Centrifuge puts AAA-rated CLO exposure onchain with JAAA

About $47 million of JAAA was supplied as collateral on Aave Horizon, making the token the largest tokenized asset on that venue at that point.

That position provides the clearest evidence of what Centrifuge has built. JAAA gives non-US professional investors exposure to AAA-rated tranches of collateralized loan obligations, or CLOs, while putting the fund interest onchain.

A CLO pools corporate loans and divides them into layers by risk. The AAA tranche sits at the top of that stack and carries the highest credit rating. Its rights remain governed by the fund’s offering documents. JAAA wraps a conventional legal claim rather than replacing it.

Those legal mechanics matter. They put tokenized settlement on top of a conventional fund structure, rather than substituting a blockchain record for the investor’s contractual rights.

• Fund operating start: July 25, 2025
• Management fee: 0.50%
• Assets under management: Currently $580 million to $680 million, down from an earlier peak above $1 billion
• Net asset value per token: Around $1.05 to $1.06
• Reported yield: Low to mid 5% range

JAAA has been deployed across several blockchains, including Ethereum, Arbitrum, Solana, Base and Avalanche. For eligible investors, that gives onchain access across several major networks. It also creates the technical condition for DeFi composability, as other applications can recognize and use the token as collateral.

Chronicle handles verification through its Proof of Asset framework. The framework verifies key fund data and writes it to the blockchain. It covers positions, pricing, valuations, yields and where each data point originated. Chronicle also runs attestations for both the standard JAAA token and deJAAA, its DeFi-focused wrapper.

Verification and legal ownership do different work. The offering documents establish what a holder owns and which rules apply. Chronicle’s attestations address whether the reported fund data matches the positions, prices and valuations used onchain. Neither layer turns the underlying CLO into a native blockchain asset.

JAAA has already moved beyond passive holding. Around $47 million worth was supplied as collateral on Aave Horizon, where it was the largest tokenized asset at that point. The position demonstrates that the token can function within an onchain lending market rather than merely serve as a transferable representation of fund ownership.

The current AUM figure deserves equal attention. It is a range spanning $100 million, not a single balance. JAAA now operates well below its earlier peak above $1 billion, showing that the token’s technical reach has not prevented the underlying fund from contracting.

What does JAAA change for professional investors?

For eligible non-US professionals, the change is practical rather than cosmetic. JAAA offers high-grade CLO exposure with onchain settlement and composability. A holder can reach the fund through a token deployed on several chains and deploy that token as DeFi collateral, subject to offering-document terms and the rules of each protocol.

The reported low-to-mid 5% yield and 0.50% management fee place JAAA alongside other income-focused tokenized funds. The token does not create a different economic return structure from the conventional claim it wraps. It changes how that claim is recorded, settled and used onchain.

Two constraints temper scale. The fund limits eligibility to non-US professional investors, narrowing its addressable market. Its AUM has already dropped from more than $1 billion to $580 million-$680 million. The next market-structure test is whether deeper collateral use can expand adoption without changing the underlying legal structure or the investor eligibility rules.