Baillie Gifford has launched a tokenized corporate bond fund directly on Solana and Ethereum — the first publicly available, fully native UK-regulated fund of its kind on public blockchains. The Baillie Gifford Enhanced Yield Fund went live this week, with BNY (Bank of New York Mellon) involved in the launch.
What the fund is
The fund invests in corporate bonds and issues tokens representing shares. It's built natively on Solana and Ethereum, meaning the fund's shares exist as tokens on those blockchains rather than being wrapped or bridged from a traditional ledger. Baillie Gifford, the Edinburgh-based investment giant, says the structure gives investors direct on-chain exposure to a regulated bond fund.
This isn't another pilot or sandbox experiment. The fund is UK-regulated and open to investors now. That makes it a concrete step for real-world asset tokenization — moving a traditional fund product onto public blockchains without cutting corners on regulatory compliance. Other big asset managers have tested tokenized funds, but most have kept them on private or permissioned networks. Baillie Gifford went public.
BNY's role
BNY Mellon, one of the world's largest custodians, was part of the launch. The bank handled the custody and fund administration side, bridging the gap between the on-chain token and the off-chain legal structure. That's a signal that traditional finance infrastructure is comfortable enough with public blockchains to support a regulated product.
What happens next
The fund is live now. Baillie Gifford hasn't said whether it will expand to other chains or launch similar products. But the fact that a 116-year-old Edinburgh firm chose Solana and Ethereum — not a private ledger — suggests the tokenization conversation is moving from theory to execution. The next question is whether other UK-regulated funds follow the same path.
