Against the backdrop of the EU DLT pilot mechanism accelerating its implementation, the French Lightning Stock Exchange Lise announced a partnership with aerospace supplier ST Group to launch a fully blockchain-based IPO, representing a tokenized securities experiment within a compliant framework. Unlike traditional securities markets that only facilitate trading during business days and fixed hours, Lise has designed rules for this IPO such as 24/7 trading, a minimum purchase of 1 share, and zero trading fees, bringing fundraising and secondary market liquidity entirely on-chain. This model directly confronts the highly specialized, expensive, and cumbersome traditional IPO pathway in Europe that has existed for years, resembling a gate being reopened especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) with limited financing channels. The question is whether this gate will be a one-time gimmick or will gradually rewrite the financing methods for SMEs in Europe.

The Harsh IPO Threshold: The Long Wait for SMEs

Lise CEO Mark Kepeneghian candidly stated that the traditional IPO process is “too burdensome” for SMEs. For most companies with limited size, the intermediary fees, legal and auditing costs before and after going public, as well as prolonged preparation for information disclosure, combined with multiple rounds of communication with regulatory bodies and exchanges, stretch already constrained cash flow to the limit. The process of obtaining a listing code often requires crossing several financial years, and this time cost alone is enough to drive many SMEs away.

In the European capital market, structures that prioritize blue-chip and large issuers have long been cemented. Even if SMEs can access the over-the-counter market or specialized boards, they still commonly face long listing cycles, limited fundraising scales, and high fixed costs: the expenses for sponsorship, underwriting, accounting, legal, and ongoing compliance pose immense pressure on businesses with unstable revenues and profits. Meanwhile, the fixed trading hours, high minimum subscription thresholds, and complex account systems of traditional exchanges also compress the space for small investors to directly participate in equity financing for SMEs, resulting in a significant disconnect between those willing to invest and those able to invest.

Under such structural constraints, the regulatory side has also realized that if the existing IPO pathways continue to be used, it will be difficult to open new equity financing channels for innovative SMEs. The EU-promoted DLT pilot mechanism is attempting to explore a lighter, more efficient path for issuance and circulation for SMEs without sacrificing investor protection and market stability, and Lise’s on-chain IPO is embedded within this practical need.

From Lightning Securities to ST Group: Moving IPOs On-Chain

Lise itself is not a makeshift crypto platform; its shareholder lineup includes BNP Paribas, CACEIS, and Bpifrance, traditional financial institutions and national capital that offer compliance and risk control endorsement for this emerging exchange. It is positioned to provide a regulated trading venue for tokenized securities outside the existing capital markets, bridging the account systems of traditional financial institutions with blockchain ledger for registration and settlement.

The IPO initiated for ST Group is structurally entirely dependent on blockchain ledger and tokenized securities architecture: it issues securities rights registered in token form under a compliant framework, rather than simple certificates that merely “map” external stocks, with issuance, holding, and transfer all recorded on-chain. The specific terms designed by Lise, such as 24/7 market, a minimum purchase of 1 share, and zero trading fees, compress the investor entry threshold and also attempt to form liquidity periods and participation structures that differ from traditional exchanges.

In public information, Lise also stated that it plans to complete 3 to 4 IPOs within the year, but this number is only found in a single source and is closer to a “trial goal” rather than a firm commitment. From a pacing perspective, this resembles a set of small-scale, iterative samples aimed at testing market feedback through different targets and issuance conditions, rather than launching a direct attack on the traditional IPO model from the outset.

European DLT Pilot: Securities Experiment in a Regulatory Sandbox

The on-chain IPO of Lise is not outside of regulation but is included in the EU DLT pilot mechanism, conducting compliant experiments within a clear institutional framework. The core of the DLT pilot is to allow market infrastructure operators to conduct securities issuance, registration, and settlement experiments on Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) under limited participants and scale constraints while observing its impact on existing regulations, systemic risks, and investor protection mechanisms.

Within this framework, regulators have set clear red lines for the platform: participants must meet KYC and anti-money laundering requirements, and the identity, risk tolerance, and sources of funds of investors must be traceable; while on-chain settlement can achieve near real-time delivery, it must still satisfy requirements of finality, traceability, and auditability to ensure that technological innovations do not weaken the protection of investor rights. Requirements such as KYC, fund isolation, and data retention will not be relaxed due to “going on-chain,” but rather some processes will be migrated from paper and databases to smart contracts and distributed ledgers.

France has been rated by several media as a “leading practitioner in the field of tokenized market infrastructure,” not only because of new trading platforms like Lise but also due to its regulatory body’s relatively positive attitude towards DLT experiments, providing a clearer testing ground for local institutions without breaching EU unified rules. However, regarding the specific approval path of DLT licenses and longer-term plans, public information remains limited, and some content is marked as unverified. Therefore, this article does not make any projections about regulatory arrangements and capital operation plans beyond 2026 to avoid exceeding the disclosed scope.

24/7, Zero Fees: The Arithmetic Behind Low Barriers

Moving IPO trading to a 24/7 T+0 settlement on-chain essentially compresses time and intermediaries through technology: on-chain registration reduces reconciliation steps between multiple custody institutions, and smart contracts can instantly trigger ownership changes and fund settlements once matches are made. The automation of these processes means that the human and system costs required to complete the same transaction volume over a unit of time are much lower, thus allowing for zero trading fees and small investments.

For investors, 1 share minimum purchase + zero fees is a highly perceptible innovation. Small investors can purchase securities of SMEs with minimal funds without being “diluted” by single transaction fees; for issuers and platforms, the lower threshold is expected to attract a broader investor base, increase order book depth, and improve the secondary market liquidity of SME shares. In contrast, traditional exchanges typically rely on trading fees, listing fees, and market-making structures to cover technical and regulatory costs, with trading times and minimum subscription thresholds often tied to the pace and compliance needs of institutional investors, making Lise’s approach starkly different from the traditional market in terms of fee logic and revenue structure.

However, low barriers do not equate to no costs; rather, costs are redistributed: Lise needs to find a new balance between system scalability, risk management, and compliance operations. The demand for continuous trading requires the underlying chain to maintain consistency and availability under high concurrency, network forks, and node failures, and the risk control and monitoring systems need to shift from a “daily opening and closing logic” to a “perpetually online” model. Before large-scale promotion of the infrastructure still in the experimental stage, issues such as liquidity dispersion, price discovery efficiency in extreme market conditions, and the division of responsibilities for technical failures must be resolved; otherwise, the attraction of zero fees may be quickly offset in a systemic event.

Digital Euro and SoFi Debut on the Same Day: Financial Restructuring in Parallel

On the day the Lise on-chain IPO news was released, the European Central Bank also disclosed that the digital euro project is “progressing smoothly,” viewing it as a key pillar in the digitization of the eurozone's currency and payment systems from retail payments to cross-border settlements. Compared to the Lise model, the digital euro focuses more on the central bank's currency form and payment infrastructure reconstruction, but both are different branches under the same wave of digitization: one rooted in the monetary level and the other extending upwards from the securities level of capital markets.

At the same time, in the United States, SoFi announced the launch of a corporate banking platform integrating crypto assets, packaging crypto assets with corporate financial management and banking services, reflecting from another perspective the accelerated integration of traditional finance and the crypto world. Whether in Europe or the U.S., financial institutions are attempting to deeply integrate on-chain assets, payment tools, and traditional account systems in a compliant manner, rather than merely viewing crypto as a marginal speculative product.

Parallel to these innovations is a more complex macro environment: within the same time window, U.S. stock futures experienced significant declines, putting overall pressure on risk assets. This background highlights a contradiction: on one hand, increasing regulation, interest rate hikes, and macro uncertainties suppress investor risk appetite; on the other hand, various digital and tokenized experiments continue to accelerate. In this tight squeeze, compliant frameworks such as the Lise on-chain IPO may become a compromise option for institutions — partially enjoying technological efficiency and market openness while avoiding direct exposure in regulatory gray areas.

From Experimental Field to New Normal: How Far Can On-Chain IPOs Go?

Overall, the on-chain IPO of Lise and ST Group provides a quantifiable sample for reducing issuance and participation costs, improving settlement efficiency, and broadening the investor base: 24/7 trading, T+0 on-chain settlement, a minimum purchase of 1 share, and zero trading fees all point toward the same goal — to make equity financing for SMEs no longer a game exclusive to large institutions and high-net-worth individuals. If this attempt continues to advance, it holds the potential to change the connection mode between SMEs and capital markets in edge markets first.

However, this “experimental field” is still a distance from becoming the new normal. The current on-chain IPO is still in the early experimental stage, with unresolved issues regarding how regulatory details can be sustainably implemented long-term, how investors understand and trust the rights structure of tokenized securities, and how the robustness of the underlying infrastructure can be verified under high-pressure scenarios. Lise’s plan to advance several IPOs within the year is also a way to accumulate experiences through gradual steps rather than an immediate replication to a larger scale main board market.

For SME financing and the structure of the European capital market, a more realistic outlook is that within the foreseeable years, on-chain IPOs will serve as a complementary channel coexisting outside traditional markets, providing differentiated options for specific types of issuers and investors rather than immediately reshaping the entire market landscape. Under the joint influence of interest rates, regulations, technology, and investor education, whether the ultimate trend leads toward a higher proportion of securities tokenization or returns to a mixed model primarily based on traditional listings with on-chain structures as an adjunct, will require time to validate.

In the face of narratives like “Europe's first” and “disrupting tradition,” investors and market participants need to remain calm: Lise’s full-chain IPO is a symbolically significant starting point for a long-term game, not a paradigm shift set in stone. True change often occurs after a series of small-scale, seemingly ordinary experiments accumulate.

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