Introducing
Tokenize.it

Fundraising, employee participation & crowdfunding platform.

Expertise

Product discovery

UX/UI design

Product management

Development

Location

Mittwerde / Germany

About Tokenize.it

This platform offers an innovative solution for companies seeking capital and investors, enabling employee participation based on the same fungible token used for fundraising. Through flexible fundraising options, startups receive capital outside of traditional funding rounds and can effectively incentivize their community. It is built on Ethereum and provides a specially optimized legal setup for GmbHs with tailored contract templates.

It was founded by Christoph Jentzsch, a theoretical physicist, former core-dev of Ethereum (2014/15), and co-founder of Slock.it, author of TheDAO, business angel, and today co-founder and CEO of Corpus & Tokenize.it who is dedicated to building the next generation of web3 products.

The Challenge

Tokenize.it was looking to build a platform that operated on the principles of continuous funding and innovative financial sustainability where a legal framework for funding would be provided for companies (as of today, it offers a legal framework only for German companies).
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At the core of Tokenize.it's value proposition is its commitment to user experience. In line with this, we dedicated our efforts to creating a responsive user interface (UI) that ensures an intuitive and engaging interaction with the platform. The user experience (UX) design has been thoughtfully developed to enhance the overall usability and satisfaction of all stakeholders, whether they are entrepreneurs, investors, or employees participating in the company's growth.

Development workflow

In our project, we implemented a development workflow by utilizing three distinct environments: local, staging, and production.
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For local development, we leveraged the local stack to emulate cloud services, ensuring seamless integration and testing of related components. Additionally, we employed Hardhat as a local blockchain, facilitating efficient smart contract development and testing.
Moving to the staging environment, we maintained a full architecture similar to production, yet with Ethereum test net integration. This allowed us to validate the application’s performance and behavior in an environment resembling the production setup.
Finally, for production deployment, we transitioned to the mainnet.

Our tech approach

Framework: NextJS (React-based)
Database: PostgreSQL with Prisma as ORM (handles migrations)
Communication protocol: tRPC (Typed RPC) for backend-frontend communication (ensures type safety, reduces runtime errors)
Infrastructure management: Terraform (IaaC) for consistent resource provisioning
Deployment: Fargate cluster for scalable and resilient container orchestration

Key Benefits

Quick integration: tRPC facilitates rapid backend-frontend connection with automatic TypeScript type generation for API calls
Code maintainability: Streamlined communication enhances code maintainability
Consistent environments: Terraform ensures consistent resource provisioning across various environments
Scalability and resilience: Fargate cluster provides seamless scaling and enhances application resilience

Overall Impact

This comprehensive tech stack, comprising NextJS, PostgreSQL, Prisma, tRPC, Terraform, and Fargate, empowers the product's development, deployment, and ongoing success.

Outcome

Although external factors initially hampered the release of the first MVP (mainly due to additional compliance requirements), our agile response allowed us to pivot and provide value to customers quickly.
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The Tokenize.it platform now offers users a seamless experience by consolidating Fundraising, employee participation, and Crowdfunding activities for German-based companies within a single, integrated solution. Built on top of Ethereum smart contracts, the platform ensures secure and transparent transactions, providing users with a reliable and efficient means to engage in various financial activities.

Tech stack

Front-end

React

Back-end

Next.js

tRPC

Blockchain

MetaMask

Smart Contracts

IntroducingTokenize.it