LEI (Legal Entity Identifier)
Regulation & issuerA 20-character global identifier for the legal entity behind an issuer, maintained under GLEIF. It resolves 'who exactly is the counterparty' to a single verifiable code.
Names are ambiguous: issuers operate through chains of subsidiaries across jurisdictions. An LEI pins the specific legal person, its registered address, its parent, and its registration status.
For institutional diligence, mapping a token to an LEI — and ideally to on-chain addresses — turns issuer risk from a branding question into a corporate-structure question.
Why it matters
It is the difference between knowing a brand and knowing your legal counterparty.
See it in action
Related terms
Which regime the issuer operates under — for example EU MiCA e-money tokens, a NYDFS trust charter, or a Singapore/UAE licence — and the reserve, reporting and redemption duties that come with it.
How much of the reserve, custody or redemption pipeline depends on a single bank, custodian or jurisdiction.
Whether reserve assets are legally segregated from the issuer's estate, so holders are paid ahead of general creditors if the issuer fails.