Crypto platform aims to let retail investors buy IPO shares at the same price as Wall Street insiders

Most people only see IPOs after the price resets at the open. Institutional investors and select clients receive allocations at the offering price, while everyone else waits for the exchange to start trading and buys at the market price.

The gap between those two prices, the “IPO pop,” can be substantial.

Circle’s IPO last year was priced at $31 and opened at $69, then closed at $83.23, illustrating why allocations matter. That spread represents value captured by whoever had early access, not by the retail investors who showed up when the ticker went live.

Backpack is trying to change that dynamic. The firm announced this week it’s building a product called “IPOs Onchain” that aims to deliver official IPO share allocations to eligible users before public market trading begins.

These shares are delivered as tokenized equities on Solana with what Backpack describes as “real, direct ownership,” not synthetic exposure.

The company is working with Superstate, a crypto tech platform founded by Compound creator Robert Leshner, which operates an SEC-registered transfer agent and issues what it calls “actual legal shares” directly as native tokens on Solana and Ethereum.

Backpack and Superstate are trying to turn IPO allocations into tokenized legal shares that can be delivered to wallets, effectively making the roadshow a distribution channel rather than just a marketing tour.

The catch is that early access may be limited to eligible users and issuer-by-issuer approvals, so this isn’t mass retail IPO access yet.

However, if the model expands, it challenges one of Wall Street’s most durable perks: getting in at the IPO price before the market reprices it at the open.

What’s real today

Backpack’s announcement centers on a waitlisted product that would allow users to purchase IPO shares on the exchange’s platform.

According to the company, these are official IPO allocations and not related to a Backpack IPO, with access “before open market trading.”

The shares would be tokenized on Solana, with Superstate’s Opening Bell platform handling the legal infrastructure by issuing SEC-registered shares as native tokens and recording ownership on an official shareholder registry.

Superstate operates Superstate Services LLC, a registered transfer agent with the SEC.

An SEC-filed exhibit describes tokenizing SEC-registered common stock and appointing Superstate as a “Digital Transfer Agent.” The technical claim that these are actual legal shares issued directly on blockchain rails, not wrappers or synthetic derivatives, rests on that transfer agent infrastructure.

Backpack founder and CEO Armani Ferrante framed the product as an extension of the traditional IPO roadshow process.

He wrote on X:

He noted that retail investors typically have to wait for the stock exchanges to go live before they can access these shares through their brokerage.

The pitch is that Backpack becomes a stop on that roadshow, with allocations flowing to users instead of exclusively to institutional accounts.

However, there’s an explicit catch. Ferrante noted that Backpack’s viability as a venue for capital formation depends on the activity and value of its user base.

In other words, issuers and underwriters will only allocate shares through this channel if they believe the audience is attractive enough to matter.

That’s distribution leverage, not guaranteed access. And Backpack’s earlier Superstate equities integration described access as available to “eligible non-U.S. users” and referenced qualified investor frameworks and jurisdiction-specific KYC requirements.

That suggests the early cohort is not mass US retail.

What’s plausible next

If issuers and underwriters choose to treat Backpack as part of IPO distribution, some users could request allocations before the public open, receiving shares in wallet-native form rather than waiting for the exchange listing.

The roadshow could evolve from a pure marketing effort into a measurable distribution endpoint, a “community tranche” in which the issuer allocates a portion of the deal to a crypto-native venue alongside traditional institutional buyers.

This would be issuer-by-issuer and jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction. Not every IPO would participate, and eligibility gates would vary depending on where users are located and what regulatory frameworks apply.

The model resembles how tokenized Treasury funds or money market products have rolled out: available to some users in some places, with expansion dependent on regulatory clarity and operational readiness.

Backpack raised $17 million in Series A funding in 2024 and is reportedly in talks to raise $50 million at a $1 billion pre-money valuation. The company is also planning to launch an exchange token, with Ferrante emphasizing a distribution model that avoids “dumping on retail” by offering pre-IPO access and allocations for a post-IPO company treasury.

Backpack’s announcement comes as Binance, Coinbase, and other platforms expand into tokenized equities, positioning themselves against web-savvy brokers like Robinhood.

The competitive dynamic isn’t just crypto exchanges versus traditional brokers, but about which platforms can credibly deliver regulated traditional assets with crypto-native settlement and custody.

What must change for true mass retail

To get from “interesting pilot” to “regular investor can realistically participate,” multiple things must align.

The SEC staff released a 2026 statement clarifying that tokenized securities models must still comply with federal securities laws and that market participants should prepare registrations and approvals where needed.

Tokenization changes the plumbing, not the obligations.

That means broader retail access would require the appropriate registrations or exemptions, compliant distribution frameworks, and sustained participation from issuers and underwriters.

IPO allocations are not free-market. Underwriters manage distribution. For this model to broaden beyond niche cohorts, they have to believe an on-chain tranche improves outcomes, such as demand, marketing reach, price discovery, or shareholder base composition.

If issuers see tokenized allocations as a way to build community engagement or tap crypto-native capital pools, the model could expand. If they view it as regulatory risk or operational complexity without clear benefits, it remains confined to pilot deals.

Broader retail would also require durable answers on KYC and eligibility, custody, transfer restrictions, and where and how these shares can trade.

Can users sell at the open, or are there lockups? What happens to voting rights, dividends, and corporate actions when shares are held as tokens? Where do these tokens trade, and under which licenses?

These questions have clear answers in traditional brokerage accounts. Tokenized IPO allocations need equally clear answers to scale.

The economic prize is real.

Jay Ritter’s IPO statistics show that in 2025, the aggregate “money left on the table”, consisting of the difference between IPO price and first-day close, and representing underpricing captured by early allocators, totaled $13.11 billion.

Additionally, the mean first-day returns are 29.3% on an equal-weighted basis. If an on-chain distribution channel ever captured even 1% to 5% of that allocation window, it would represent a non-trivial share of an incentive pool that’s historically been institutional.

Of course, IPOs can also open flat or down. Circle’s IPO opened well above its offering price, but not every IPO follows that pattern. The benefit is the option to participate at the pricing moment, not a guarantee of profit.

Several indicators will clarify whether this constitutes real retail access: eligibility frameworks (whether they expand beyond non-US or qualified investors), which IPO participates first, and what percentage of the deal flows through this channel, whether the legal structure holds up as actual registered shares, among others.

The test is whether issuers, underwriters, and regulators treat on-chain distribution as a legitimate channel at scale, and whether the compliance, custody, and market structure rails prove durable enough to handle real volume and real disputes.

If those pieces align, the IPO pop stops being an exclusively institutional perk. If they don’t, this remains a niche product for eligible cohorts rather than a structural shift in capital formation.