Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based investment manager, has launched a tokenized corporate bond fund natively on Solana and Ethereum. The Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund is the first publicly available, fully native UK-regulated tokenized fund issued on public blockchains, according to the firm.
BNY Mellon serves as custodian and transfer agent for the fund. Baillie Gifford said the launch demonstrates that regulated asset managers can issue tokenized funds directly on public networks without requiring a separate wrapped or bridged token structure.
The move marks a regulatory checkpoint. UK Financial Conduct Authority approval of a tokenized fund using the existing framework for open-ended investment companies signals that regulators are willing to treat blockchain-native issuance as equivalent to traditional fund structures, provided custody and settlement safeguards remain in place. The fund operates under FCA authorization, meaning it must meet the same capital, reporting, and investor-protection rules as any conventional fund.
Baillie Gifford's choice to deploy on both Solana and Ethereum reflects the practical reality that different networks serve different settlement speeds and cost profiles. Solana offers faster transaction finality at lower cost. Ethereum provides broader institutional familiarity and deeper liquidity ecosystems. The dual launch avoids locking the fund into a single network dependency.
For asset managers, the structural precedent matters. Prior tokenized fund launches either wrapped existing products or operated in closed or sandbox environments. This instance treats the public blockchain as the primary settlement layer, not a wrapper atop traditional infrastructure. That shifts where settlement actually occurs and who holds keys to redemptions.
The fund itself focuses on corporate bonds, a core institutional product. Tokenization here is not about adding speculative appeal but about operational efficiency: faster settlement, clearer on-chain ownership, reduced intermediaries in the transfer chain. Baillie Gifford's client base skews toward institutional and high-net-worth investors, not retail speculators chasing yield tokens.
Regulators elsewhere are watching. The FCA's willingness to greenlight a fully native issuance on public blockchains creates a template. Other jurisdictions considering tokenized fund frameworks now have evidence that operational risk and investor protection do not require a private ledger. The precedent is more valuable than the fund's initial asset size.