ADI Chain and Shipfinex partner to open the $680B ship finance market to institutional investors via tokenization. First tokens planned for 35 vessels worth $500M.
The world's commercial ships are worth an estimated $2 trillion. The market financing their purchase and construction is relationship-driven, dominated by a small circle of shipowners, banks and specialist lenders. That structure shuts smaller operators and alternative investors out of a significant pool of capital.
Blockchain platform ADI Chain and Dubai-based maritime tokenization firm Shipfinex want to route that market – worth an estimated $680 billion in bank lending, leasing and export credit today – through blockchain technology to open it up to institutional capital.
"Maritime finance has the scale, real assets and commercial activity to become a major new real-world asset category," Ramana Kumar, President of Stablecoin Ecosystem at ADI Foundation, said in the announcement shared with CoinDesk.
The deal signals tokenization is expanding beyond financial instruments such as government bonds and money market funds into physical, capital-intensive infrastructure like ships and warehouses.
Shipfinex finds vessels and packages them into deals, determining which ships qualify, what they're worth and how the investment should be structured. ADI Chain turns those deals into blockchain tokens and handles payments using stablecoins – digital tokens pegged 1-to-1 to currencies like the UAE dirham or the U.S. dollar – so money moves instantly without a traditional bank wire. For now, this is aimed at "qualified institutional participants," not retail buyers.
Shipfinex CEO Capt. Vikas Pandey said the partnership would let the company "create a regulated digital route into this market, with every instrument tied to a real vessel, its economics and its legal structure."
No maritime asset tokens have been issued yet. Shipfinex does not yet have a full license to operate. Its regulatory clearance from Dubai's Virtual Assets Regulatory Authority is an "In-Principle Approval" – a preliminary thumbs-up confirming it passed an initial background check, not a finished license.
Still, Shipfinex has earmarked around 35 vessels worth about $500 million combined as candidates for tokenization, once the regulatory approval and deal structure are finalized. Each ship will sit in its own separate legal entity, so if one ship runs into financial trouble, it does not drag down investors in the others.
Buying a token could mean a loan backed by the ship, a share of the money the ship earns from shipping contracts, or a broader economic stake in the vessel's value, depending on the deal structure. None of that gives the token holder a share in legal ownership of the ship. The token represents a financial claim tied to the vessel, while the ship itself stays owned and operated the way commercial ships always have been.
Maritime shipping accounts for more than 80% of international trade in goods by volume, according to Tuesday's announcement, and remains a largely untapped corner of the tokenized real-world asset market, which currently stands at roughly $38 billion. Tokenized equities alone have hit $1.48 billion on some platforms, showing the broader category is gaining traction.
The ADI and Shipfinex partnership is not the category's opening move. Galactica has already closed tokenized vessel financings, including a bridge-financing deal for a 145,000 CBM LNG carrier, on InvestaX's regulated platform. Ethra Ship launched a competing maritime RWA protocol in June built on an existing shipping business.
ADI Chain is the Abu Dhabi-based institutional blockchain platform founded by Sirius International Holding, the technology-focused subsidiary of International Holding Company (IHC). The blockchain already hosts DDSC, a dirham-backed stablecoin licensed by the UAE central bank.
Shipfinex has 35 vessels lined up, but no tokens have been minted and the regulatory green light is still preliminary. The partnership's success depends on turning that in-principle approval into a full license and convincing institutional investors that a ship token offers something a loan from a traditional bank does not.
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