In the scramble for front-row seats in the market, the real beneficiaries are often those who quietly set up the stage. In recent months, one of the hottest sectors in the crypto industry has undoubtedly been stock tokenization. From Kraken's launch of xStocks to Ondo's push for on-chain securities, and the subsequent launch of US stock trading services by exchanges like Gate and Bitget, more and more institutions are attempting to bring traditional securities to the blockchain. On the surface, this appears to be a competition between platforms. But if you break these products down, you'll find an interesting phenomenon: different brands are at the forefront, but the real work is often done by the same company. This company is Alpaca. According to its disclosed data, Alpaca supports approximately 94% of the market share in the tokenized US stock and ETF market; in the large and super-large-cap stock sector, this proportion is even close to 97%. In other words, as more and more institutions begin vying for access to the "on-chain Wall Street," the entire industry is betting more and more on the same company. Even more interestingly, ten years ago, almost no one was optimistic about it. The main battlefield of stock tokenization: Over the past year, stock tokenization has been most likely to create a misconception. Many people believe the competition happens on the front end. Whoever launches their product first, supports more stocks, or has more users wins. But for those who have actually worked in the securities business, they know very well that the truly difficult part is never on the front end. Issuing a token isn't difficult; the difficulty lies in the real-world financial system behind it. User account opening requires compliance reviews, stock trading requires order routing, assets need custody, and clearing and settlement are needed after a transaction is completed. Corporate actions such as dividends, stock splits, stock consolidation, and delisting of listed companies also require someone to handle them. These things don't disappear just because assets are moved to the blockchain. On the contrary, when on-chain assets are connected to real-world assets, these problems often become even more complex. This is why many platforms ultimately choose the same partner, because solving these underlying problems is the truly high-barrier-to-entry work compared to customer acquisition and traffic. And Alpaca is precisely doing these things. Why Alpaca? Alpaca was founded in 2015. Founder Yoshi Yokokawa came from the Lehman Brothers securitization team, and co-founder and CPO Hitoshi Harada also has a background in finance and technology. But what many people don't know is that this company didn't start out as a brokerage firm. In the early stages of their startup, the team attempted to develop products related to artificial intelligence and machine learning, hoping to find a breakthrough by taking advantage of the AI boom at the time, but the results were not ideal.Harada later admitted that the company was initially founded more out of entrepreneurial impulse than to address a real market need. Meanwhile, they applied several times to join the renowned Silicon Valley startup incubator Y Combinator, but were unsuccessful. It wasn't until 2019 that Alpaca was finally approved. However, what truly changed the company's fate wasn't Y Combinator, but their renewed understanding of financial infrastructure. At the time, there were already many financial products for investors, but few were willing to build the underlying systems that users couldn't see. If a fintech company wanted to launch a securities trading service, it would face numerous complex issues: brokerage licenses, KYC systems, market data, order execution, clearing and settlement, securities custody… For most startups, this was almost an impossible task. Alpaca decided to change its approach: since no one was willing to build these underlying capabilities, they would specialize in doing it. In the following years, the company gradually obtained the relevant regulatory qualifications and established a complete brokerage business and clearing capabilities, ultimately forming a standardized API system. For partners, they didn't need to build the entire securities infrastructure themselves; they only needed to call Alpaca's interfaces, and Alpaca would handle the rest. This is Alpaca's "Brokerage-as-a-Service" model. For a long time, Alpaca played a behind-the-scenes role in the stock tokenization boom, reaping the benefits without much effort. However, as stock tokenization exploded, all platforms attempting to bring US stocks onto the blockchain ultimately faced the same question: how do on-chain tokens correspond to real-world stocks? This requires real-world stock custody, clearing and settlement, handling dividends and corporate actions, and meeting regulatory requirements. These are precisely the capabilities Alpaca has accumulated over the years. In 2025, Alpaca further launched the Instant Tokenization Network (ITN). Compared to the settlement cycle required by traditional securities markets, ITN aims to shorten the conversion time between traditional securities systems and on-chain ledgers, improving the efficiency of tokenized asset circulation. In a sense, it doesn't create a new asset, but rather attempts to shorten the distance between two financial systems. Thus, an interesting phenomenon emerged: more and more platforms began competing on the front end, while more and more platforms also began using the same infrastructure in the back end. When an industry expands, Alpaca is almost naturally able to share in the benefits of that growth. 94%: a double-edged sword. Now, back to that number: 94%.For Alpaca, this is the result of a decade of accumulation—licensing, self-clearing, API priority, early deployment, and network effects—each a barrier that latecomers find difficult to replicate in the short term. More and more platforms are connecting to Alpaca, bringing more accounts and trading volume, driving it to further improve its infrastructure, continue attracting newcomers, and creating a positive flywheel. Yoshi's own interpretation of this figure is larger than outsiders imagine. He's not just eyeing the tokenized stock market, but the global custody market of approximately $350 trillion—currently controlled by four giants: BNY Mellon, State Street, JP Morgan, and Citi, which together control about $180 trillion. Alpaca's goal is to become the "next-generation BNY Mellon." But for the entire tokenized stock market, this 94% has another side. If more and more platforms rely on the same infrastructure provider, then the entire market is actually forming a new single point of dependence. Today, users see different platforms, different brands, and different products, but the underlying clearing, custody, and execution processes are becoming increasingly centralized. This certainly brings efficiency, but it also means that risks are concentrating. If significant regulatory changes, core system failures, or service limitations occur in the future, the impact may not be limited to a single platform, but rather the entire tokenized securities ecosystem. This is not a problem unique to Alpaca. In fact, every infrastructure industry faces similar challenges at a certain stage of development. This is true for cloud computing, payment networks, and financial infrastructure. The competition on the front end versus the truth behind the back end. The next time you see an exchange announce "listing US stocks," consider two things: the front end is a competition for brand and traffic, while the back end's clearing, custody, and execution are likely still being handled by the same company. From a lost entrepreneur rejected four times by Y Combinator to an invisible giant controlling the lifeline of on-chain US stocks, Alpaca's story illustrates one thing: in the scramble for front-row seats in the market, the real beneficiary is often the one who quietly sets up the stage. But when there is only one stage, and everyone is on it, the stability of the stage itself and risk management are key to the future healthy development of the market. *This article is for reference only and does not constitute any investment advice. The market is risky; invest with caution. [Conflux]