The blockchain network Injective, focused on decentralized finance, has introduced a new product — perpetual futures on private companies, including OpenAI. Now investors from all over the world can trade synthetic assets reflecting the valuation of corporations that have not yet gone public.
The new instrument allows opening positions with leverage up to 5x, directly through the Injective protocol — without intermediaries or centralized platforms. The company emphasizes that, unlike the Robinhood approach, this is a fully on-chain solution.
The project uses data from two sources. Caplight — a price aggregator for venture-backed private companies — provides market quotes. Seda Protocol — a decentralized data provider for blockchains — supplies the technical infrastructure for oracles. Injective emphasizes:
“Unlike Robinhood and others, our perpetual contracts for pre-IPO companies are structured differently.”
Key differences include full on-chain execution, programmability, modularity, and more efficient capital usage.
The first asset on the new platform will be OpenAI — the developer of ChatGPT. Trading will take place on Helix, a decentralized exchange built on Injective. In October, the list will expand to include other private companies.
This launch is part of Injective’s strategy to bring all financial markets on-chain. The company is actively developing real-world asset (RWA) tokenization and aims to combine DeFi with traditional instruments.
The RWA segment is growing rapidly this year. According to RWA.xyz, the total value of tokenized financial assets on blockchains has already approached $32 billion. Currently, the majority consists of private debt and US government bonds.
The RWA market is currently mainly composed of private debt and US bonds. Source: RWA.xyz
How Injective differs from Robinhood tokens
Access to the pre-IPO market has traditionally been closed to ordinary investors; only institutions and accredited participants could take part in such deals. Injective changes the approach: instead of classic securities, perpetual derivatives tied to the indicative price of private companies are used here. This does not grant ownership rights, but allows access to the asset’s dynamics — decentralized and permissionless.
The contrast is especially noticeable against the backdrop of recent regulatory claims against Robinhood. In the spring, the company faced criticism for its “private stock tokens.” OpenAI, among others, publicly stated that these products do not provide an equity stake. As Galaxy Digital later pointed out, Robinhood’s documentation specifies: these are derivatives that only indirectly reflect the value of the underlying asset.
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Despite this, in July the Bank of Lithuania, the main regulator of Robinhood in the EU, requested additional clarification on these tokens.
At Injective they also clarified that their product is structured differently. A project representative stated:
“This is a completely different approach — we offer a perpetual derivative based on the reference price of a private company before its IPO.”
At the same time, he noted that the product is not available to users from the US, UK, and Canada due to legal restrictions.
