The Next Frontier in Finance: Tokenized Access to Private Markets

Tokenization is re-architecting backstage markets from the crushed up, and the implications are enormous, says Fission Labs’ Jonathan Shaffer.

Jun 25, 2025, 3:00 p.m.

The world's astir invaluable startups aren't traded connected nationalist markets. They're tucked distant successful backstage portfolios — locked down precocious superior requirements, agelong lockups and constricted entree to woody flow. Historically, backstage markets person belonged to the elite few: endowments, household offices and a tiny nine of well-connected organization players.

Today's backstage markets stay mostly gated. Traditional backstage equity requires minimum investments of $250,000 - $25 million, task superior funds often request much than $1 cardinal minimums and accredited capitalist requirements unopen retired the bulk of Americans who don't conscionable these wealthiness thresholds.

But that exclusivity is opening to crack.

Thanks to blockchain technology, we're witnessing the aboriginal enactment of a parallel fiscal strategy — 1 that brings transparency, liquidity and accessibility to a abstraction that’s been notoriously opaque and illiquid. Tokenization is re-architecting backstage markets from the crushed up, and the implications are enormous.

At its core, tokenization transforms real-world assets, specified arsenic shares successful growth-stage startups oregon backstage funds, into programmable, integer tokens. These aren’t conscionable integer wrappers. They transportation embedded compliance and tin beryllium structured to supply fractional vulnerability to a wide scope of investors without terms distortions.

Imagine accessing a handbasket of high-growth, venture-backed companies done a single, liquid and blockchain-native asset. Investors nary longer person to hold 7–10 years for a imaginable exit. Secondary markets and liquidity protocols present marque it imaginable to commercialized positions oregon rebalance portfolios much dynamically and astatine fairer prices than ever earlier successful backstage markets.

Some of these tokenized vehicles spell further. They embed governance rights oregon performance-linked incentives. Others connection vulnerability to hard-to-access assets: pre-IPO unicorns, backstage recognition oregon adjacent backstage equity and VC funds. In galore ways, this resembles the opportunities that ETFs introduced successful the 1990s — but this time, it's powered by unfastened networks and astute contracts.

And this displacement isn't conscionable astir efficiency. It's astir adjacent access. Tokenization opens the doorway for smaller investors, planetary participants and underserved geographies to allocate superior into antecedently gated markets. Venture capital, agelong the motor of modern innovation, is nary longer the sole domain of Silicon Valley insiders oregon sovereign wealthiness funds.

As the infrastructure matures from compliant issuance platforms to regulated secondary markets, we're inching person to a fiscal satellite wherever entree to backstage marketplace upside is nary longer a privilege, but a programmable right. This isn't a theoretical future. It's already happening, with tokenized funds, startup equity and yield-bearing backstage indebtedness instruments actively trading crossed decentralized and centralized platforms alike. The full secondary marketplace transaction measurement surged to grounds highs of implicit $150 billion successful 2024, astir triple the magnitude from conscionable 7 years ago; yet, these markets inactive correspond lone astir 1% of full backstage marketplace value, signaling monolithic country for growth.

Considering the existent tokenized backstage real-world assets (RWA) worth of ~$14 billion, compared to a full addressable marketplace size of ~$12 trillion, determination inactive exists a monolithic accidental successful bringing these assets on-chain.

Source: RWA.xyz

Source: S&P Global

Of course, this improvement brings challenges: regulatory clarity, capitalist extortion frameworks and capitalist education, to sanction a few. But the momentum is undeniable. Private markets are excessively big, and the request for entree excessively strong, to enactment siloed overmuch longer.

The fiscal strategy of the aboriginal won’t gully crisp lines betwixt nationalist and private, analog and integer and developed and developing. Instead, it volition beryllium interoperable, composable and unfastened by design.

Tokenized backstage assets aren’t conscionable a caller plus class. They’re a awesome that the adjacent trillion-dollar accidental won’t beryllium walled disconnected from the world, but woven into a much inclusive, liquid and transparent fiscal web.

The gross is open. The aboriginal of backstage markets is on-chain.

Jonathan Shaffer