- Tokenized private equity and venture capital are among the fastest-growing use cases of blockchain technology, now capturing over $2 billion of the tokenized RWA market.
- ZKsync Era and Solana are the two most dominant networks in the sector, as they become the top choices of platforms like Securitize, Ctrl Alt, and Republic.
The ongoing mass adoption of blockchain technology is undoubtedly changing how investors and institutions approach financing, trade, distribution, liquidity provision, and information sharing across a wide range of industries. Among the sectors where it is making a major impact are private equity (PE) and venture capital (VC) through tokenization. ZKsync (ZK) Era and Solana (SOL) stand out in these areas with their unique strengths.
This article takes a deep dive into how real-world asset (RWA) tokenization is modernizing PE and VC ecosystems. It also explores how ZKsync and Solana are dramatically transforming traditional fund management models and are capturing a lion’s share of these market segments.
Private Equity and Venture Capital: A Comparison
Private equity and VC both invest in private companies. They inject capital into these firms in exchange for equity.
The value of their investments scales with the maturation, recovery, or growth of these companies. Ultimately, they either sell their shares to capture the upside of these enterprises or convert their stakes into public equity when the businesses undergo an initial public offering (IPO) or acquisition by another entity. These are all subject to the partners’ existing arrangements, though. Meanwhile, private equity and VC vastly differ in their investment approaches.
A private equity firm generally buys mature businesses, which are often struggling financially or operationally. It usually targets a 100% buyout or at least majority control over a company.
On the other hand, a VC focuses on early-stage startups with high upside potential. It typically aims to secure a minority stake in these companies due to their substantial risk of failure and to diversify capital allocations across multiple deals.
PE and VC Tokenization
As Sygnum Singapore highlighted in a recent report, three in four high-net-worth and professional investors are either holding or are planning to gain exposure to tokenized RWAs. Nearly half, or approximately 48%, have already included or are targeting to include tokenized private equity or VC in their portfolios.
Tokenization is the process of converting real-world physical or financial assets into digital security tokens hosted on a distributed ledger. What makes them appealing is that they unlock better accessibility, more efficiency, and lower entry barriers for private equity or VC offerings.
First off, RWA tokenization enables fractionalization. It splits expensive limited partner (LP) commitments into smaller, programmable shares. This opens alternative asset classes to accredited retail allocators and family offices that have been historically excluded from top-tier PE and VC funds.
Additionally, the model creates secondary-market liquidity, paving the way for programmatic peer-to-peer transfers to create continuous exit opportunities for LPs. It significantly reduces the long lockups while ensuring seamless withdrawal of funds without disrupting underlying fund capital.
Importantly, the process automates regulatory compliance. The embedded logic in tokens enforces Know Your Customer (KYC), Anti-Money Laundering (AML), investor accreditation standards, and regional transfer restrictions directly within its smart contract. At the same time, it ensures transparency in the dealings of the concerned parties in an agreement.
According to RWA.xyz data, PE and VC tokens currently account for around 0.58% of the $404.398 billion tokenized RWA market, excluding the $298 million market cap of stablecoins. The former takes up a $1.311 billion share while the latter has a $1.024 billion share in the sector.
ZKsync Era: An Emerging Major Player in Tokenized Venture Capital
ZKsync Era is a layer 2 (L2) zero-knowledge (ZK) rollup on Ethereum (ETH). It features low transaction fees, often falling below a cent, combined with high-throughput performance and top-tier security that leverages the Ethereum mainnet. The network likewise offers cross-chain interoperability without relying on third-party bridges.
To date, the chain’s native token, ZK, has a market cap of approximately $76 million out of its 10.15 billion circulating supply. In the PE and VC segment of RWAs, it holds a lion’s share of its network value at $959.45 million.
Blockchain Capital Token (BCAP), the third fund from Blockchain Capital issued by Securitize, accounts for ZKsync’s locked value across the tokenized VC market. Besides VC tokens, the chain is a rising venue for asset-backed credit, corporate credit, and specialty finance tokenization.
Solana: A Top Choice for Tokenized Private Equity
Capturing the largest slice in tokenized PE is Solana, a high-performance, open-source layer 1 (L1) chain, which is among the pioneers of fast, secure, and scalable decentralized applications (dApps), non-fungible tokens (NFTs), meme coins, decentralized finance (DeFi) projects, stablecoins, and crypto payments. SOL, the network’s native coin, currently has a market cap of more than $43.88 billion out of its circulating supply of 582.78 million coins.
Solana’s versatility enables builders, users, and fund managers to launch, distribute, and settle tokenized shares at scale without the traditional technological bottlenecks. As such, it has immediately etched its mark among the heavyweights in the RWA market, accounting for $3.8 billion of its total value.
Around $854.1 million in tokenized PE runs on Solana, as it emerges as the top choice of big PE tokenization platforms, such as Ctrl Alt and Republic. Among the top projects Solana hosts in the space are Titan III Equity Token (TIN-III), Hera I Equity Token (HERA-I-E), preSPAX Token (PRESPCX), preOPAI Token (PREOPAI), and Animoca Equity Token (AB1).
