’s transfer agent operations are conducted through its subsidiary, Fairmint TA LLC. This entity is registered with the SEC, a status that allows it to maintain the master securityholder file—the definitive legal record of ownership for U.S. equities. By acting as the official registrar, Fairmint positions itself at the center of the equity lifecycle, moving beyond the role of a technology provider to that of a regulated financial intermediary. The company’s leadership includes Joris Delanoue, who serves as CEO and co-founder. Fairmint’s approach emphasizes the use of issuer-authorized shares and registered agents to maintain U.S. standards within the digital asset ecosystem, aiming to set a global model for onchain equity infrastructure.

What this means

This announcement moves the tokenization narrative from theoretical "digital twins" to the actual legal record of ownership. By integrating the transfer agent function directly with blockchain technology, Fairmint is challenging the traditional separation between a company’s official ledger and the secondary market's trading rails. This puts significant pressure on legacy transfer agents to prove they can offer similar efficiencies without the transparency of a distributed ledger. The reliance on the SEC’s 2026 Innovation Exemption highlights that the path forward for onchain equity is now defined by regulatory compliance rather than technical workaround. The primary question remaining is whether institutional liquidity will follow these new rails or remain tethered to traditional centralized clearing systems.