A $100 million tokenized sukuk will be issued jointly by ADI Foundation and Tokinvest, according to a report from Zawya, marking another Gulf-based push to bring Sharia-compliant structured products onto distributed ledgers.

The collaboration positions the two entities at the intersection of Islamic finance and on-chain capital markets. A sukuk is an asset-backed Islamic financial certificate that structures returns as a share of underlying cash flows rather than as interest, which makes the instrument incompatible with conventional bond coupons and instead tied to permissible asset classes such as real estate, infrastructure or trade receivables.

Tokenization, in this context, refers to representing ownership of the certificate on a blockchain, allowing fractional transfer, programmable settlement and broader investor access. The combination extends a trend that Gulf institutions, including Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority sandbox initiatives and UAE-based free-zone frameworks, have actively courted since 2023.

What is a tokenized sukuk?

A tokenized sukuk mirrors the legal structure of a traditional sukuk but records ownership and transfers on a distributed ledger. The on-chain layer does not, on its own, alter the underlying Sharia-compliance requirement: the structure must still pass review by an internal or external Sharia supervisory board, and the underlying assets must meet halal criteria. Practical differences from a paper certificate include automated distribution of profit payments through smart contracts, programmable transfer restrictions to keep the investor base compliant, and the ability to fractionalize ownership for smaller-ticket investors.

What is known about the partnership?

Public reporting confirms only the headline figure and the names of the two counterparties: ADI Foundation and Tokinvest. The Zawya notice does not specify the issuance jurisdiction, the blockchain protocol, the expected closing date or the identity of the Sharia supervisory board, all of which are standard disclosure items for comparable Gulf issuances. The tenor, the underlying asset pool and the expected minimum ticket size are also absent from the published reporting.

Who are the counterparties?

ADI Foundation operates within the Gulf's Islamic-finance ecosystem, though the Zawya item does not detail its parentage, governance or capitalization. Tokinvest functions as a tokenization infrastructure provider; the published report likewise stops short of naming the platform's home jurisdiction, custody arrangements or licensing status. Both entities will need to surface those details before institutional allocators can underwrite the deal.

What changes for the regional market?

The tokenized sukuk space in the Gulf has been small but institutionally endorsed. Saudi Arabia's Capital Market Authority and the UAE's Dubai Financial Services Authority have both hosted regulated tokenization pilots since 2023, and Bahrain's regulatory regime has long permitted sukuk issuance on regulated platforms. A confirmed $100 million joint issuance would represent a meaningful size point relative to prior tokenized Islamic finance deals, most of which have settled below the $50 million mark and concentrated in pilot rather than production tranches.

What to watch next?

Investors and compliance teams will look for the formal prospectus, the Sharia supervisory opinion, the chosen blockchain standard (commonly ERC-3643 for permissioned securities or a private Hyperledger Besu deployment for institutional issuance) and the custody and registrar arrangements. Disclosure of those items will determine whether the ADI–Tokinvest instrument clears institutional due-diligence thresholds or remains confined to accredited-investor distribution, and whether the $100 million ceiling is later reset upward.