Metlabs and ATH21 collaborate on tokenized issuances in Spain

Metlabs and ATH21 agreed in October 2025 to collaborate on tokenized issuances in Spain. The collaboration combines Metlabs’ blockchain infrastructure development with ATH21’s legal advice, with a specific objective: supporting businesses that want to structure an issuance and implement it on a technology platform designed for its operation.

Issuing a token starts with defining the right it represents, identifying its issuer and determining how it may be transferred. The legal structure and software design need to reflect the same instrument. The agreement connects these two areas of work so that legal and engineering decisions can be considered together throughout the development of the project.

ATH21: the legal structure of the issuance

ATH21 is a firm specialising in digital assets and fintech. Its work spans regulatory, corporate and tax advice, and its Corporate team supports businesses with tokenization strategies. Within this collaboration, it contributes the legal perspective needed to assess the instrument, the rights of its holders and the requirements applicable to the project in Spain.

Legal work helps define the structure of the transaction and the documentation that accompanies it. It also helps establish conditions for participation and transfer. These definitions become development requirements: who may subscribe, which operations are permitted and what information needs to remain available throughout the life of the issuance to the relevant participants.

Metlabs: from the instrument to the technology system

Metlabs handles blockchain engineering: system architecture, smart contracts and the applications used by the issuer and its users. Implementation translates project requirements into programmable rules, permissions and operating processes. The technology is designed around the issuance, its participants and the functions that the system needs to support during initial implementation and subsequent operation.

This coordination allows a project to be considered as a complete operation. Initial issuance, subsequent administration and the exercise of the rights attached to the instrument require decisions that affect both software and documentation. Legal advice and engineering provide different answers that need to fit within the same operating model for the business and its users.

The collaboration with ATH21 brings legal support into Metlabs’ work on tokenized issuances in Spain. For an issuer, the starting point is to define the transaction and assemble the capabilities needed to execute it: legal structuring, technology infrastructure and, where applicable, the custody and registration services required by the particular instrument.