Private Sale Tokenization: Opening a New Era in the Primary Market

Beyond the surge of stablecoins, equity tokenization is becoming the new focus of the market. Recently, a Web3 startup completed a $5 million Pre-seed funding round, drawing attention to private equity tokenization. The company aims to address a long-standing issue: why do the early growth dividends of top private companies only belong to institutions and super-rich individuals? Their proposed solution is to leverage blockchain technology to reconstruct the participation model, transforming the private equity of unlisted companies into asset-backed Tokens, allowing ordinary investors to participate in the growth of star enterprises with a lower threshold.

The private market has always been one of the most closed asset classes in the financial sector. A certain company has built an index that includes 30 top private companies to measure the overall performance of Pre-IPO enterprises. Data shows that these companies have attractive return rates. From the beginning of 2021 to the first quarter of 2025, the index has cumulatively increased by 81%, far exceeding the 51% rise of the Nasdaq 100 index during the same period. Even in the context of an overall market downturn in the first quarter of 2025, these leading private companies still rose against the trend by 13%.

However, this "value capture window" has long been the privilege of a few. The asset market, with an average transaction size exceeding $3 million, complex structures, and a lack of public liquidity, is completely unattainable for most retail investors. Furthermore, the exit paths for these companies are not limited to IPOs, and mergers and acquisitions have become a more mainstream option, further raising the participation threshold for retail investors.

Private equity tokenization is attempting to break this structural inequality. It transforms the originally high-threshold, low-liquidity, and complex opaque private equity into on-chain native assets, significantly lowering the access threshold, enhancing liquidity, and allowing assets that were originally locked for long periods to be priced around the clock.

Currently, several major private sale tokenization platforms have emerged in the market:

1. A certain platform aims to break the walls of the traditional financial world, allowing Pre-IPO assets, which are exclusively enjoyed by high-net-worth individuals, to become publicly accessible investment products for global users. It first completes the genuine equity acquisition of the target company, and then tokenizes this portion of equity on-chain in a 1:1 manner. The total issuance, circulation path, and holding information of all tokens are fully transparent and recorded on-chain, open for real-time verification by any user.

2. Another established investment platform has launched a new product line, with the first product targeting a well-known aerospace company, attempting to "mirror" it as a publicly subscribed on-chain asset. Each Token is tied to the expected value trend of the company, with a minimum investment threshold of only 50 dollars. This design does not confer voting rights but has created a unique "tracker" mechanism. When the target company achieves an IPO, is acquired, or experiences other "liquidity events", the platform will return corresponding profits to investors based on their Token holding ratio.

3. A Europe-based RWA asset tokenization solution provider has also begun to venture into the private sale market for securitization. Its core advantage lies in the standardization of product structure, with compliance logic embedded in the issuance process, allowing for rapid replication and expansion across different jurisdictions. The technology standards used by the company enable tokens to incorporate KYC, transfer restrictions, and other control logic throughout the entire process from generation to transfer, ensuring that the products are legal and transparent.

The rise of private sale equity tokenization signifies that the Primary Market is entering a new phase of structural transformation driven by blockchain technology. However, this path still faces many challenges. It reshapes the access rules but struggles to break through the deep structural barriers between retail and institutional investors. This is not only a technological innovation but also a long-term game about trust, transparency, and institutional reconstruction. The real test has just begun.