New York Life's junk bond fund, built with Centrifuge, arrives on Stellar for DeFi use cases
Junk bonds have a new home: the blockchain. High-yield corporate bonds are now available on Stellar as a tokenized fund built for DeFi use cases, according to a post on X.
The products are HYB and its DeFi-friendly sibling, deHYB. Behind them is New York Life Investment Management (NYLIM), a firm with roughly $807–838 billion under management. Centrifuge, the tokenization platform, handles the onchain side.
HYB is short for the Anemoy U.S. High Yield Corporate Bond Segregated Portfolio. It launched on June 30, 2026, as NYLIM’s first tokenized offering.
The fund offers exposure to an actively managed US high-yield corporate bond strategy. These bonds come from companies with lower credit ratings, so they pay more interest to compensate investors for the added risk.
The division of labor is clean. NYLIM keeps control of portfolio management and risk decisions. Centrifuge runs the onchain issuance and the infrastructure that makes the token work.
Money moves through stablecoins. Investors subscribe and redeem using USDC , which then gets converted into dollars to buy the underlying bonds off-chain.
HYB is structured as a British Virgin Islands segregated portfolio under Regulation S, which means it targets non-US professional investors.
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HYB on its own comes with the usual gatekeeping. Tokenized funds typically require whitelisting and KYC checks, so tokens can only move between approved wallets.
deHYB, also called HYB deRWA, is Centrifuge’s answer. It’s a permissionless wrapper that lets the token transfer freely and plug into DeFi protocols while keeping the economics of the underlying fund intact.
Early adoption is modest. As of mid-October 2026, HYB held around $637,000 in onchain assets under management, while deHYB held approximately $157,000.
The fund has picked up outside validation. Particula gave HYB an “A” rating on August 20, 2026, focused on token mechanics and institutional backing.
It has also been spreading across chains. HYB expanded to Avalanche in September 2026 and reached Solana on September 24, 2026. Stellar now joins that list, per the X announcement.
Stellar isn’t new to tokenized real-world assets. Its ecosystem has seen notable RWA activity, including sovereign debt projects tied to Centrifuge.
The risks deserve equal billing. High-yield bonds carry real credit risk, and putting them onchain doesn’t change that. A DeFi wrapper makes the token easier to move, not the underlying companies more likely to repay their debts.
There’s also a tension worth watching. HYB is built for non-US professional investors under Reg S, while deHYB strips away whitelisting and KYC. How that permissionless layer coexists with the fund’s restricted legal structure is likely to draw scrutiny as adoption grows.
Combined onchain assets across HYB and deHYB sit well under $1 million. The cross-chain expansion to Avalanche, Solana and now Stellar suggests NYLIM and Centrifuge are betting that wider distribution will close that gap.