By tokenizing, allowing ordinary users to get in before the bell rings, will SpaceX and other unicorns be the new future of RWA?
Written by: Frank
Since 2026, RWA still seems to have no new battles.
Looking back over the past five years, from stablecoins to U.S. Treasuries, then to funds and U.S. stocks, mainstream assets have been gradually integrated into on-chain systems. Through tokenization, they have become tradable new financial products, to some extent enabling on-chain trading logic for traditional finance (TradFi) secondary market assets.
However, in the primary market—where super unicorns like SpaceX, ByteDance, OpenAI, and Anthropic are hidden behind closed doors—users can smoothly trade Tesla on-chain but find it difficult to buy a "ticket" to SpaceX before the bell rings.
But since last year, boundaries have indeed been tested: Robinhood experimented with private equity tokenization products like OpenAI in Europe; Hyperliquid launched perpetual contracts for SpaceX and others; and this week, MSX introduced on-chain pre-IPO share offerings for unicorns like SpaceX and ByteDance.
Although these actions differ in approach, they point in the same direction: Pre-IPO, a previously highly closed primary market, is trying to embrace blockchain.
- Pre-IPO, it is happening and must embrace blockchain
To understand the significance of on-chain Pre-IPO, we must first clarify the unique role that "Pre-IPO" plays in the lifecycle of capital markets.
For a long time, well-known investment stories—such as Masayoshi Son’s six-minute decision to back Alibaba, a16z’s early investment in Meta (Facebook), Sequoia’s bet on Coinbase—are essentially about the same story: institutional investors positioning themselves early before a quality asset IPOs, capturing the "arbitrage" from private to public valuation jumps.
Objectively, this is also what they deserve.
After all, early-stage venture capital is a "probability game." a16z may have invested in hundreds of dead-end social networks before hitting Facebook; Masayoshi Son missed or misinvested in countless internet companies before and after backing Alibaba... Ultimately, bearing high trial-and-error costs, enduring a long exit cycle of up to ten years, and covering losses with the super returns of a few successful projects, is the basic business logic of venture capital and the risk premium that institutional capital should earn.
However, when we talk about Pre-IPO (just before listing), the logic shifts dramatically.
Because this is a completely different stage. As the "last mile" before going public, companies like SpaceX, ByteDance, OpenAI, and Anthropic have grown into super unicorns with highly mature business models and clear revenue paths. Entering at this stage significantly reduces the risks compared to early-stage VC and even offers a certain quasi-secondary market certainty.
Strangely enough, this high-certainty stage still yields astonishing returns before and after IPO. For example, in 2025, two representative stocks: Figma, with an IPO price of $33 and a first-day close of $115.50—up over 250%; Bullish, with nearly 290% on the first day.
This means that institutions holding shares before the bell rang, with very low risk, still took home the most lucrative slice of the pie.
Unfortunately, even with secondary platforms like Forge and EquityZen for private company shares, they generally operate via peer-to-peer OTC matching, with minimum investments often in the tens of thousands of dollars, and only for accredited investors. Ordinary users still have to wait until after the IPO bell to buy on the secondary market.
From a capital efficiency perspective, this is inherently inefficient: on one side, unicorn valuations keep rising; on the other, ordinary investors are kept outside the high wall. A natural question arises:
If blockchain can lower the U.S. stock market’s entry barriers and enable asset fragmentation, can it also, before a unicorn goes public, through tokenization, allow users to share in the valuation growth during the transition from private to IPO?
- Route competition: perpetual contracts or tokenized mirror assets?
Current on-chain attempts at Pre-IPO are diverging into two very different paths.
One is represented by Hyperliquid’s perpetual contracts, where, based on the HIP-3 framework, developers can deploy custom perpetual products for Pre-IPO assets like OpenAI and SpaceX. The core idea is to combine Pre-IPO with perpetual contracts, without involving actual equity transfer—essentially bypassing equity itself, providing only price exposure for users to bet on valuation rises or falls of companies like SpaceX and OpenAI.
The advantages are clear: extremely low entry barriers, no need for accredited investor certification; instant trading without complex equity transfer processes.
Mechanistically, this can be understood as a betting agreement on SpaceX’s valuation, with liquidity activated by market makers and leverage mechanisms. This requires constant monitoring of oracle stability, risk control mechanisms, and fair liquidation in extreme conditions.
From a compliance perspective, this model may constitute a form of disguised securities issuance, which remains a gray area in major jurisdictions worldwide.
The other route is much more challenging: under compliant conditions, enabling users to actually hold tokenized equity assets, not just trade prices.
In June 2025, Robinhood’s European experiment and MSX’s March 2026 launch of Pre-IPO sections point toward this direction—both platforms have partnered with US-regulated asset tokenization platform Republic, aiming to tokenize real Pre-IPO equity via SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) structures, allowing investors to hold legally protected rights.
The core value of this model is that the tokens correspond to real equity, held by regulated third-party custodians, with legal and asset backing.
Specifically, Republic uses an "indirect holding via SPV" structure: establishing offshore SPVs to hold underlying company shares, then distributing tokenized rights of the SPV to investors. Although still indirect, this approach at least creates a traceable chain: token → SPV → equity.
Of course, implementing this model heavily depends on compliance infrastructure, operating within frameworks like the US SEC, and collaborating with licensed custodians (e.g., BitGo Trust) to ensure asset safety and legal validity. This makes it not just product innovation but also a systemic engineering project.
Overall, these two paths represent two distinct value orientations. The perpetual contract approach (DeFi efficiency logic) emphasizes liquidity and low barriers but lacks real connection to underlying assets; the tokenized equity mirror approach (TradFi logic) emphasizes compliance and legal backing, which is more challenging to build.
But regardless of the path chosen, a consensus is forming: by tokenizing unlisted equity, a "semi-primary" market between primary and secondary markets is taking shape.
- From Robinhood to MSX, the global bridge of the "semi-primary" market
A market’s explosion requires not only a grand narrative but also entry-level products.
From a technological perspective, tokenization has matured through years of engineering validation: smart contracts, oracles, on-chain compliance frameworks are capable of supporting complex financial products. From an application standpoint, DeFi and TradFi have begun initial integration, with global users gradually accustomed to sharing the growth dividends of top-quality assets in a decentralized, permissionless manner.
In this context, the on-chainization of Pre-IPO assets is at a critical moment. But purely DeFi protocols often struggle with user education, compliance, and large-scale capital inflows. Therefore, infrastructure that connects traditional finance’s DNA will be the most critical variable between narrative and implementation.
Looking back, Robinhood’s June 2025 experiment was significant.
As a global benchmark for retail online brokers, Robinhood enabled European users to participate in on-chain shares of unicorns like OpenAI and SpaceX with minimal barriers. It was the first major broker to clearly demonstrate support for the on-chain Pre-IPO market at this scale, proving that regulatory frameworks can be flexibly adapted and that there is genuine, strong demand from the public.
But Europe is just the beginning. Larger and faster-growing markets in Asia-Pacific also hold enormous potential, yet lack a truly entry-level platform.
This is why MSX’s newly launched Pre-IPO section is worth watching.
On March 2, MSX partnered with Republic, the platform that supported Robinhood’s European compliance framework, to replicate this proven approach in Asia-Pacific: initial offerings include tokenized shares of top unicorns like SpaceX, ByteDance, Lambda Labs, and Cerebras Systems, with minimum investments as low as 10 USDT.
In a way, MSX is playing the role of an "Asian Robinhood"—using compliant tokenization structures to connect "pre-bell" scarce equity with "post-bell" global liquidity, bridging the most difficult "last mile."
From a broader perspective, on-chain Pre-IPO is not just a demand from ordinary users; it’s a two-way journey:
Ordinary users need a truly equitable entry point to share in the growth of top unicorns before the bell, without waiting on the sidelines of the secondary market;
Private equity and early shareholders also seek to attract unprecedented global liquidity, exchanging on-chain liquidity for diversified exit options.
Both sides’ needs align perfectly.
Thus, from Robinhood to MSX, Europe to Asia, it’s clear that the Pre-IPO market is gradually moving from "peer-to-peer matching" to an era of "low barriers and high efficiency" tokenization.
- Final thoughts
Mature underlying technology and widespread adoption often do not immediately lead to product explosions, but when enough accumulation occurs, the delayed wave of innovation can be even more powerful.
In this sense, the on-chain Pre-IPO market is likely to become a mainstream asset class within the next 3–5 years. Blockchain technology has reached a point where tokenization infrastructure can support complex financial products, on-chain compliance frameworks are becoming clearer, and trust between institutions and users is slowly but steadily building.
But a logical foundation alone does not guarantee success.
Is the compliance path sufficiently clear? Are risk control mechanisms truly reliable? Can institutional and retail liquidity be effectively matched? Each is a necessary condition—none can be overlooked. More importantly, beyond Robinhood and MSX, more platforms need to be willing to bear the cost of "being the first"—using real products and real users to carve out a replicable path.
By 2026, will on-chain Pre-IPO be a fleeting concept or the true starting point for reshaping capital market access? We will soon find out.
