Primary issuance
The first sale of a tokenized security by its issuer to investors – the capital-raising event, as opposed to later secondary trading.
Glossary
78 words this industry uses at you, in plain English.
Every word here appears somewhere on this site, and each definition is written without using another piece of jargon to explain it. If one of these gets used at you in a meeting, this is what it means.
78 terms · 7 groups · every one used somewhere on this site · no definition that needs a second definition
- Search as you type
- Three terms carry a live figure
- Including the words we refuse to use
The words
Search it, or read the group you need.
Grouped by what the word is about rather than alphabetically, because the groups are how the work is actually organised. The search box matches the definitions too.
Core ideas
Asset Passport
The asset’s own file: every claim about it, the document behind each claim, and who signed that document. A buyer reads it instead of asking you for a pack, and it travels with the token.
Asset tokenization
Issuing a blockchain token that represents legal ownership of, or a claim on, a real asset. The token becomes the official, transferable record of ownership.
Attestation
A dated statement of fact signed by a named outside party, such as a vault or a laboratory, attached to the record so a buyer can read it without asking you.
Cap table
The list of everyone who owns a piece of the company, and how much. It is the asset itself in a private company, which is why it being wrong is expensive.
Digital Security Offering (DSO)
Another name for an STO – an offering of digitally native, tokenized securities. The terms are used interchangeably; DSO emphasizes that the security's official record lives on-chain.
Master-feeder structure
A fund pattern for mixed investor bases: a US feeder for US taxable investors and an offshore feeder for everyone else, both investing into one master vehicle. Tokenization digitizes the feeders' registers without changing the tax logic.
Non-custodial
A model where the user holds their own keys and assets. Stobox is non-custodial – it never takes custody of investor funds or tokens.
On-chain registry
The blockchain-based cap table that records who owns a tokenized security in real time, replacing spreadsheets and manual transfer agents.
Real-world asset (RWA)
A tangible or traditional financial asset – real estate, a fund, private equity, commodities, royalties – that exists off-chain and can be represented on a blockchain.
$27.8B on chain across 176 products, DefiLlama, 12 September 2026
Register
The official list of who owns what. Today it is a spreadsheet somebody maintains. After tokenization it is the asset itself, and it updates when ownership moves.
Secondary trading
Buying and selling after issuance. It happens through licensed venues, where the venue decides whether to list. A token makes a transfer possible inside the rules; it does not create a market.
Security token
A token that is a regulated security – it confers ownership, profit, or repayment rights and is subject to securities law. Distinct from a utility token.
Security Token Offering (STO)
A regulated sale of tokenized securities to investors under a securities exemption (e.g. Reg D, Reg S, Reg CF, Reg A+). Unlike a 2017-era ICO, an STO sells real, compliance-gated securities – not a utility coupon.
Self-custody wallet
A wallet the owner controls directly. On Stobox it signs you in, anchors one-time verification, and holds the securities you buy.
Special purpose vehicle (SPV)
A company created to hold one asset (or one deal) and nothing else. In tokenization it is the standard wrapper: the SPV holds the asset's title, the tokens represent interests in the SPV – ring-fenced from the sponsor's creditors.
Tokenized security
A security (equity, debt, fund interest) issued and recorded as a compliant on-chain token, with transfer rules enforced by the token itself.
Utility token
A token used to access a product or service, conferring no equity, profit-share, or voting rights. A consumer good, not a security.
21,085 coins in existence, most of them this, CoinGecko, 12 September 2026
Rules and who may invest
Accredited investor
An investor meeting income or net-worth thresholds who is permitted to participate in certain private (e.g. Reg D) offerings.
Beneficial owner
The actual human being who ends up with the money. Rules on sanctions and money laundering apply to that person, not to the company in front of them.
Broker-dealer
A licensed firm that transacts securities. Public raises are run through broker-dealers; Stobox is a technology provider, not a broker-dealer.
EU Prospectus Regulation
The EU framework governing when a published prospectus is required to offer securities to the public across member states.
Exemption
The rule that lets you sell shares to investors without registering a public offering. Your lawyer picks it. It decides who may invest and how you may advertise.
KYC / KYB
Know Your Customer / Know Your Business – the identity verification of investors and entities required before participating in a regulated offering.
Lock-up
A period during which a holder has agreed not to sell. Also usually a document, and also enforceable by the asset itself.
Reg A+
A U.S. exemption (a 'mini-IPO') allowing public raises up to a set ceiling from all investors, with SEC qualification and ongoing reporting.
Reg CF
U.S. Regulation Crowdfunding – lets companies raise from the general public (accredited and non-accredited) up to an annual cap, via a registered portal.
Reg D (Rule 506(c))
A U.S. exemption for private placements to accredited investors, allowing general solicitation when all investors are verified as accredited.
Reg S
A U.S. exemption for securities offered to investors outside the United States, commonly paired with Reg D for global raises.
Transfer agent
The party that maintains a security's ownership records. For tokenized securities, an on-chain registry performs this function automatically.
Transfer restriction
A rule about whether an investor may sell their stake and to whom. It is in the fund’s own documents, and it is the first thing to read before promising anyone liquidity.
Deals and documents
Appraisal
A valuation signed by a licensed valuer. Yours and theirs are different documents, and a buyer only counts the second.
Assay
A laboratory test of how much metal is actually there and how pure it is. An in-house test is an opinion; a licensed laboratory has a licence to lose.
Carbon credit
A tradable certificate for emissions avoided or removed. It is a separate asset from the power, with separate rules and a separate buyer.
Change-of-control clause
A line in the loan that lets the bank object if the ownership of the borrower changes. It is why the lender is the first call, not the last.
Compute
The machines that run the models: graphics cards, servers and the building and power they need. Unlike a model, it is a physical thing you can own and finance.
Custody, or vault statement
A signed statement from the vault confirming what it is holding for you. Not the same document as one you write yourself, and buyers know the difference.
Grid connection
Permission and physical capacity to put power into the network. Without it the plant is equipment in a field.
Model weights
The trained output of the model itself. They are hard to own cleanly, hard to transfer and hard to value on any given day, which is why we do not build offerings on them.
Offtake agreement
A contract with a buyer who agrees in advance to take what you produce. It turns a mine into a predictable stream of money.
Offtaker
The party on the other side of that contract. Their credit quality, not yours, is what an investor is really taking a view on.
Option ledger
The record of shares promised to employees, on what terms and when they earn them. It sits outside the share register and is regularly forgotten in one of the two.
Power purchase agreement
A long contract with someone who agrees to buy the electricity. It is the reason a solar field is financeable and a solar field without one is not.
Rent roll
The list of who rents what, for how much, and until when. It is the document that turns a building into an income figure.
Right of first refusal
A rule that says existing holders get the chance to buy before an outsider can. It is normally in a document somebody has to remember; written into the asset, it is enforced automatically.
SAFE, and convertible note
Two ways of taking money now and deciding later how much of the company it bought. They are the most common reason a cap table and the paperwork disagree.
The company that holds the building
Property is usually owned by a company, not by a person. You sell shares in that company, not bricks, and its own documents decide whether that is allowed.
Money in, money out
Audit right
The right of an investor to have somebody check the numbers behind their payment. Without it, the share of revenue is a promise rather than a claim.
Contracted revenue
Money customers have already signed up to pay you over a period, as opposed to money you expect. Lenders and investors treat the two completely differently.
Depreciation
How quickly the hardware loses its value. On compute it is fast, and any honest financing structure has to say what happens when it does.
Gross and net
Before costs, and after them. Almost every dispute about a revenue share is a dispute about which of the two was meant.
Partial exit
Selling some of your stake and keeping the rest, usually so a founder can take money off the table without losing the company.
Pledged, or encumbered
Already promised to somebody else, usually a lender, as security for a loan. Income that is pledged cannot be sold twice, and it is the surprise that kills deals in week six.
Royalty
A right to a share of what something earns, without owning the thing itself. Music, patents, software and minerals are the common ones.
Waterfall
The agreed order in which money is paid out: who is paid first, who is paid from what is left, and who is paid last.
Funds and vehicles
Carry
The share of profits a manager keeps. We never take it, on any deal, at any layer. It is a manager’s economics, not a technology provider’s.
Continuation vehicle
A new fund set up to buy assets from an older one, so the manager can hold them longer. Investors who want out are paid; investors who want to stay roll in.
Feeder fund
A second fund that exists only to pool a group of investors and put them into the main one, usually because they sit in a different country or a different rule set.
Limited partner
An investor in a fund. They put in money and take no part in running it, which is what limits their liability.
Portfolio company
One of the businesses a fund or a holding company owns. The value is in these, not in the vehicle that holds them.
Side letter
A private agreement giving one investor terms the others do not have. Most funds have several, and together they quietly override parts of the main agreement.
Subscription documents
The pack an investor signs to join a fund: who they are, what they are allowed to invest in, and what they are agreeing to.
The mark
What the manager says the portfolio is currently worth. It is an opinion until somebody independent signs one, which is why an outside valuation changes the conversation.
Standards, chains and rails
Arbitrum
An Ethereum Layer-2 network. The STBX security token is issued on Arbitrum.
Base
The USDC-native Ethereum Layer-2 in the Coinbase stack. Stobox Compass issues on Base for compliant, low-cost, scalable settlement.
ERC-20
The baseline Ethereum standard for fungible tokens. Compliant securities extend it with permissioning and transfer restrictions.
Permissioned token standards
Token standards that carry identity and eligibility rules, so only a holder the rules admit can receive one. ERC-3643 and ERC-7943 are the two that matter; Stobox is a backer of ERC-7943.
Smart wallet
A self-custody wallet (e.g. Coinbase Smart Wallet) with no seed phrase to record, used to sign in and hold assets on Stobox.
USDC
A fully-reserved, dollar-backed stablecoin used to settle investments in tokenized assets on Stobox.
$74.4B in circulation, DefiLlama, 12 September 2026
The Stobox stack
AXIS readiness pillars
The seven weighted pillars Stobox scores to measure how prepared a company is to raise or tokenize: Asset, Legal, Transparency, Technology, Liquidity, Governance, and Risk.
AXIS Score
Stobox's tokenization-readiness score: a completeness-and-verification measure across seven weighted pillars – Asset, Legal, Transparency, Technology, Liquidity, Governance, and Risk. It is not a credit rating or an endorsement; it measures how complete and how verified a company's record is, weighted by what capital markets actually check, and it rises as gaps are resolved and figures verified.
Readiness Score
A free assessment of twenty-five questions across the same seven dimensions the AXIS score uses. It takes about eight minutes, needs no email to see the result, and every weight behind the number is published.
STBU
The utility token of the Stobox ecosystem, used for access and payments, on Base.
STBX
Stobox’s own security token: a Class-C equity token issued by Stobox Tokenized Equities Ltd, on Arbitrum One, offered to eligible investors.
Stobox Compass
The token. It issues a compliant tokenized security with a register that is the asset itself, and rules the contract checks on every transfer.
Stobox Intelligence
The record. One current, checked account of a company, with the document behind every figure and a proof tier saying how strong that document is.
Stobox Raisable
The raise. It turns that record into an offering package a licensed firm will accept, for a flat fee and never a share of what you raise. Built with Raisable, distributed by Stobox.
Words we do not use
The other half of a house style, which nobody usually prints.
A glossary says what words mean. This says which ones are ruled out here, and what we say instead. Each is a decision somebody can hold us to.
Seamless, frictionless, effortless
Nothing here is any of those. The work is paperwork and it takes as long as it takes.
Cutting-edge, next-generation, world-class
Adjectives doing a number’s job. We publish the number instead, or say we do not have one.
Bank-grade security
Not a standard, not an audit, not a certification. It means nothing, so it is not on this site.
Unlock liquidity
A token does not create a buyer. We say a path to secondary trading through licensed venues, and that listing rests with the venue.
Make your assets smart
The asset stays what it was. The rules around it are what become enforceable.
Put your data on the blockchain
The asset and its rule set go on chain. The canonical record stays off it, and that is the part most descriptions skip.
A percentage of your raise
Taking a share of what you raise is broker-dealer work, and it carries its own regulatory weight. Our fees are flat and published.
These are enforced by a script, not by taste. A build that reintroduces one of them fails before it ships.
Two ways in
Knowing the words is not the same as being ready.
The score reads your asset across seven dimensions and tells you what is missing, in the same plain terms this page uses.
Prefer email? info@stobox.io.
Or let your assistant ask
Our server gives an AI assistant a term lookup and a fact check, with a source against every answer.
Connect the serverOr bring the asset itself – thirty minutes, and we will say if the answer is no.
Stobox Technologies Inc. Nothing on this page is an offer to sell or a solicitation to buy any security, and nothing here is legal, tax or investment advice. Definitions are written for a general reader and are not a substitute for counsel. See the privacy summary.