Centrifuge (CFG)

Overview

Centrifuge is a platform for bringing real-world financial assets onto blockchains. It helps asset managers create digital investment products backed by assets such as Treasury bills, corporate credit, and other financial claims. Investors can then hold tokens that represent shares in those products. Centrifuge’s ecosystem token is CFG. (developer.centrifuge.io)

The basic idea is to connect familiar financial activity with onchain tools. A fund manager still selects assets, values them, and follows the fund’s legal terms. Centrifuge provides software for issuing shares, recording ownership, managing investor access, and processing investments and redemptions. A redemption is the process of returning fund shares in exchange for the assets or payment specified by the product. (developer.centrifuge.io)

History & Team

From asset financing to onchain funds

Centrifuge launched in 2017. Its early work focused on financing assets such as receivables—money owed to a business—through blockchain-based pools. It later expanded into tools for managing tokenized investment funds. Early projects included work with MakerDAO, now part of the Sky ecosystem, and an Aave real-world asset market. (centrifuge.io)

Lucas Vogelsang is a Centrifuge co-founder and led the project for several years. In 2025, Bhaji Illuminati became chief executive of Centrifuge Labs, while Vogelsang moved to a board role. The leadership team also includes co-founder Martin Quensel as president and Anil Sood as chief strategy officer. Centrifuge Labs builds the technology, while the Centrifuge Network Foundation oversees the ecosystem’s current governance structure. (centrifuge.io)

The project raised a $15 million Series A round in 2024, co-led by ParaFi Capital and Greenfield. Participants included Circle Ventures, Arrington Capital, Borderless Capital, and others. That funding supported product development and the project’s move toward institutional onchain finance. (centrifuge.io)

Technology & How It Works

Pools, shares, and vaults

A pool is the onchain home of a financial product. It holds the product’s accounting rules and share classes, and it gives the manager a way to handle pricing, investor permissions, and orders. A fund may have more than one share class, with different terms or access rules. Each class has its own token to record an investor’s position. (developer.centrifuge.io)

Investors enter and leave through vaults. A vault sets the accepted payment asset, the network used, and how an order is handled. For example, one vault might accept USDC on Ethereum, while another serves the same share class on a different network. Some deposits can issue shares in a single transaction. Other deposits, and redemptions, use requests that the manager processes according to the product’s schedule. This design gives managers time to handle offchain settlement or update a fund’s value. (developer.centrifuge.io)

Centrifuge organizes each pool around a hub and spokes. The hub is the center for accounting, permissions, pricing, and order processing. Spokes are the networks where investors hold tokens and use vaults. Protocol messages keep the product’s records aligned across those networks. A share token can therefore reach investors on several chains while belonging to one product with one overall supply and share price. (developer.centrifuge.io)

The move to Ethereum-based technology

Centrifuge once operated its own blockchain. Its V3 upgrade moved the protocol to an Ethereum-compatible, multichain design. The change makes its fund tools easier to connect with wallets and applications that use Ethereum-style smart contracts. It also separates the ecosystem token from the tokens issued as shares in individual funds. (centrifuge.io)

Tokenomics & Utility

CFG is an ERC-20 token on Ethereum. During a migration that began in May 2025, holders of the former Centrifuge Chain token and its wrapped Ethereum version could exchange them for the current CFG token at a one-to-one ratio. The migration is closed. This history matters because older references to CFG staking, validator rewards, and chain transaction fees describe the former blockchain design. (developer.centrifuge.io)

Centrifuge’s published tokenomics recorded a total supply of about 697 million CFG as of June 2026. A 2025 governance proposal created 115 million tokens for ecosystem incentives. Of those, 15 million unlocked when minted, while 100 million were set to vest gradually through April 2029. The published model also sets annual token issuance at 3% of total supply, with newly issued tokens going to the Centrifuge treasury. Vesting releases and new issuance are two separate ways the available token supply can change. (developer.centrifuge.io)

CFG has served as the ecosystem’s governance token. Under a governance change approved in November 2025, active DAO voting paused and day-to-day oversight moved to the Centrifuge Network Foundation; DAO tools remain available for possible reactivation. CFG also has a role in the project’s proposed corporate restructuring, discussed below. Fund share tokens such as JTRSY are separate: they represent positions in particular investment products, with rights defined by those products. Holding CFG alone does not make someone a shareholder in a Centrifuge fund. (docs.centrifuge.io)

Ecosystem & Use Cases

Centrifuge serves two broad groups: managers bringing assets onchain and investors seeking access to the products they create. The platform supports the steps between them, from setting up a pool and share classes to accepting investments, publishing share prices, and processing redemptions. A product can set its own rules for who may hold or transfer its tokens. (developer.centrifuge.io)

One example is the Janus Henderson Anemoy Treasury Fund, whose JTRSY token represents fund shares backed by short-term U.S. Treasury bills. Another is JAAA, a tokenized strategy involving highly rated collateralized loan obligations—a type of structured credit. Centrifuge has also supported a tokenized high-yield corporate bond strategy for New York Life Investment Management. These examples show how the same software can serve products with different assets and investment terms. (app.centrifuge.io)

The ecosystem also connects to decentralized finance, or DeFi: financial applications built with blockchain software. An asset manager can distribute a product across supported networks, while an eligible integration may give its share token another onchain use. The permissions set by each product still govern where and how its tokens can be used. (developer.centrifuge.io)

Advantages & Challenges

Centrifuge brings issuance, ownership records, and parts of fund administration into a shared onchain system. Tokenized shares can be held in compatible wallets, and permitted transfers can be recorded on a blockchain. Managers can offer several vaults for one product instead of building an entirely separate fund for each network or accepted payment asset. Published pool data can also make parts of a product’s activity easier to follow. (developer.centrifuge.io)

The harder work often lies where blockchains meet the outside world. A manager must value underlying assets, arrange custody and legal rights, decide who may invest, and keep information consistent across networks. A token can record a fund share, but the fund’s documents and manager still determine what that share means. Request-based orders can also follow a different schedule from the instant transactions many crypto users know. (developer.centrifuge.io)

Where to Buy & Wallets

CFG is available on Coinbase and Binance in supported locations. Coinbase provides a purchase route for U.S. customers, while Binance lists CFG for eligible users in its supported regions. Exchange access depends on the customer’s location and account requirements. (coinbase.com)

CFG can be held in an Ethereum wallet that supports ERC-20 tokens, such as MetaMask. The current Ethereum contract address published in Centrifuge’s documentation is 0xcccCCCcCCC33D538DBC2EE4fEab0a7A1FF4e8A94. A wallet can use that address to display the token if it does not appear automatically. Ethereum transactions use ETH for network fees. (developer.centrifuge.io)

Regulatory & Compliance

Legal requirements mainly depend on the individual product, its issuer, and the investor’s location. Centrifuge lets managers set onchain access rules. A product may require identity and anti-money-laundering checks before a wallet address is approved, and it may restrict access by jurisdiction. Approval for one product or network does not automatically grant access to another. (developer.centrifuge.io)

The JTRSY fund offers a concrete example. It is a British Virgin Islands professional fund licensed by the BVI Financial Services Commission and described as open to eligible non-U.S. professional investors. Its fund shares, eligibility rules, and legal structure are distinct from the rules for buying and holding CFG on an exchange. (app.centrifuge.io)

Shariah compliance also turns on a product’s assets and contracts. Islamic finance prohibits riba, commonly understood to include conventional interest. JTRSY earns returns from U.S. Treasury bills, so its interest-based strategy does not meet a strict no-riba standard. The presence of real-world assets, by itself, does not establish a Shariah status for every product built with Centrifuge or for the separate CFG token. (app.centrifuge.io)

Future Outlook

Centrifuge’s technical direction centers on giving asset managers more ways to issue, run, and distribute onchain products. Its multichain pool and vault design provides a base for funds with different assets, investor groups, and settlement schedules. Further use will depend on managers creating products and on the legal and operational systems behind those products. (developer.centrifuge.io)

CFG’s longer-term role may change more substantially. On September 10, 2026, Centrifuge’s community approved proposal CP172, which sets a direction for eligible CFG holders to subscribe for tokenized company shares using CFG at a proposed one-token-for-one-share ratio. Carrying out that plan still requires corporate approvals, a restructuring, legal work, and final eligibility and subscription terms. The vote approved a path to pursue; it did not itself turn CFG into company shares. (gov.centrifuge.io)

Summary

Centrifuge provides blockchain tools for managing financial products backed by real-world assets. Its pools, vaults, and share tokens connect fund operations with onchain ownership and distribution. CFG is the ecosystem token, while each fund sets the rights attached to its own shares. Together, the platform’s growing range of products and its approved restructuring proposal make Centrifuge a distinct example of how traditional finance and blockchain systems can meet. (developer.centrifuge.io)