The 12 questions that sort the tokenization market
Every platform demo looks the same; the differences live in the questions demos avoid. This checklist is built from the failure modes we've documented across the industry — ask all twelve in writing, of everyone, including us.
As of July 10, 2026
Does the fee grow with your raise?
Percentage and success fees turn the platform into a silent co-investor: 3% of a $5M raise is $150,000. Flat software fees keep incentives clean — and any legitimate success fee belongs to the licensed broker-dealer, disclosed and regulated.
Are prices published at all?
Enterprise 'talk to sales' pricing isn't a crime, but it makes comparison impossible and surprises likely — implementation fees, per-investor charges, hourly meters. A published price list is a confidence signal.
Who holds the keys?
Custodial platforms hold your asset and your investors' tokens; non-custodial ones never touch them. Ask precisely: if the platform froze operations tomorrow, could investors still move their tokens?
What survives the platform's death?
The existential question nobody asks. If eligibility lives in the vendor's database, compliance dies with the vendor. If it lives in on-chain attestations the token checks itself (the ERC-7943 model), the asset outlives the platform.
Who writes the offering documents?
The token is a third of the job. Platforms split three ways: documents prepared in-house by specialists, referred out to a law-firm network on your budget, or explicitly out of scope. Know which you're buying before you compare prices.
How does a regulated raise actually reach investors?
Publicly marketed securities sales need licensed intermediaries in most jurisdictions. Does the platform route to licensed broker-dealers as part of the product — or is SEC/ESMA compliance quietly your problem?
Does anyone check you're ready before you pay?
A readiness assessment before spend is the difference between a platform and a token vending machine. Deals stall on the company record — reconciled ownership, valuation, cap table — not on minting.
Open standards or a proprietary protocol?
Proprietary token protocols mean the asset speaks only the vendor's language. Open permissioned standards (ERC-3643, ERC-7943) mean other platforms, venues, and custodians can read your token — leverage you keep.
Where does investor identity live?
Some platforms store KYC documents; others read a verified yes/no from attestation layers and never hold identity data. The second model shrinks your breach surface and your GDPR problem.
Which rails does the token actually live on?
Chains, stablecoin settlement, wallets your investors already have. A token on niche rails with no USDC and exotic wallets adds friction exactly where you need none — at investor onboarding.
What's the real track record — raises, or just mints?
Ask for completed regulated raises, jurisdictions worked, and years operating — not token counts. Minting is trivial; compliant capital formation is the product.
What happens after the raise?
Distributions, votes, transfer approvals, reporting, secondary access where regulation permits. The raise is an event; the register is a decade. Ask to see the operating tooling, not the pitch.
See the questions applied: vs Securitize ·vs Tokeny ·vs Brickken ·vs DigiShares ·vs Polymesh — each concedes where the other side wins.
Questions, answered
What should I look for in a tokenization platform?
Twelve things, in rough priority: a fee model that doesn't take a percentage of your raise; published pricing; non-custodial architecture; compliance that survives the platform (on-chain attestations, not a vendor database); in-house offering-document preparation; licensed broker-dealer routing; a readiness assessment before you spend; open token standards; identity handled as attestations rather than stored documents; mainstream rails (USDC, common wallets); a track record of completed regulated raises; and post-raise operating tooling. Any serious platform should answer all twelve in writing.
Why does the fee model matter so much?
Because percentage and success fees compound against you invisibly: 3% of a $5M raise is $150,000 — often more than the entire flat cost of preparation and issuance elsewhere — and fees priced in a platform's own token add market risk to your cost base. Flat, published, dollar-denominated fees are comparable and budgetable; everything else is a negotiation you enter blind.
What's the single most overlooked question?
Continuity: what happens to your token holders if the platform disappears? If transfer eligibility lives in the vendor's database, your compliance — and effectively your investors' liquidity — dies with the vendor. If the token checks on-chain attestations itself, the asset keeps working no matter who operates the tooling. Ask it explicitly; the answer sorts the market fast.
Is Stobox the right answer to all twelve?
That's for the checklist to decide — it's built from failure modes, not from our feature list, and we publish our own answers openly: flat published fees and never a percentage, non-custodial ERC-4337 wallets, ERC-7943 attestation-based compliance, in-house offering preparation via Raisable, licensed broker-dealer routing, a free readiness score, and raises delivered across 20+ jurisdictions since 2018. Compare us against anyone — the comparison pages on this site do exactly that, competitors' strengths included.
General information as of July 10, 2026, not legal or investment advice — seeLegal & disclosures.