Author: Owen Chen from Peking University Blockchain Association (X @xizhe_chan)

Abstract

Pre-IPO stock holds a trillion-dollar value in global asset allocation but has long been constrained by two structural dilemmas: first, high entry barriers for participants, and second, a scarcity of liquidity exits at the exit end. In the context of real-world assets (RWA) being a focal point of financial innovation, "equity tokenization" is seen as a key mechanism to break the liquidity deadlock in the private equity market. This report focuses on the underlying equity tokenization of unlisted companies (especially unicorns), aiming to clarify the evolution logic of this sector from early speculation to compliant infrastructure by analyzing the current market situation, realization paths, and key challenges. The core conclusions of the report are as follows:

1. Market Situation: Despite global unicorn valuations reaching trillions of dollars, the actual scale of the tokenization market is only in the range of $100-200 million (excluding some non-freely tradable projects, the actual tradable scale is only in the tens of millions). The market exhibits a strong head effect, with assets highly concentrated in a few AI tech unicorns like OpenAI and SpaceX. This indicates that the industry is still in the very early stages of transitioning from a "narrative space" to an "effective market," and has yet to form a scalable asset supply and acceptance capacity.

2. Path Differentiation: The industry has formed three differentiated paths, with the core differences lying in the "degree of rights confirmation" and "participation of the target company":

• Synthetic Asset Type (Republic, Ventuals): Includes Perps and debt note types, does not hold underlying equity, only provides valuation exposure, and meets speculative demand with high leverage, mainly serving as a flow introduction.
• SPV Indirect Holding Type (Jarsy, PreStocks, Paimon): Holds shares through offshore SPVs and tokenizes rights, currently the most mainstream landing form. However, it faces dual compliance challenges from the target company and regulatory bodies, with recent public warnings from companies like OpenAI exposing the legal vulnerabilities of this model in violating "transfer restriction clauses."
• Native Collaborative Type (Securitize, Centrifuge): Essentially provides TaaS (Tokenization as a Service) for the target company. Relying on Transfer Agent qualifications, it achieves legal mapping of on-chain tokens and shareholder registers, realizing true equity on-chain. Although the landing cycle is long, it can solve legal finality dilemmas and provide compliant paths for IPO transitions.

3. Trend Judgment: Tokenization does not automatically create liquidity; the current market faces liquidity issues (thin markets, pricing inefficiencies). The future breakthrough point for the industry lies not in unilateral issuance but in collaboration with the target company:

• Compliance Side: Under dual pressure from regulatory bodies and corporate legal departments, business models will gradually shift towards compliance collaboration, where service providers offer TaaS infrastructure to issuers.
• Asset Side: Target assets will shift from crowded head unicorns to long-tail private companies with more urgent exit demands.
• Facility Side: There is a need to build native RWA trading facilities that adapt to securities attributes (such as compliant AMMs, on-chain order books) to address the issue of insufficient depth.
• Ecological Side: The future market will move towards a multi-layered symbiotic pattern rather than a single model of survival of the fittest. The synthetic asset model serves as a flow entry point and plays a role in user cultivation; the SPV indirect holding type has strong flexibility and can provide early validation for specific assets; the native collaborative type offers TaaS services, which is a standardized path for future institutional funding acceptance and large-scale asset tokenization.

Keywords: Pre-IPO equity tokenization, RWA, SPV structure, TaaS (Tokenization as a Service), Transfer Agent

1. Research Scope and Key Definitions

Unlisted company equity, especially the rapidly growing unicorn equity, constitutes an important asset segment in the global economy. However, for a long time, its investment access and primary value-added returns have been dominated by professional institutions such as PE/VC and a few high-net-worth individuals, making it generally difficult for ordinary investors to access. As blockchain technology matures, the path of "equity tokenization" has begun to show feasibility—mapping equity shares with on-chain digital tokens to improve the circulation efficiency of private assets within compliance boundaries. Boston Consulting Group (BCG) estimates that by 2030, the on-chain RWA market size is expected to reach $16 trillion. This reflects the market's high attention to the direction of tokenization: on one hand, due to the enormous value of leading unlisted companies, and on the other hand, because tokenization technology is expected to lower the barriers and trading frictions of traditional financial markets.

Based on the above background, this article will systematically sort out the market background and development status of unlisted equity tokenization, analyze the pain points of the traditional market and the mechanism advantages of tokenization, and combine major platform cases, technical and regulatory points, and key challenges to make judgments on future evolution directions.

1.1 Research Object

This report focuses on the enterprise side—unlisted companies (especially unicorns)—the tokenization of underlying rights, specifically the direct tokenization of "target company equity," rather than the tokenization of LP shares in private equity funds (PE Fund) in the traditional context.

This is mainly because the discussion of "private equity fund tokenization" typically starts from the investment side, using traditional financial frameworks for measurement and analysis, thus easily overlooking the larger portions of the unicorn equity structure—such as shares held by founding teams and employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). Such omissions can lead to deviations in assessing the coverage of assets and real liquidity demands for "equity tokenization," thereby underestimating the actual potential and expandable space of this market.

1.2 Research Premises

Time Frame: The research time frame for this article is until December 27, 2025.

Data Standards: Unlisted equity valuations inherently lack a unified official standard; therefore, the market size and tokenization market value are partially estimated using publicly available statistics and platform data.

Equity Liquidity: Unlisted equity inherently faces lock-up, transfer restrictions, and shareholder register management requirements, and there are difficulties in tokenization in actual implementation. Therefore, it is necessary to distinguish between "theoretical tokenization (full volume)" and "tradable tokenization (after restrictions)" as two sets of concepts.

Currency and Exchange Rate Standards: Involving multiple currency valuations, this article presents data uniformly in USD, with exchange rate conversions approximated based on the assumption of USD stablecoin anchoring, without separately discussing extreme decoupling scenarios.

Special Products: For synthetic contract products on platforms like Bybit and Hyperliquid, open interest is listed separately for measurement and is not included in the "equity token market value" calculation.

2. Market Background: The "Trillion Fortress" of Unlisted Equity

2.1. Asset Spectrum and Holder Structure

Broadly, unlisted company equity covers all shares of companies not listed on public exchanges, with highly diverse types: from early-stage startups to mature large private groups. Holders are not limited to institutional funds and commonly include: founding teams, employee shareholders (equity, option incentives), angel investors, VC/PE, strategic investors, and various secondary transferees.

Table 1: Common Holder Structure of Unlisted Equity

Source: PKUBA Research

Except for strategic investors and some founding teams, other equity holding groups generally have varying degrees of monetization demands: institutional sides emphasize exit efficiency; employees often need liquid assets at departure or financial planning points. However, under traditional mechanisms, aside from a few methods like share buybacks, the efficiency of equity circulation in the secondary market is low, leading to a long-standing structural dilemma of "exit difficulty."

2.2. Scale Characterization: Dual Evidence of Capital Allocation and Asset Valuation

It is important to emphasize that due to the lack of a unified official standard for the scale of unlisted equity, this section mainly infers magnitude from the statistical data of mainstream institutions from two dimensions: "capital allocation capability" and "asset valuation volume."

Table 2: Key Indicator Statistics of Global Private Markets and Unicorn Valuations

Source: Hurun, McKinsey, Preqin

According to the data, from the perspective of "capital allocation capability," the total scale of PE and VC under management is approximately $8.9 trillion ($5.8T + $3.1T), forming an important capital base for unlisted equity assets;

From the perspective of "asset valuation volume," the valuation of the unicorn group alone reaches trillions. According to Hurun Research Institute, this figure is $5.6 trillion as of mid-2025. Additionally, according to CB Insights, as of July 2025, the cumulative valuation of 1,289 unicorns globally exceeds $4.8 trillion.

Table 3: Top 10 Unicorn Companies by Global Valuation

Source: CB Insights (as of December 2025)

It is important to emphasize that whether it is $4.8 trillion or $5.6 trillion, this only represents a few thousand top enterprises at the tip of the pyramid; the vast value of tens of thousands of mature private enterprises and growth companies worldwide that have not reached unicorn status has yet to be accounted for.

In summary, the actual total value of the global private equity market is a vast fortress far exceeding trillions of dollars. This astonishing scale, coupled with a lack of liquidity, undoubtedly provides an imaginative application prospect for tokenization.

3. Core Contradictions and the Value Path of Tokenization

Unlisted equity has long exhibited a coexistence of high value volume and low liquidity, fundamentally due to the dual constraints of institutional and market structures on both the participation and exit ends. On this basis, the potential value of equity tokenization mainly manifests in three aspects: circulation channels, price discovery, and financing channels.

3.1. Dual Bottlenecks: Participation Constraints and Exit Obstacles

Unlisted equity has long presented a structural characteristic of "high value volume—low liquidity supply," rooted in the dual constraints of institutional arrangements and market structures on both the participation and exit ends: on one hand, entry rules and capital thresholds compress the coverage of investors; on the other hand, exit channels rely on terminal events and inefficient secondary circulation, leading to difficulties in asset liquidity.

• Participation Side: High Barriers and Small Circle Compliance Constraints. In most jurisdictions, unlisted equity trading is typically strictly limited to qualified or institutional investors; at the same time, the minimum investment amounts often range from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars, compounded by net asset and income qualification requirements, creating significant institutional and financial barriers that lead to a high concentration of asset dividends and limited breadth of market capital supply.
• Exit Side: Scarcity of Exits and Lengthened Cycles. Traditional exits heavily rely on terminal events such as IPOs or mergers and acquisitions (M&A), but the trend of "unicorns delaying IPOs" has significantly lengthened holding periods, making it difficult to realize paper wealth in a timely manner. Even when transferring through the private secondary market, transactions often depend on offline matchmaking, with common issues of information opacity, high due diligence and settlement frictions, high costs, and slow settlements, resulting in inefficient and unstable liquidity supply.

3.2. Three Types of Gains: Circulation Channels, Price Discovery, and Financing Supplementation

Compared to "tokenization of listed stocks," which mainly improves trading time and channel convenience, unlisted equity tokenization resembles a redesign of the private market structure, primarily reflected in three core gains:

First, in terms of circulation channels: Tokenization reduces the "fortress" dilemma through continuous secondary liquidity, building a two-way channel for both the participation and exit sides.

• For the participation side's dilemma, the potential gain from tokenization mainly manifests in expanding access through divisibility: By breaking down equity rights or economic benefits into finer granularity, it lowers the minimum participation threshold within a compliance framework, allowing more compliant investors to access growth-oriented targets that were previously difficult to allocate, thereby alleviating the structural constraints of "difficulty in participation" in the private market.
• For the exit side's dilemma, the core gain of tokenization lies in supplementing liquidity exits: For employees, early investors, and institutional funds, it can provide a more continuous transfer channel beyond IPOs/M&As/repurchases, expanding liquidity options and reaching a broader range of potential acquirers, thus improving the flexibility of exit choices and timing without altering the terminal path.

Figure 1: Summary of Primary Market Exit Paths

Source: PKUBA Research

Second, in terms of price discovery: Tokenization introduces more continuous price discovery signals, enhancing financing pricing and market capitalization management capabilities. Traditional valuations of unlisted equity primarily anchor on financing rounds, with low frequency and insufficient transparency, leading to valuation signals often lagging behind changes in business operations and market expectations. Through equity tokenization, relatively continuous secondary trading can be formed, providing more continuous price discovery signals, helping to narrow the valuation discrepancies between primary and secondary markets, and offering reference coordinates for subsequent financing pricing and market capitalization management.

Third, in terms of financing supplementation: Tokenization opens up incremental financing channels and is expected to explore new models such as STOs and "digital listings." Tokenization not only serves the circulation of existing rights but may also become an incremental financing tool. Some companies can reach global compliant digital capital pools through the issuance of security tokens (STOs), potentially reducing the cycle and cost of traditional IPOs, and providing new options for financing and capital structure management. Platforms like Opening Bell are also exploring similar "digital listing" paths, but cooperation and scalable implementation at the unlisted company level still require more case validation.

4. Market Status: From Narrative Space to Measurable Scale

4.1. Scale Status: "Tens of Millions" Volume in Early Validation Period

Due to some platforms not disclosing market values and synthetic contracts being measured by open interest, this article primarily uses disclosures from CoinGecko and project official websites for estimation.

Table 4: Statistics of Major Projects in Unlisted Company Equity Tokenization (Incomplete Statistics)

Source: CoinGecko, project official websites, etc., as of December 27, 2025

Based on the above sample, a relatively clear judgment can be made: the unlisted equity tokenization market is still in the early validation stage. From the disclosable data and estimable standards, the overall scale of the industry roughly falls in the range of $100-200 million, and excluding projects like Securitize (CURZ) and Archax (MGL) that are not freely tradable on-chain, the market's freely tradable scale is approximately in the tens of millions of dollars.

This result indicates that: even though the market narrative space is vast, the current secondary liquidity, trading depth, and participation breadth remain limited, resembling a situation where only a few samples are completing market education and model validation in the short term.

4.2. Target Preferences: Concentration of Leading Tech Unicorns and AI Assets

From the distribution of underlying targets, aside from a few special projects, the current tokenized targets exhibit obvious characteristics of high homogeneity and concentration, primarily focusing on top American tech unicorns, with AI-related assets at the core (such as OpenAI, SpaceX, xAI, etc.).

The reason for this concentrated preference is that in the early market, project parties often prioritize assets with high recognition, strong narratives, and concentrated attention to gain trading heat and traffic conversion at lower educational costs, thus promoting product cold starts and market validation. Relatively speaking, although some project parties claim to have contacted or communicated with holders of Chinese background unicorns, as of now, there is still a lack of publicly verifiable landing cases, indicating that this direction has not yet formed a replicable path in terms of asset acquisition, compliance boundaries, and trading structures.

5. Realization Paths: Structural Differences and Rights Boundaries of Three Models

Around the question of "how to turn unlisted equity into on-chain tradable assets," three types of solutions have basically formed in practice, with differences concentrated on: whether there is real shareholding, whether the target company participates, whether the tokens correspond to shareholder rights, and compliance license qualifications.

Table 5: Comparison of Models for Unlisted Company Equity Tokenization

Source: Pharos Research

5.1. Synthetic Asset Type: Value Mapping Detached from Underlying Rights Confirmation

The synthetic asset type typically does not obtain permission from the target company and does not hold underlying equity, but issues contracts that track valuations, allowing investors to gain economic exposure to the target. Its key feature is that investors do not enter the shareholder register and do not enjoy governance, dividends, or other shareholder rights; returns are entirely determined by contract terms and settlement mechanisms, making the product attributes closer to synthetic derivatives.

The advantage of this model lies in its fast launch speed, flexible structure, and lower dependence on asset acquisition; however, risks are also relatively concentrated, mainly including counterparty credit risk, tracking errors and pricing deviation risks, clearing and settlement mechanism risks, and regulatory uncertainties across jurisdictions.

This path aligns more closely with the trading and speculative needs of native Web3 users for risk exposure but cannot be equated with assetization solutions in the sense of equity on-chain. Current representative practices of this model can generally be categorized into two types: one is debt notes (e.g., Republic), and the other is perpetual valuation contracts (e.g., Ventuals, based on Hyperliquid).

Figure 2: Introduction to Equity Tokenization from Ventuals Official White Paper

Source: Ventuals Official Documentation

5.2. SPV Indirect Holding Type: Mainstream Form Validating Demand First

The SPV model structure involves the platform establishing an SPV that acquires and holds real equity in the traditional private secondary market; the tokens sold externally are not the equity of the target company itself but rather the equity certificates of the SPV. Therefore, investors are usually not listed in the target company's shareholder register and do not directly possess governance voting rights.

Figure 3: SPV Indirect Holding Type Issuer Structure Diagram

Source: Pharos Research

The advantage of this structure lies in its flexibility, but risks are also relatively concentrated, mainly reflected in two points:

• Transparency Challenges: The offshore SPV structure is complex, and investors often can only verify asset-side proof of "whether the SPV holds shares," making it difficult to fully penetrate the operational and financial information on the liability side.
• Target Company Warning Risks: If the target company deems the arrangement to violate shareholder agreements or transfer restrictions, it may trigger legal and compliance conflicts, which will be elaborated on later.

5.3. Native Collaborative Type: True Equity On-Chain Centered on Transfer Agent

The premise of the native collaborative type is deep participation from the target company, which can be understood as providing TaaS (Tokenization-as-a-Service) for the target company. However, unlike the general sense of asset on-chain, this model requires a one-to-one correspondence between equity and tokens, with the key being that the project party must possess Transfer Agent (TA) qualifications and use the Transfer Agent as the core to bridge the mapping relationship between on-chain tokens and offline shareholder registers, thereby achieving rights on-chain in a legal structure.

Transfer Agents typically refer to transfer agents registered with the SEC, used to maintain and change shareholder registers. Only when the issuance and circulation of tokens can trigger compliant updates to the shareholder register can the on-chain tokens have a substantial correspondence with the equity; correspondingly, token holders may then obtain a more complete boundary of shareholder rights within the company's articles of association and applicable legal framework, including voting, dividends, and information rights. This is also the fundamental reason why the native collaborative type has less controversy and clearer rights foundations compared to SPV and synthetic asset paths.

However, the implementation cost of this model is also significantly higher. On one hand, its trading and transfer processes are more likely to be closely monitored by regulators; on the other hand, it often requires additional licenses and trading facilities such as Broker-Dealer (B-D) and ATS, forming a compliant closed loop from issuance, registration to secondary circulation. Therefore, its main constraints are not theoretical feasibility but rather compliance completeness, implementation cycles, and the willingness of the target company to collaborate. As for current market progress:

• Opening Bell is currently more focused on scenarios involving listed companies, while cooperation with unlisted companies remains primarily at the official promotional level;
• Securitize's path has strong practical reference value for compliance, which will be further elaborated on later;
• Centrifuge, as a leading project in the RWA field, announced in November this year its entry into equity tokenization, shifting its business focus from private credit to unlisted equity, and its subsequent implementation progress is worth close attention.

Figure 4: Centrifuge's Entry into Unlisted Equity Tokenization Promotional Image

Source: Centrifuge Official Website

6. Case Studies: Typical Examples of Three Models

Based on the previous path classification, the compliance strategies and trading facilities corresponding to the three models are significantly different. This section will further dissect specific case studies of the three models and compare their business processes and operational effectiveness.

6.1. Synthetic Asset Type: Introduction of Speculative Flow

The synthetic asset type does not acquire underlying equity but instead splits the target valuation into basic contract units, providing price exposure to the market through on-chain matching. Current practices mainly diverge into two paths: one is synthetic assets based on perpetual contract platforms (Perps DEX), and the other is debt instruments that achieve exposure in the form of notes.

Both share the commonality of not corresponding to real equity and not generating shareholder rights; the differences are concentrated in compliance boundaries, trading mechanisms, and funding attributes, distinguishing them from the previous round of synthetic asset narratives centered on collateralized minting (e.g., Mirror Protocol). Specifically:

• Perps DEX synthetic assets: Essentially perpetual contracts that enhance trading efficiency and capital turnover through leverage and funding rate mechanisms, with representative projects like Ventuals (based on Hyperliquid).
• Debt note synthetic assets: Essentially tokenized notes issued by the platform, classified as debt instruments, linked to the performance of the target through contractual terms, with representative projects like Republic's Mirror Tokens.

Table 6: Comparison of Three Forms of Equity Synthetic Assets

Source: PKUBA Research

From the perspective of product positioning and funding structure, the market shows clear differentiation: the Republic route leans more towards compliance and traditional financial frameworks, holding a Broker-Dealer license and disclosing and issuing under U.S. securities law, with a relatively clear range of investors; the Perps DEX route is closer to the logic of native trading markets, where its core competitiveness lies not in legal confirmation but in the trading attributes themselves, including leverage tools, continuous liquidity supply, and lower trading friction.

Figure 5: Ventuals Platform Pre-IPO Contract Product Display

Source: Ventuals Official Website

In terms of liquidity performance, the Perps route based on Hyperliquid has a more pronounced stage advantage. According to Dune data, the daily trading volume of Pre-IPO related assets on Hyperliquid has reached millions of dollars (see Figure 6), contrasting with the performance of SPV indirect holding types in secondary transactions and depth (comparison standards will be discussed in Figure 13 later). The reason lies in synthetic assets, especially Perps, aligning more closely with the funding preferences of the crypto market: high-frequency trading combined with high leverage mechanisms more easily attracts speculative funds and trading users, thereby forming considerable transaction volumes and completing user education on the category of unlisted equity exposure on the demand side.

Figure 6: Daily Trading Volume of Pre-IPO Related Assets on Hyperliquid Platform (USD)

Source: Dune

Further analysis indicates that synthetic assets may not necessarily constitute a substitute for true equity on-chain but may instead play a role in early demand cultivation and liquidity warming: gathering users and funds on the trading side first, then providing a potential market foundation and demand traction for subsequent more compliant and rights-confirmed equity tokenization paths.

6.2. SPV Indirect Holding Type: Coexistence of Low Barriers to Entry and High Compliance Controversies

The core logic of the SPV indirect holding type is to have a special purpose entity (SPV) typically located in an offshore jurisdiction hold the equity of the target company, and then tokenize the SPV's beneficial certificates, thereby providing economic exposure to unlisted equity without directly touching the target company's shareholder register.

Figure 7: SPV Indirect Holding Type Token Issuance Structure Diagram

Source: Pharos Research

This model has become the most common practice in the current unlisted equity tokenization field due to its flexible structure and relatively low entry barriers, but it has also concentratedly exposed compliance and governance controversies. In terms of asset acquisition, SPVs typically complete the acquisition of target equity through two paths:

• Path One: Purchase through private secondary platforms. Typical platforms include EquityZen, Forge Global, Hiive, etc. This path has a relatively standardized process and stronger replicability but often comes with higher structural setup costs and compliance review requirements.
• Path Two: Acquisition through the issuer's PE/VC resources. The issuer utilizes its resources in the traditional private equity circle to acquire shares from private equity funds or venture capital funds that hold the target equity. In this structure, SPVs often hold shares indirectly as new LPs (limited partners), effectively transforming the transaction into a transfer at the fund share level.

The rapid expansion of this model is primarily due to its attempt to circumvent the transfer restriction clauses in shareholder agreements structurally. Since the transferred shares are often small and may be viewed as internal LP share transfers within the fund, some transactions do not need to be reported to the target company on a case-by-case basis, thus providing the platform with limited structural space and time windows.

However, accompanying the "easy implementation" is "high controversy." The transparency of the SPV model typically exhibits a one-sided characteristic: investors can often only verify asset-side proof of "whether the SPV holds shares," while the platform's own funding arrangements, fee structures, risk isolation, and operational robustness still possess a certain degree of black-box attributes. This is particularly evident in the issuance rhythm, where two common operational methods are observed:

• Buy first, issue later: The project party first purchases equity with its own funds, then issues tokens to recoup funds, locking in the asset and reducing performance uncertainty.
• Issue first, buy later: Tokens are issued to raise funds first, then a commitment to purchase equity is made; if fundraising is insufficient or price fluctuations prevent transactions, investors will face higher execution and delivery risks.

Compared to completely unsupported synthetic assets, the SPV model at least has equity asset backing, thus providing more certainty regarding "whether the asset exists"—but its core risks are not limited to internal operations but rather external legal and compliance challenges: when the tokenization actions are deemed by the target company to violate shareholder agreements or transfer restrictions, it may simultaneously trigger compliance pressures from government regulators and rights claims from the target company's legal side. Recently, some target companies (e.g., OpenAI) have publicly expressed opposition to related arrangements, further highlighting the external uncertainties of this model. The related risk transmission and impact mechanisms will be further discussed below.

6.3. Native Collaborative Type: Achieving TaaS Service Model through License Compliance

The key to the implementation of the native collaborative type lies in the uniformity of the compliance framework: it requires the target company to directly connect to the government regulatory system, achieving compliant digitization of assets by mapping company rights to digital securities on-chain. In industry practice, this model is gradually evolving from a single on-chain tool to a full-stack solution for TaaS (Tokenization-as-a-Service) aimed at target companies. Service providers are no longer limited to technical delivery but provide a full-process closed loop covering issuance, registration, holder management, and even secondary market circulation.

In the currently observable market samples, the most representative paths of the native collaborative type are concentrated in two infrastructure-type institutions: one is Securitize, which has formed a relatively complete compliance path and has verifiable cases; the other is Centrifuge, which recently proposed a reference framework for compliant on-chain equity, but actual issuance-side cases are still in the advancement stage.

Figure 8: Securitize Compliance License and Structure Overview

Source: Securitize Official Website

Therefore, this section's analysis mainly focuses on the structural direction of Centrifuge + the landing cases of Securitize, where the Securitize part mainly consists of two paths:

• Securitize Path A: The lifecycle of tokenized IPOs (Exodus)
• Securitize Path B: The normal form of long-term private equity circulation (Curzio Research)

6.3.1. Securitize Path A: Exodus—Lifecycle Sample from ATS to NYSE

As of the end of December 2025, the project's token market value is approximately $200 million, making it an important component of the tokenized stock market. Its evolution path reflects different stages of liquidity acquisition:

2021: Exodus, as an unlisted company, collaborated with Securitize to mint Class A common stock into equity tokens on the Algorand chain through the DS protocol; Securitize acted as the Transfer Agent, responsible for token creation, maintenance, and destruction; subsequently, the point-to-point transfer from whitelisted wallets gradually expanded to compliant trading on Securitize Markets and tZERO (ATS, Alternative Trading System);

December 2024: Exodus was listed on NYSE American (ticker: EXOD), completing the transition from unlisted tokenized equity to publicly traded securities;

2025: Exodus announced a partnership with Superstate's Opening Bell to expand stock tokens to networks such as Solana and Ethereum, but Securitize's core role as Transfer Agent remained unchanged.

Figure 9: Token Trading Process Before and After Exodus Listing

Source: Paramita Venture

The above figure illustrates the liquidity mechanisms at different stages before and after the listing, showing that the core of token liquidity in Exodus before and after the listing is completed through the Transfer Agent (TA), but after the listing, mutual conversion between tokens and stocks can be achieved.

• Pre-Listing (2021–2024): Primarily ATS. Investors first deposit tokens with the Transfer Agent to update the register, and then the Transfer Agent transfers the holding records to the ATS (Alternative Trading System) broker, where ATS facilitates transactions and settlements.
• Post-Listing (December 2024–Present): Transition to public market stock trading. Investors, with the assistance of the Transfer Agent, convert tokens into traditional registered shares (street name holding) in the broker's account, conducting regular trading based on EXOD tokens.

In addition, there exists a fundamentally resident liquidity path: compliant OTC transfers. Both parties' wallet addresses must undergo whitelist verification, prices are negotiated offline, and consideration is arranged separately, with token transfers completed on-chain. Notably, during the transition period from ATS delisting to NYSE listing, this path became the primary liquidity method.

6.3.2. Securitize Path B: Curzio Research—Sample of ATS Private Placement Circulation Unable to Go Public

Exodus demonstrates an ideal lifecycle, but for most unlisted companies, circulation within ATS may not be a transitional form but could become a long-term "end state."

Figure 10: Curzio Research Token Market Value Trend Chart

Source: MarketCapWatch, as of December 27, 2025

The case of Curzio Research (CURZ) illustrates that after equity tokenization, trading on ATS for qualified investors provides a compliant but limited secondary market for companies that are not preparing to go public or cannot go public, alleviating shareholder exit pressure. Its trading performance also reflects the thin market characteristics of ATS: a long-term decline after issuance, bottoming out in early 2024, followed by high volatility, exhibiting characteristics such as large price spreads, sparse transactions, and low price discovery efficiency (significantly different from the depth of the public market).

6.3.3. Centrifuge's Entry: Directional Signal of Native TaaS Route

From the perspective of industry evolution, Centrifuge's entry serves more as a directional signal: the native collaborative type is moving from case-driven to structural standardization.

On December 5, 2025, Centrifuge released "Centrifuge Tokenized Equities: A Reference Architecture for Regulated Onchain Equity," systematically providing a reference implementation framework for compliant on-chain equity. Its core idea aligns with the logic already validated by the market: a regulated transfer agent (Transfer Agent) uniformly manages the shareholder register, achieving transparency in restricted transfer processes and ensuring that on-chain tokens have the same legal effect as physical equity.

Figure 11: Centrifuge Equity Tokenization Architecture Diagram

Source: Centrifuge Official Website

Notably, the first case disclosed on the Centrifuge website is a collaboration with Caesar AI. This partnership positions Centrifuge strategically towards a broad range of issuers (especially crypto-native startups) rather than large unicorn companies. If this model develops into a replicable landing template, it will greatly advance the maturity of TaaS supply aimed at Web2 companies, providing a rich infrastructure for the scalable expansion of the native collaborative model.

7. Key Challenges: Three Bottlenecks Determine Industry Limits

Although unlisted equity tokenization has a clear narrative space and potential incremental value, from the perspectives of feasibility and scalability, this track still faces several rigid constraints. The key bottlenecks currently determining the upper limit of industry expansion can be summarized into three categories: compliance squeeze, insufficient liquidity depth, and uncertainty in IPO end connections.

7.1. Compliance Squeeze: Dual Pressure from Regulation and Target Company Legalities

Compared to tokenization of listed stocks, the compliance complexity of unlisted equity tokenization is significantly higher due to the simultaneous impact of government compliance regulation (SEC) and target company legal constraints.

On one hand, the product issuance and trading phases may touch upon securities laws and licensing systems (such as the SEC regulatory framework); on the other hand, more decisive constraints often come from the equity management constraints of the target company, especially in shareholder agreements regarding transfer restrictions (Transfer Restrictions). Under structures like SPV indirect holding, the issuing platform attempts to achieve "indirect transfer of equity" at the LP level through structural design, but this practice may violate transfer agreements and trigger company-side measures.

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