Injective Protocol, a layer-1 blockchain dedicated to decentralized finance, is introducing onchain pre-IPO perpetual markets, enabling global investors to trade synthetic versions of prominent private companies like OpenAI.
This new feature allows users to take leveraged positions of up to five times on private company valuations directly via Injective, setting the protocol apart from centralized pre-IPO offerings from platforms such as Robinhood.
According to an announcement from Injective on Wednesday, the Pre-IPO perpetuals utilize onchain data from Seda Protocol, which provides a decentralized oracle infrastructure for price data, and Caplight, which gathers private market pricing data for venture-backed firms.
“Injective’s Pre-IPO perps stand out compared to other solutions from Robinhood and similar platforms,” the protocol remarked, emphasizing features such as complete onchain execution, programmability, composability, and capital efficiency.
The first pre-IPO perpetual market will feature OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, with trading available on Helix, a decentralized exchange built on Injective. The protocol plans to add more private companies in October.
Injective framed the launch as part of its broader objective to “bring every financial market onchain,” highlighting its efforts in real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and expanding DeFi into traditional markets.
This year, the RWA market has seen rapid growth, with the total onchain financial assets valued at nearly $32 billion, according to industry data.
Related: Deutsche Telekom subsidiary becomes a validator for Injective blockchain
A difference from Robinhood’s private equity tokens
Historically, access to the pre-IPO market has been limited to institutional or accredited investors, posing challenges for retail investors. Injective’s model utilizes onchain perpetual derivatives linked to reference prices of private companies, offering a decentralized and permissionless means to gain exposure, although this does not equate to holding equity.
This distinction is significant, especially given the regulatory scrutiny faced by Robinhood earlier this year regarding its “private equity tokens,” with companies like OpenAI publicly stating that such products did not represent ownership stakes. Nonetheless, as Galaxy Digital pointed out, Robinhood’s fine print specifies that the equity tokens are “derivatives that provide indirect exposure to the underlying asset.”
In July, the Bank of Lithuania, Robinhood’s main regulator in the EU, announced it was seeking “clarifications” regarding the firm’s stock token offerings.
An Injective representative further clarified the distinction between the offerings in a statement to Cointelegraph: “This is much more uniquely positioned because it’s a perpetual derivative based on a reference price of the Pre-IPO company,” they explained, adding that the product is not available to users in the United States, United Kingdom, or Canada due to regulatory constraints.
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