Backed Airdrop

Problem Solved

Many non-US investors do not have a clean path to buy US stocks. Local brokerages are limited, US accounts are off-limits to many non-residents, and markets close nights and weekends. Even where access exists, the shares sit in walled brokerage accounts and cannot be used onchain. Backed tokenizes real equities and ETFs into freely transferable tokens that trade 24/7 and plug directly into DeFi. A holder can use SPYx or NVDAx as collateral, lend it, or provide liquidity, things a normal brokerage share cannot do. Each token stays backed 1:1 by the underlying stock, purchased through regulated brokers and held with qualified custodians.

Tokenomics

There is no native token. The only tokens today are the tokenized securities themselves, each redeemable 1:1 for the underlying share. What matters for airdrop hunters is the official xPoints program. Backed states that points "will be used to determine your share of future rewards," the clearest signal yet of a planned distribution without a confirmed token or date. Points accrue daily from onchain activity across three tiers: holding xStocks is the base rate, lending earns more, and providing liquidity earns the most. An xBoost multiplier and a referral program stack on top. No conversion rate, supply, or TGE date has been disclosed.

Perspectives

Backed's position is unusually strong for an airdrop target: a live product with roughly $490M in assets, over $10B in cumulative volume, and Kraken as its new owner. Kraken plans to fold xStocks into its broader products, including the Krak money app, and expand beyond Solana and Ethereum to TON, Tron, Mantle, and BNB Chain. The TON integration putting tokenized stocks inside Telegram is already live. The main question for airdrop hunters is not survival but reward generosity: a Kraken-owned issuer has no obligation to run a large token distribution, and any reward sits at the parent's discretion.

Founders and Team

Backed's three co-founders, Adam Levi, Yehonatan Goldman, and Roberto Klein, all came from DAOstack, an early DAO-tooling project where they ran research, operations, and legal respectively. DAOstack itself wound down, but the team carried that experience into a clean pivot toward regulated real-world assets. The identities are public and verifiable, with no anonymity. For a securities issuer, the legal team stands out: a dedicated general counsel and head of AML plus special counsel, consistent with running a regulated, prospectus-backed product. The strongest credibility signal is external, Kraken judged the team and infrastructure worth acquiring outright in late 2025.

Funding

Backed raised modestly by crypto standards: a 2021 seed backed by Gnosis, Semantic Ventures, and Stratos, then a $9.5M Series A in April 2024 led again by Gnosis, for roughly $17.9M total. That is small for the ambition, but the relevant number is no longer the raise. In December 2025 Kraken agreed to acquire Backed outright as it builds vertically integrated tokenization infrastructure ahead of a planned 2026 IPO. The deal price was not disclosed. Following the acquisition funding risk is effectively gone, replaced by a well-capitalized parent with strong distribution, but also full control over any future token.

Community

The corporate X account @BackedFi has about 28K followers, with a separate @xStocksFi handle running campaign quests. Unlike most airdrop projects the community is anchored by a real, used product rather than farming alone. Roughly $490M in xStocks sits across about 50,000 wallets, with 130K current holders cited and more than $10B in cumulative trading volume. Engagement is now a mix of genuine trading demand and fresh xPoints farming interest.

Competitors

Tokenized equities is suddenly crowded, with the overall market up nearly 30x year over year. Ondo Global Markets now leads by value at roughly 59% share, listing 200+ tokenized stocks and expanding aggressively onto Solana, directly into Backed's territory. Securitize is the institutional heavyweight, Dinari holds the US-native compliant angle as an SEC-registered broker-dealer, and Robinhood lists many names but with little onchain value. Backed sits second by value at around 24% share, but dominates retail onchain trading on Solana, where it has handled the large majority of activity. Its edges are DeFi composability, broad exchange distribution, and now Kraken's balance sheet.