The daily pre-IPO prediction market has distributed 2.74M+ $CC and grown to 18,000+ $HECTO holders — turning an institutional settlement network into a venue for everyday participation in the world's most valuable private companies.
Hecto is the on-chain gateway to the pre-IPO economy. Built natively on the Canton Network, it is full-stack infrastructure designed to open an asset class historically reserved for funds, family offices, and insiders: the world's most valuable private companies, which now create the majority of their value while still private. Hecto's organising principle is simple — make the inaccessible accessible, compliantly and on-chain.
That infrastructure is designed to move capital and attention through three stages — Signal, Access, and Settlement, and its first live product is now scaling fast. Hecto’s Allocator product, a daily prediction market on the price movement of the world's most valuable private companies, has gotten heavy traction on Canton, The product has surpassed 17,000+ daily active users, distributed 2.74M+ $CC (Canton Coin) in rewards, and grown to 18,000+ $HECTO holders, establishing the Allocator as one of the most active consumer applications on the Canton Network.
Private markets have historically been engineered to be exclusive, with the upside of companies like OpenAI, SpaceX, and Anthropic compounding behind gates only insiders could pass. The Allocator is the front door Hecto built to change that: a simple, daily way for anyone to engage with those companies, on rails designed for institutional finance.
How the Allocator works
The Allocator is a daily, on-chain prediction market built natively on Canton. Each day, users allocate $HECTO, Hecto's Canton-native utility token, to the Hectocorn they believe will outperform, and earn $CC rewards for correct conviction.
A Hectocorn is a private company valued at $100B or more; the current set includes OpenAI, SpaceX, Anthropic, ByteDance, Stripe, and Databricks.
The mechanic is deliberately simple:
- Swap $CC for $HECTO.
- Allocate to the company you believe will move.
- Earn $CC for a correct call.
Importantly, the Allocator is a prediction on price movement - not a purchase of shares and not ownership of the underlying company. And it is non-liquidating: an incorrect call does not cost a user their $HECTO. They simply study the market and participate again the next day.
That single design choice is what separates the Allocator from the rest of the on-chain prediction landscape.
Why it's different
Most products adjacent to the Allocator fall into two camps. Event-based prediction venues resolve occasional binary outcomes such as if a company will IPO by a certain date, and settle once. Perpetual futures offer continuous exposure but carry liquidation risk, where a wrong move can wipe out a position.
The Allocator is neither. It is a daily, continuous, company-level market on how the world's most valuable private companies move, closer to active trading than to one-off event betting, and it is non-liquidating by design. It is also Canton-native, which means it settles on infrastructure built for regulated financial assets rather than on a public chain designed for retail speculation.
The result is a genuinely new format: the market before the market. A low-friction, daily on-ramp to the pre-IPO economy that rewards attention and conviction rather than punishing a single wrong call.
The difference on Canton
The Allocator's traction is also a story about Canton itself. As an institutional, privacy-enabled settlement network, Canton was built for serious financial infrastructure — and the Allocator has become a breakout consumer use case on top of it, driving real, sustained on-chain activity rather than fleeting speculation.
Hecto's design recycles Canton Coin emissions into liquidity incentives, so network rewards translate directly into durable depth for Hecto's markets — activity that compounds rather than evaporates. That contribution is reflected in a set of Canton firsts: Hecto is the network's first asset issuer and first utility token issuer, holds validator and Featured App status, and ranks among Canton's most active applications by on-chain value generated.
For Canton, the Allocator demonstrates that an institutional-grade network can host a live, growing, genuinely consumer-facing product. For users, it means daily engagement with private-market giants on rails trusted by institutions.
The front door to a full stack
The Allocator is the first stage of a larger architecture Hecto describes as:
- Signal
- Access
- Settlement.
The Allocator generates live, daily signal - a continuously updating read on where conviction and attention are flowing across the most valuable private companies.
On the roadmap, Hecto plans to route that signal into structured access: Hecto Indices / PMX for tokenised, diversified pre-IPO exposure; Hecto Vaults for quote-based, direct access for qualified participants; and Hecto Secondaries for direct cap-table routes.
Each of these is forthcoming and subject to eligibility, KYC, and regulatory requirements - not yet live.
The Allocator a the live product, and the front door to everything that follows.
Quote
"Private markets were engineered to be exclusive. The Allocator flips that — it gives anyone a daily, hands-on way to engage with the companies defining this era, on infrastructure built for institutional finance. This traction tells us the appetite was always there. The access just wasn't." - Ultan Miller, CEO, Hecto
About Hecto
Hecto is building the full-stack infrastructure for the pre-IPO economy, natively on the Canton Network. Its live product, the Allocator, is a daily prediction market on the world's most valuable private companies.
On the roadmap, Hecto's architecture extends into tokenised index exposure (Hecto Indices / PMX), quote-based direct access (Hecto Vaults), and direct secondary access (Hecto Secondaries) - all designed compliance-first.
It pays to be early.
