On September 10, Nasdaq Ventures officially announced a $100 million investment in Kraken's parent company, Payward, valuing the company at approximately $21 billion. The key initiatives both parties are advancing include: 1. Continuing to develop the Nasdaq Equity Tokens (NETs) framework, expected to launch in Q2 2027; 2. Payward adopting Nasdaq's market surveillance technology to cover its trading platforms for crypto, stocks, tokenized stocks, futures, and options; 3. Extending the collaboration from March this year to use Payward's xStocks framework to build a bridge between traditional licensed markets and on-chain networks. xStocks is already one of the leading frameworks for tokenized stocks, ranking high in both trading volume and the number of holders, with broad chain support. In my opinion, this investment is more about pricing Payward's "settlement and compliance channel capabilities" rather than just hyping up a specific blockchain. Nasdaq's decision to deepen its partnership shows they recognize Payward's execution capabilities in tokenized stock infrastructure. For retail investors like us, the more accessible opportunity lies with the Ink chain. As an L2 incubated by Kraken, it’s already one of the networks supported by xStocks. If NETs truly materialize in the future and generate large-scale on-chain transfer demand, Ink at least holds a "priority consideration" position. But this doesn’t mean assets will automatically flow in—ultimately, it depends on whether the DeFi protocols on Ink can offer sufficiently attractive use cases. The direction is clear, but the pace of implementation and actual market share will be the key factors.