Tokenized AAA-CLO funds compared — Securitize STAC vs Janus Henderson / Anemoy JAAA

TL;DR — the decision rule

Both funds hold the same asset (senior AAA CLO tranches, floating SOFR + spread, ~30%+ subordination, <0.1% historical default) and earn the same ~4% real carry at a rising NAV. They differ on the wrapper, not the asset — and the wrapper is the whole risk. JAAA caps theft behind a 4-of-9 Safe + 48h timelock and discloses its 22 CUSIPs against SEC EDGAR; STAC’s mint/burn/seize/pause/upgrade all sit on un-timelocked single Securitize keys with no protocol-layer backstop and no public holdings disclosure. On capital quality the two move in opposite directions: STAC is concentrating — Grove is now 99.8% of it as everyone else redeemed out — while JAAA is de-concentrating, its Grove anchor having redeemed ~$618M of its own seed (98% → 35% of the ETH leg) as a real, diversified open base grew ~17× into the gap. Net: at equal size JAAA is the safer wrapper today (custody + governance + transparency + a broadening holder base), and the binding constraint for either is the same — a curator-gated, off-chain-settled redemption beside one allocator: Grove, the Sky USDS allocator, is verified on-chain as the anchor of both funds (Ethena is a second in STAC), so both sit downstream of USDS/sUSDS redemption risk. Size against that anchor’s flows, not headline AUM.

Question

We now hold evals for two tokenized AAA-CLO funds — Securitize STAC and Janus Henderson / Anemoy JAAA. They are the closest peers in the book: same asset class, same BVI-fund-plus-tokenized-share structure, same curator-gated redemption shape. The recurring questions when either comes up for sizing are (a) which wrapper concentrates more risk, (b) how durable is the capital beside us, and (c) what the carry actually is net of cost. This study answers all three with side-by-side data so neither eval has to repeat it, and so a sizing decision on one can reference the other.

Methodology

Findings

1. Same asset, same carry — different wrapper

Identical economic engine; the differences are all in how the share is issued, governed, and disclosed.

2. Governance & key-compromise — STAC is strictly more centralized

The eval claims here were re-confirmed in a Tenderly mainnet-fork simulation (2026-06-24): impersonating STAC’s real MASTER/ISSUER EOAs, pause(), burn(holder,…), and issueTokens(…) each succeeded with no signature, no timelock, no second signer. JAAA’s theft path provably requires the 4-of-9 Safe to clear the 48h Root delay.

3. Capital retention & anchor concentration — STAC concentrating, JAAA diversifying

How to read this. Both funds are dominated by one holder that doesn’t trade day-to-day — the anchor, which in both cases is Grove, the Sky ecosystem’s USDS credit allocator (verified on-chain — Finding 6). This chart is the anchor’s share of each fund’s Ethereum leg over time. A rising line means everyone else is leaving and the fund is collapsing into its anchor; a falling line means the opposite — other investors are arriving, or the anchor itself is exiting. It’s a concentration gauge, not a measure of withdrawable liquidity (exit is a gated off-chain queue either way — see the Transparency & exit table; and a co-redeeming anchor actually worsens your liquidity by forcing CLO sales into that same queue).

The two funds are moving in opposite directions:

• STAC is concentrating into its anchor. Grove held ~94% of the fund at its Dec-2025 peak and 99.8% today — because the non-Grove float bled from 6,180 STAC ($6.3M) to 198 ($0.2M), a −97% exit. STAC is now effectively a single-holder fund. (Total supply only fell −6%, because Grove’s flat 100,000 tokens mask the near-total exit of everyone else.)
• JAAA is de-concentrating — the finding a single-fund eval misses. Grove’s share of the ETH leg fell 98% → 35% because Grove (Sky) redeemed ~$618M of its own ~$1B seed ($748M → $130M of JAAA on Ethereum), not because open investors fled. Meanwhile JAAA’s genuine open float grew ~17×, from ~$14M to ~$241M — real diversified demand arriving as the anchor left.

A snapshot of where the money sits today shows the shared anchor and the divergence:

STAC is ~100% two anchors (Grove + Ethena); JAAA is ~60% Grove + ~40% open — and that 40% is the fast-growing diversified base. The decisive point is the navy block: Grove/Sky anchors both funds — ~$102M in STAC and ~$380M in JAAA ($130M Ethereum verified + a ~$250M Avalanche tranche, eval-sourced). So the pair is not diversification — holding both stacks correlated Grove/Sky exposure through one decision-maker, and (Finding 6) downstream of USDS itself.

4. NAV accrual — real carry, never marked down

Both NAVs rose monotonically across the entire window — including through JAAA’s −82% drawdown — confirming the capital flight in Finding 3 was redemptions, not losses. JAAA’s pricePerShare is on-chain and daily; STAC’s NAV is off-chain (no on-chain getter; an announced Chronicle Proof-of-Asset feed is unverified), so only the inception/current endpoints are observable. The two lines start at different levels only because JAAA launched ~3 months earlier (its NAV had already accrued to 1.015 by the time STAC was born).

To compare the yield itself, the next chart rebases both to 0% at their own first reading — so the slope is the realized return, regardless of when each launched:

Over a comparable ~7–8-month window JAAA realized +2.31% (≈4.0% annualized) vs STAC’s +2.10% (≈3.2% annualized) — JAAA’s carry is modestly higher and steeper. Both are real AAA-CLO coupon (SOFR + spread), not emissions. (These are realized historical returns, not forward yields; STAC’s is a two-point off-chain line, JAAA’s a daily on-chain curve, so treat the STAC slope as an average, not a path.)

5. Cost — STAC is cheaper to hold, dearer to exit

There are only two fee types that actually bite. The expense ratio is the all-in annual drag — it already bundles the management fee (STAC’s 0.30% management is a component of its 0.40% all-in; JAAA’s 0.50% is its all-in the same way), plus admin/custody/audit. Both funds charge 0% performance and 0% subscription, so there’s no separate management-fee bar to add — the expense ratio is the comparable, and STAC’s (0.40%) undercuts JAAA’s (0.50%). The second charge is the exit toll: STAC’s 2.00% redemption fee vs JAAA’s none. So STAC is cheaper to hold but materially more expensive to exit — at a ~3–4% gross carry, a single round-trip in STAC inside ~6 months is net-negative on the redemption fee alone.

6. The shared anchor, traced — Grove is the Sky USDS allocator, and it anchors both funds

The most important finding, now verified end-to-end on-chain (block 25,388,574):

Sky USDS → AllocatorVault 0x2651… (ilk = ALLOCATOR-BLOOM-A — “Bloom” is Grove’s Sky allocator name) → MainnetController 0xfd9d…a9f5 → Grove ALMProxy 0x491e…a44e → holds 100,000 STAC ($102M) + 124.8M JAAA ($130M) on Ethereum.

• One on-chain entity anchors both funds. The same ALMProxy is the 99.8% holder of STAC’s ETH leg and a 35% holder of JAAA’s — ~$232M across the two on Ethereum (plus the ~$250M Avalanche JAAA tranche). The cross-fund concentration is now a verified fact, not a press inference.
• It’s Sky USDS reserve capital. Grove has drawn ~$2.65B of USDS (against a $3.16B ceiling) via the Sky vat under ilk ALLOCATOR-BLOOM-A. The CLO carry it earns flows into Sky’s reserve income — part of what funds the Sky Savings Rate paid to sUSDS holders.
• The reflexive loop. Because the anchor is Sky’s USDS book, a USDS/sUSDS stress event (savings-rate cut, depeg scare, mass sUSDS redemptions) can force Grove to pull reserve capital — i.e. redeem from STAC/JAAA — driving CLO liquidation through the same gated, off-chain queue any NOCA position exits through. So both funds aren’t just anchor-concentrated; they are downstream of USDS stability itself. This is the concrete upstream trigger for the “reflexive co-redeemer” risk both evals flag.

7. Transparency & exit mechanics

Decision framework

• At equal size, prefer JAAA on wrapper safety. Same asset and carry, but JAAA caps theft behind a 4-of-9 Safe + 48h timelock, publishes on-chain NAV, and discloses holdings to SEC EDGAR; STAC concentrates mint/burn/seize/pause/upgrade on un-timelocked single keys with no public holdings and no on-chain NAV. The credit is equivalent; the custody/governance/transparency gap is the deciding factor.
• Size either against the anchor, not headline AUM — and know the anchor is Sky/USDS. The dominant holder of both funds is Grove, the Sky USDS allocator (verified on-chain, Finding 6) — so STAC and JAAA are not diversifying exposures; holding both stacks correlated Grove/Sky risk, and both are downstream of USDS/sUSDS redemption pressure (a USDS stress event is the concrete trigger that forces Grove to redeem and clog the exit queue). But note the divergence: STAC is collapsing into Grove (99.8%), while JAAA’s Grove is exiting (→35%) as a diversified open base replaces it — STAC’s concentration is rising, JAAA’s falling. STAC adds Ethena ($250M Solana) as a second anchor. Treat the curator-gated RWA bucket as one correlated position; watch Grove’s flows (and USDS) as the leading indicator.
• Price STAC’s 2% redemption fee into any horizon under ~1 year — it erases roughly half a year of carry on a round-trip.
• Pre-enroll the KYC allowlist before depositing in either — neither can be added during a crisis.

This framework stops applying when: STAC hardens its keys (adds a timelock/multisig — re-rate immediately) or ships a verifiable on-chain NAV/PoR (the Chronicle feed going live and readable); JAAA’s recovery reverses (open float rolls back toward the March trough); or the shared Grove/Sky anchor materially exits either fund. Any of these → re-run.

Caveats

• JAAA’s Avalanche Grove tranche + spokes are eval-sourced (2026-06-04), not re-verified this run. Only the Ethereum Hub was pulled on-chain; the ~$635M cross-chain total assumes the $250M Avalanche Grove tranche is unchanged. If Grove has also unwound there, JAAA’s total and its cross-chain Grove share are lower than shown.
• STAC’s NAV and its Solana/Ethena leg are off-chain / non-EVM — from rwa.xyz and press, not independently verified on-chain. STAC’s retention read rests on the Ethereum leg.
• “Open float” excludes Grove but not every non-natural holder. For JAAA, open float = ETH leg − Grove’s verified balance; it still includes the Aave Horizon aToken (~$17M, a leveraged loop, not a natural investor), so the truly diversified base is modestly smaller than the ~$241M shown. STAC open float = total supply − Grove (clean).
• Smallest fact that would falsify the core call: STAC adding an on-chain timelock/multisig over its MASTER/ISSUER keys would collapse the governance gap behind “prefer JAAA.” Next-most-useful follow-up: re-verify the Avalanche Grove tranche on its own chain to pin JAAA’s true cross-chain Grove share, and confirm the USDS→Grove→CLO carry actually accrues to the sUSDS rate (vs. being retained at the Star level).