Whose name is actually written on your stock? A panoramic deconstruction of six ownership models from paper certificates to on-chain tokens.

Independent RWA researcher stein published a six-part taxonomy of stock ownership tracing the path from paper certificates to onchain tokens, framing every model by one measure: how close the investor's legal name sits to the transfer agent's official shareholder register. The article details the direct registration system (DRS), where names sit on the issuer's register electronically—Computershare alone maintains registers for 58% of S&P 500 companies and about 35 million shareholder accounts, and GameStop retail holders had moved roughly 76 million shares, about a quarter of the float, into DRS by March 2023—alongside the Cede & Co. street-name system that dominates broker-held shares. It contrasts these with SPV-issued wrapper tokens and issuer-sponsored tokens (ISTs) such as Securitize's $SECZ, which whitelist KYC-bound wallets and remove the broker from the chain, a structure Ledger Insights calls an add-on to the direct registration system. The piece argues that only models wired into transfer agents' legal obligations and official registers can truly rewire clearing, since code alone delivers 24/7 transferability and composability without legal ownership. It cites Galaxy Digital, Superstate, Securitize and Canton Network as live cases. The next test is whether tokenized U.S. equities can move beyond wrapped exposure to direct, register-level ownership at scale.