In June of this year, internet brokerage giant Robinhood launched a new service for European users, offering the opportunity to trade "stock tokens" of top-tier pre-IPO unicorn companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX. Robinhood even airdropped a small amount of OpenAI and SpaceX tokens to eligible new users as a way to attract them.

However, this move was immediately met with opposition from OpenAI. The official OpenAI statement on X clarified that "these OpenAI tokens do not represent OpenAI equity, and we have no partnership with Robinhood." In response to this message, Elon Musk did not directly comment on Robinhood's tokens, but he retweeted OpenAI's statement and sarcastically commented, "Your own 'equity' is fake." This quip not only mocks OpenAI's shift to a for-profit entity and its capital operation but also indirectly points out the strong resistance of pre-IPO companies to the deprivation of their "pricing power" for such shares.

Despite the skepticism, traditional brokerage firms' attempts reflect the market's strong interest in on-chain Pre-IPO asset trading. The reason is simple: the massive benefits of the primary market have long been controlled by a few institutions and high-net-worth individuals. The valuations of many star companies have shown a significant leap at the time of listing (or acquisition). For example, take the design software company Figma: unable to complete a merger with Adobe due to antitrust reasons, Figma went public independently in 2025 at a price of $33 per share. The closing price on the first day soared to $115.5, a 250% surge. This price corresponds to a market capitalization of nearly $680 billion, far exceeding the $200 billion valuation discussed in the Adobe acquisition negotiations. Similarly, the recently listed crypto exchange Bullish surged 290% on its opening day.
These examples illustrate that investing in such companies before their IPO could potentially yield returns of several times, if not tens of times, the initial investment. However, traditionally, it has been relatively difficult and complex for ordinary investors to participate in such opportunities. Allowing retail investors to early share in the appreciation dividends of these future star companies through blockchain is precisely what makes the concept of on-chain Pre-IPO so attractive.

The Scale and Barriers of the Private Equity Market

Over the past few decades, the global private equity market has been massive and growing rapidly but highly closed off. According to research by Yann Robard, a partner at Dawson Management, in the article "Why Private Equity Wins: Reflecting on a Quarter Century of Outstanding Performance," over the past 25 years, the private equity market has created about three times the value of the public stock market during the same period. Many excellent companies have delayed or even bypassed going public, raising billions of dollars through multiple rounds of private funding. For example, in October 2024, OpenAI received a $6.6 billion investment from investors such as Microsoft and SoftBank, followed by another massive $40 billion financing in March 2025, making it the largest private financing deal in history. With abundant private funding, many companies can stay unlisted for a long time or go public late. As a result, enormous growth dividends have been generated before these companies go public, and only institutional investors have been able to participate in these gains, while ordinary people have been completely excluded.

Comparison chart of value creation between the private market and the public stock market over the past 25 years, Source: Dawsonpartners

Traditionally, a few secondary trading platforms targeting wealthy investors (such as Forge and EquityZen in the U.S.) have provided limited Pre-IPO share transfer channels. However, these platforms mainly operate on a peer-to-peer matching basis, with high trading thresholds usually only catering to accredited investors, requiring minimum investments in the thousands of dollars. This OTC model has led to poor market liquidity, lack of price discovery mechanisms, and low trading efficiency. Furthermore, many unicorn companies have highly restrictive transfer provisions in their bylaws, often requiring company approval for employees or early shareholders to sell shares.

Within the existing regulatory framework, the secondary market for private equity is almost inaccessible to retail investors. But this barrier has slowly started to open up some "cracks." For example, in June of this year, Nasdaq Private Market (NPM) launched Tape D, which is a real-time private company data set that enhances price transparency and valuation visibility for private and pre-IPO companies. Users can obtain the desired information through an API interface. This has also provided a relatively fair environment for "oracles."

The Pre-IPO market is not a new concept in the crypto space. Over the past few years, limited by technological capabilities, compliance environments, and inadequate investor education, this model has always struggled to gain widespread adoption. However, the situation is gradually maturing now, with significant improvements in blockchain scalability and user experience, and increasingly robust infrastructure for custody, KYC/AML, etc. At the same time, AI and crypto companies are approaching IPO milestones frequently, providing new narratives and investment demand for early access to these high-growth targets. Compared to putting funds solely in highly volatile crypto assets, Pre-IPO tokenized products, beyond speculation, offer structured and predictable exit paths, attracting more funds seeking diversified portfolios.

More importantly, millennials and Gen Z are becoming the main force in investment, preferring direct investment, frequent trading, and actively seeking high-potential private equity opportunities such as SpaceX, OpenAI, Anthropic, etc. However, within the traditional framework, they have almost no access to these transactions. If the Pre-IPO market can leverage on-chain tokenization to split unlisted equity into small units accessible at a low threshold and introduce a transparent secondary liquidity mechanism, there is an opportunity to provide cost-effective, self-managed, and values-aligned investment entry points for these young investors. It also presents an unprecedented global retail incremental funding pool for private equity.

Compared to putting money into a retirement fund, the Gen Z and Millennial demographic are more inclined to invest. For more detailed data across multiple dimensions, see Jarsy's Medium research report.

Through tokenization, originally expensive and scarce pre-IPO equities can be fragmented into small digital tokens and traded 24/7 on-chain. Smart contracts can also automatically execute rights such as dividends and voting, enhancing transparency and efficiency. More importantly, if these tokens can be traded on DEXs or compliant platforms, market makers and liquidity pools can provide continuous quotes, avoiding the illiquidity of pure peer-to-peer transactions. In theory, the tokenization of private equity can allow global retail investors to participate in the growth of top private companies at a very low threshold and improve the price discovery mechanism, making pricing more market-driven and transparent.

Of course, the grander the vision, the narrower the reality. Traditional regulatory complexity, the reluctance of private companies, and the complexity of technology integration are all challenging issues that have not yet been resolved on the tokenization path. Nevertheless, over the past year, with the changing policy landscape, we have seen a wave of projects exploring on-chain Pre-IPO trading emerge. Some focus on derivatives and leveraged trading, while others concentrate on the tokenization transfer of real equity.

On-Chain Trading for Pre-IPO

This category of platforms focuses on the trading experience and often does not directly hold the actual equity of the target company but allows users to speculate on the valuation fluctuations of unlisted companies through derivatives or other mechanisms. The advantage of this approach is a low barrier to entry and no involvement in complex equity settlement processes; however, the challenge lies in pricing basis and compliance risks.

Ventuals: Offers a 10x leveraged "Pre-IPO Perpetual Contract" on Hyperliquid

Ventuals is a new project incubated by Paradigm and founded by Alvin Hsia, who was also involved in the previous hype around the content platform Subs.fun and previously collaborated with Paradigm as an Eir (Entrepreneur in Residence) to incubate the end-to-end data platform Shadow.

Ventuals aims to allow users to trade perpetual futures of unlisted companies on the Hyperliquid blockchain. This model is similar to contract trading common in the crypto market, but the underlying assets are replaced with valuation indices of popular startup companies. Ventuals' core advantage is the ability to provide a trading market without the need to hold the underlying stocks, making it more akin to platforms like Polymarket, allowing it to circumvent many traditional securities regulatory requirements (such as identity verification, accredited investor status, etc.).

The platform creates a custom perpetual contract market following Hyperliquid's HIP-3 standard and utilizes an "Optimistic Oracle" mechanism to obtain valuation data: anyone can submit data on a company's valuation and stake a collateral; if unchallenged, the price becomes effective; if disputed, it is settled through on-chain voting. This mechanism brings private funding valuation consensus, which is usually hard to obtain, onto the blockchain, providing a basis for pricing.

Ventuals' pricing method is also interesting, as it does not directly use the company's most recent funding round stock price but anchors the token price by dividing the company's valuation by 10 billion. For example, if OpenAI's latest valuation is $3.5 trillion, then the initial price of 1 vOAI token would be set at $350. This design lowers the barrier to entry, making the price figure intuitive. However, the issue lies in the highly opaque and infrequently updated valuations of private companies, mainly relying on occasional funding or secondary market transaction information. Despite Ventuals introducing Oracle+EMA (Exponential Moving Average) and other technologies to smooth prices, the information asymmetry remains a challenge: when the base data lags or distorts, derivative trading based on it may amplify market fluctuations. Platforms like Polymarket that utilize oracles have encountered some problems due to these deficiencies, and as transaction volumes increase, the rapid trading process could pose larger challenges for Ventuals.

Due to the founding team using investor money to buy Ferraris, the market's valuation plummeted, source: Ventuals

As a trading platform, Ventuals' biggest selling point is offering up to 10x leverage for long or short positions, allowing users to "bet big." However, the platform is currently in a testing phase (operating on testnet only). Ventuals is taking a completely decentralized derivatives path, aiming to build a global Pre-IPO exchange without the need for trusted intermediaries through on-chain high-performance matching (Hyperliquid's capability of 100,000 orders per second). Of course, the compliance challenges ahead are still significant; despite not holding actual shares, these contracts fundamentally bet on security prices and may still be considered by regulators as securities derivatives. Additionally, the liquidity provider and oracle accuracy guarantor remain unknown factors.

Earlybird: Pre-IPO Long/Short Market on Solana

Earlybird was built by the team behind the NFT marketplace Hyperspace on Solana (which ceased operations in 2024, with even the Twitter account directly rebranded from Hyperspace to Earlybird), also focusing on allowing users to "long or short a company before its IPO," positioning itself as the next-generation retail-friendly private equity trading platform. The team had previously received investment from top crypto VCs (such as Dragonfly, Pantera) and gained experience in the Solana NFT space, and now has shifted towards the Pre-IPO track.

It seems the price data provided by the oracles of the two platforms is slightly different, unsure if it will be corrected upon launch, future inclusion of Polymarket might enable cross-platform arbitrage

Earlybird's founding team includes Hyperspace co-founders Kamil Mafoud and Santhosh Narayan. It is said that after the closure of Hyperspace's NFT business in 2024, this team started to focus on developing Earlybird. In fact, the concept of a "Pre-IPO platform" might be more fitting for them than an "NFT platform," as both of them have experience working at Morgan Stanley and have served as investment analysts for many years; their Wall Street connections may be more valuable in this field than their crypto connections.

The specific product form of Earlybird has not been fully revealed yet (the platform is still in a closed testing phase by invitation only), but you can experience the product through the Dev testnet (with a $10,000 play money lol). From its promotion, it is likely to be similar to Ventuals, using on-chain derivatives or synthetic assets to allow users to speculate on the valuation changes of pre-listed companies. Solana's high-speed, low-fee on-chain environment is also suitable for building a real-time trading market. The team may use an order book or AMM market maker mechanism to provide more continuous liquidity than traditional OTC. It is worth mentioning that there have been similar practices of Pre-IPO asset trading on Solana, such as PreStocks, and earlier on-chain US stocks (like synthetic assets mStock on the now-defunct Mango Markets).

Earlybird's trading logic, source: @0xprotonkid

From a market positioning perspective, Earlybird may take a more open and decentralized approach, with relatively loose user region restrictions and qualification requirements. In short, Earlybird is an active explorer of the Pre-IPO track in the Solana camp. Like Ventuals, it has chosen the approach of "not touching real equity but achieving it through derivatives in the market." Its success largely depends on its ability to address the two core issues of valuation pricing and compliance risk control.

PreStock (backed by Republic): The "Good Kid" in Equity Token Trading Platforms

Compared to Ventuals and Earlybird's "light asset" model, PreStocks is closer to traditional stock trading, just moved onto the blockchain. PreStocks was founded by a Singaporean team and is backed by the established private placement platform Republic Capital. It holds real shares of private companies through a special purpose vehicle (SPV) and issues 1:1 pegged tokens.

In simple terms, if PreStocks buys a batch of seed shares of OpenAI through an SPV, it will mint the "pOPENAI" token on Solana at a ratio of one token per share for users to trade. Each token is backed by real stock, and holders of the token can enjoy nearly the same economic rights as stockholders (such as stock price appreciation benefits, future IPO realization, etc.), just without direct legal shareholder status or receiving dividend payouts.

PreStocks currently supports token trading for 22 private companies, including well-known unicorns like OpenAI and Canva. Users only need a Solana wallet and can buy and sell these tokens for as little as a few dollars, with no investment threshold. Tokens on PreStocks can be freely transferred on-chain, traded or lent on DEX platforms, used to provide liquidity to earn trading fees, or used to build new structured products. PreStocks integrates the Jupiter aggregator and Meteora market maker, enabling 24/7 trading and real-time settlement.

To ensure that each token is backed by real stock, PreStocks has regulated custodians holding the underlying shares and commits to regular disclosure of audit reports. However, the team has not yet publicly disclosed detailed proof of holdings, only claiming that all tokens are 100% fully collateralized. Considering the involvement of shares of unlisted companies, PreStocks faces significant compliance pressure, so it blocks users from major jurisdictions such as the United States (no KYC is required for on-chain trading, but KYC is required for minting or redeeming PreStocks). The company's choice of registration in Singapore is also due to the consideration of relatively lenient regulations.

The founder of PreStocks, Xavier Ekkel, once stated that his vision was to make private equity investment as simple as trading public stocks. PreStocks has indeed to some extent weakened the monopoly of the traditional secondary market by providing retail investors with a zero-threshold entry channel to unicorns. However, this model also has clear limitations. Firstly, liquidity: due to the limited source of each company's shares (currently on the PreStocks platform, the market value of a single company's token is usually only in the tens of thousands of dollars), the market depth is shallow, and large trades will impact the price. In comparison, institutions such as Forge handle transaction sizes with a median over $5 million and possess institutional-grade order management systems. For PreStocks to build its trading system, it would require a more extensive user base.

Secondly, its scalability is also limited by the "1:1 ownership" model. For each new target, PreStocks must negotiate the purchase of actual shares offline, requiring case-by-case communication with the seller (employees, VCs, funds, etc.), a lengthy process subject to the target company's willingness. Furthermore, PreStocks itself is not a licensed securities exchange; it operates more in a gray area. Once regulatory attitudes change, the platform may be forced to restrict or delist related assets.

Overall, PreStocks has taken a more tangible path than derivatives, using real money to "pave the way" for retail investors. Its advantage lies in better protection of investors' rights (backed by real stocks, future IPOs can receive real redemption), but the downside is high operating costs and significant compliance challenges. The author believes that Repuic is more inclined to develop PreStocks into an on-chain "high-liquidity trading platform" as the distribution of its mirrored tokens. This is because it operates according to Reg CF rules, limiting investments to $5,000 and requiring a one-year lockup. Meanwhile, liquidity and "lock-up" restrictions on its own compliant centralized exchange platform, INX, contradict the product's original intention. Therefore, it chooses the "roundabout path" of PreStocks.

Further reading: "Figma set to have the largest IPO this year, can you buy its private equity on Republic?"

Focus on Platforms for Real Equity Tokenization

This category of platforms directly offers retail investors the opportunity to purchase equity in pre-IPO companies, essentially a form of on-chain securities issuance or private crowdfunding. They usually need to hold or lock up real stocks and use tokens as proof for investors to share future profits. This model is more akin to traditional finance but leverages blockchain for registration and circulation, so they are often operated by traditional financial companies or fintech firms.

Jarsy: Group-Buying Platform for Equity Tokens

Among many Pre-IPO projects, Jarsy has made solid progress. It quietly launched on the Arbitrum network in 2024. The company behind it, Jarsy, Inc., is headquartered in San Francisco, USA, founded by Hanqin, Chunyang Shen, Yiying Hu, and others. The founding team includes former executives from Uber China and the engineering lead from Afterpay, bringing deep expertise in internet product operation and compliance. It has received a $5 million investment from Breyer Capital and other institutions, with notable investors including Evan Cheng, CEO of Mysten Labs; Nathan McCauley, CEO of Anchorage; and Richard Liu, CEO of Huma Finance. Jarsy's mission is to "democratize private equity investment through blockchain," providing ordinary investors with a channel to purchase equity in unicorn companies through strict 1:1 asset-backed tokens.

Jarsy's operating model involves first listing the target company's Pre-IPO equity product on the platform for users to subscribe to in advance (payable in USDC or USD). Once a certain subscription threshold is reached, Jarsy negotiates with venture capital funds, early shareholders, or employees holding shares of that company to purchase a certain amount of real equity with the raised funds. If the acquisition is successful, tokens representing the actual shares are minted and distributed to investors based on the shares they own; if the negotiation fails or the fundraising target is not met, the funds are refunded. This process is similar to traditional private placement transfer but leverages a crowdfunding approach of "fundraising before acquisition" and on-chain tokens as proof of ownership.

Jarsy also places all held stock assets in a dedicated Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) for custody and provides a real-time on-chain reserve proof page for verification. Each Jarsy token purchased by an investor (e.g., JSPACEX representing SpaceX shares) is backed by a corresponding share of real stock. While token holders are not legal shareholders of the company, they enjoy nearly identical economic rights to shareholders, including cashing out during a future IPO, consideration in case of acquisition, and even potential dividend income. This sets Jarsy apart from the aforementioned projects and positions it more as a "group-buying platform" for private equity.

However, Jarsy has significantly reduced the entry barrier, with a minimum investment of only $10 per transaction. More remarkably, besides US investors, global users can participate without being accredited investors. Jarsy also optimizes the user experience of Web2, supporting email registration and fiat payments, creating custodial wallets for users, and making token purchases almost devoid of blockchain complexity. Jarsy emphasizes compliance and user-friendliness, aiming to build a "Web2 frontend + Web3 backend" bridging product. Since its launch, Jarsy has rolled out tokenized equity of star companies like Anthropic, Stripe, and Perplexity AI, many of which were quickly sold out.

Of course, the Jarsy model still faces two major challenges. The first is liquidity. Since the supply of each Jarsy token depends on the actual equity received, and private equity itself lacks public market pricing, when large token holders sell off, it is easy to experience price crashes or a lack of buyers. Currently, some of the largest holdings in Jarsy are X.ai (about $350,000), Circle ($490,000), and SpaceX ($670,000), none of which are considered large in scale. In such a shallow market, a tens of thousands of dollars sell order could easily crash the price, showing a clear lack of trading depth.

The second is the expansion bottleneck issue that any "true holding" project will encounter. The effort required for Jarsy to add a new target is far greater than that of a "derivative model platform," and it requires extensive connections and resources. In addition, although Jarsy claims to prioritize compliance, it ultimately offers unregistered security tokens, creating uncertainty in the U.S. regulatory environment. However, Jarsy has proactively partnered with top law firms like WSGR (Wilson Sonsini, Goodrich & Rosati) to plan a compliance roadmap, indicating its intention to seek regulatory exemptions or approvals, which may make it more institutionally friendly in the current compliance environment.

As CEO Han Qin put it, "We founded Jarsy to bring private equity investment opportunities that have long been monopolized by institutions to ordinary people." Despite challenges such as liquidity and compliance on the road ahead, Jarsy has taken an important first step and is one of the few relatively compliant "equity tokenization platforms." With user growth and asset scale expansion, if it gradually gains regulatory recognition, it is not ruled out that its tokens may circulate on a compliant secondary market, truly making "Pre-IPO equity" a mainstream asset class.

Opening Bell: Pioneer of Traditional Stock Chain Transformation

The Opening Bell platform launched by Superstate offers another path, allowing companies to directly move their stocks onto the chain. Unlike the aforementioned projects where a third party buys shares and issues tokens, here the company itself becomes the issuer. In May 2025, Superstate (a compliance fintech company founded by Compound's founder Robert Leshner and others) announced the launch of Opening Bell, allowing publicly listed stocks or qualifying private companies registered with the SEC to conduct 24/7 on-chain trading via the Solana blockchain. In simple terms, public companies or private companies can issue on-chain versions of stock tokens on the Opening Bell platform, ensuring that these tokens represent actual legal ownership (not Mirror token synthetic products).

The early adopters of this model include the Nasdaq-listed company Upexi (stock symbol UPXI) and the Canadian company SOL Strategies. Recently, Galaxy Digital, which gained attention for its Ethereum Trust, also participated (although only SOL Strategies has not yet been listed on Nasdaq). This requires a robust legal framework support, for example, Superstate has already registered a digital transfer agent in the United States to ensure that the on-chain shareholder registry is synchronized with traditional registration.

The emergence of Opening Bell signals further integration between traditional finance and blockchain. Through this platform, company stocks can be traded 24/7 in real-time, providing unprecedented flexibility and transparency, making stocks "always on" like cryptocurrencies. Private companies also have the opportunity to access liquidity early through Opening Bell. Some companies planning to go public or not in a hurry to IPO can fully engage with global investors by issuing on-chain stocks to raise funds or provide shareholder liquidity. Superstate clearly stated that Opening Bell's target customers include both listed companies and "late-stage private companies" seeking liquidity.

Of course, advancing this model still requires regulatory approval. Although companies like SOL Strategies have announced on-chain plans, they have all stated that they are "pending regulatory approval." However, at least in terms of trends, regulatory agencies have shown a more open discussion attitude towards asset tokenization. The U.S. SEC held a special roundtable in 2025 to discuss securities tokenization, with even traditional giants such as Blackstone's CEO and Robinhood's CEO publicly expressing support. Superstate itself has had successful experiences in stablecoins (USTB) and on-chain bond funds and is now expanding into the stock field, making the timing perfect.

Regarding Pre-IPO, Opening Bell provides a possible path to a de facto IPO where companies do not need to go through the lengthy traditional IPO process but can make their stocks publicly traded through blockchain during the private placement stage. For example, a unicorn company can issue partial equity tokens on Opening Bell for trading and then formally IPO or merge when conditions are right. This is somewhat similar to the past OTC market but with the transparency and efficiency greatly improved due to on-chain technology.

From a certain perspective, if this model is accepted, future IPOs may no longer need Wall Street underwriters but can be completed on-chain. In this sense, Superstate is like the "Binance Alpha" of Nasdaq.

Read Next:《Superstate Introduces "On-Chain Equity," SOL Reserve Company Moves Coin vs. Equity Battle Back On-Chain》

Is the Era of Investment Democratization Here?

Opening up investment opportunities for unlisted companies to be more accessible and efficient. For the average retail investor, this is undoubtedly an exciting trend. From a wealth opportunity standpoint, this helps narrow the gap between the masses and institutional investors. However, the on-chain Pre-IPO field still faces a mix of opportunities and risks. "Regulatory compliance" and "the target company's reluctance" are the Sword of Damocles hanging over such projects.

Embracing regulation and cooperation should be the primary direction of on-chain Pre-IPO transactions. More and more traditional financial institutions and investors have actually shown interest in this area. For example, exchanges like the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are exploring tokenized securities; well-known VCs may consider partnering with these platforms to release a portion of their shares on-chain without affecting company control. This new paradigm of LP and GP cooperation, once successful, is expected to greatly accelerate the popularization of private equity tokenization. But undoubtedly, on-chain Pre-IPO trading is a promising new frontier. Free trading of unlisted equity, this "Trojan Horse," may eventually open the "city gates" of the capital market's ultimate form. Perhaps we are just steps away from the city gates.

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia