The Open Cap Table Protocol (OCP)
A blockchain-based standard for programmable, compliant, and composable equity management, supporting the Open Cap Table Format (OCF).
The Open Cap Table Protocol (OCP) introduces a blockchain-based framework for recording and managing equity ownership in a programmable, interoperable, and composable manner. As equity ownership remains fragmented across isolated files and databases, requiring slow, costly, and manual processes to update and reconcile records, the Open Cap Table Protocol (OCP) aims to address this issue.
The Open Cap Table Protocol (OCP) is an event-driven, onchain cap table system that enables real-time ownership tracking, automated compliance, and seamless integration with financial applications.
Built as the onchain protocol of the Open Captable Format (OCF) standard, OCP ensures legal and industry compatibility while allowing equity to function as a composable financial primitive. Through modular smart contracts and a hybrid onchain/offchain architecture, OCP scales across equity securities such as stocks, convertibles, warrants, and equity compensation while preserving privacy via Role-Based Access Control (RBAC).
OCP modernizes ownership structures and creates the technical foundation for digital and disintermediated equity markets by replacing intermediaries with code and enabling previously impossible applications (DeFi), from collateralizing private equity for loans to enforcing vesting schedules or settling transactions across different blockchains.
Authors & Contributors
Thibauld Favre (Fairmint), Joris Delanoue (Fairmint), Victor Mimo (Fairmint), Adam Momen (Fairmint), Alex Fong (Plural)
Release date
The Open Cap Table Protocol whitepaper was released on May 15th, 2025.
The evolution of securities settlement is a story of both ingenuity and compromise. In the early days, when stock ownership was represented by physical certificates, the industry was mired in labor-intensive processes. The “paperwork crisis” of the 1960s—when the New York Stock Exchange even had to close on Wednesdays during a substantial amount of 1968 to reconcile certificate volumes—underscored the urgent need for reform [1]. Research like the Rockwell Study of 1969 proposed visionary solutions, including a “national clearing system together with a decentralized network of individual transfer agent depositories,” where each transfer agent would maintain the certificates for its issuers [2]. However, due largely to technological limitations of the era—when mainframes and databases were just emerging—the industry ultimately adopted a centralized model. Certificates were immobilized within a single entity, the National Clearing Corporation [1] (the precursor to today’s Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation [3]), which was interconnected with banks and regional clearinghouses and was responsible for maintaining a comprehensive ledger of all ownership records.
While this centralized framework has proven good enough for public markets, it also spawned a complex infrastructure of intermediaries that is effectively reserved for the world’s most successful companies. Only those with significant resources can access streamlined, regulated channels for equity movement in this system. In contrast, many companies today remain private for longer periods but lack an efficient infrastructure for transferring equity. As a result, ownership records are scattered across disparate systems—from spreadsheets to isolated private databases—and moving equity involves labor-intensive, slow, and costly legal processes that limit investors’ ability to interact with and leverage their holdings fully.
The timing for modernization has never been more opportune. In February 2025, as part of a comprehensive new regulatory framework, SEC Commissioner Pierce outlined the SEC's Crypto Task Force agenda, which includes plans to work on "the intersection of crypto and clearing agency and transfer agent rules." The Commission has specifically indicated their commitment to engage with "market participants interested in tokenizing securities or otherwise using blockchain technology to modernize traditional financial markets" [4]. This regulatory evolution signals growing recognition of the need to modernize traditional financial infrastructure.
56 years ago, a vision of a distributed network of transfer agents was hypothesized. Today, the Open Cap Table Protocol (OCP) stands as an onchain, permissioned record of cap tables that is immutable, transparent, and natively programmable. By establishing a distributed network of transfer agents and issuers—each maintaining its own records while seamlessly interoperating with others—we can eliminate the friction imposed by legacy intermediaries. This network functions as a decentralized DTCC, offering a single, scalable source of truth that empowers investors to interact with their holdings in real time.
OCP unlocks a new design space for equity securities by delivering unparalleled transparency, programmability, and composability. Investors gain direct, real-time access to a single, immutable source of truth—allowing them to verify ownership, trace historical events, and confidently audit every transaction. At the same time, equity becomes programmable: compliance rules, such as transfer restrictions, vesting schedules, and shareholder voting requirements, can be enforced automatically, and transfers can be executed seamlessly when predetermined conditions are met. Moreover, OCP enables the integration of equity data into broader financial ecosystems. For example, investors can leverage their holdings as collateral to access debt financing, unlock equity-linked financing opportunities, and incorporate their equity into complex financial contracts through smart contract interactions. In short, OCP transforms cap tables into smart contracts, turning static securities into dynamic and actionable financial instruments, paving the way for financing models that were previously too complex and expensive to execute.
OCP is open source under the MIT license, with all code available in the official Open Captable Protocol repository and upcoming (read "less stable") versions available at Fairmint's repository.
OCP is designed to become the ‘de facto’ standard for recording equity onchain. OCP is chain agnostic and supports all EVM-compatible chains, maintaining the same standardized interfaces and security guarantees across all platforms. This ensures companies can deploy their cap tables on the blockchain that best suits their needs.
OCP relies on a hybrid architecture combining onchain immutability with offchain scalability. The design consists of two synchronized components: 1. smart contracts deployed on EVM-compatible chains that maintain the authoritative record of all states and transitions, and 2. a server exposing REST APIs for efficient data access and integration. While the hybrid architecture provides additional benefits, the smart contracts can be deployed independently.
Synchronization between these two components is maintained through continuous event monitoring. When a state change occurs onchain, it is immediately reflected in the offchain database, for regulatory and compliance reasons, creating a system that leverages both blockchain's immutability and traditional databases' query performance.
OCP’s core data model is grounded in the work of the Open Cap Table Coalition, ensuring broad compatibility with existing industry standards.
Hence, the foundational structure of any cap table is defined by four primary objects:
● Issuer: Represents the root entity controlling global share authorization and tracking total shares issued. This centralized control ensures that all share issuances, regardless of class or type, operate within authorized limits.
● Stock Classes: Defines the characteristics and behavior of different equity types. Each class maintains its own share authorization limits, price per share, and issuance tracking, while operating within the Issuer's global constraints. This hierarchical structure enables precise control over dilution and share allocation.
● Stock Plans: Facilitates equity compensation programs by reserving shares from specific stock classes. These plans define vesting parameters and manage share pools, providing a structured approach to employee equity distribution while maintaining compliance with company policies and regulatory requirements.
● Stakeholders: Represents individuals and/or entities that can hold securities, implementing a secure mapping between onchain addresses and legal identities. This mapping, managed through a robust verification system, ensures that all transactions can be adequately attributed while maintaining privacy and regulatory compliance.
The runtime state of the system is maintained through two key components:
● Active Positions: Represents stock positions, convertible positions, equity compensation positions, and warrant positions.. Stock positions track quantities and prices per class, while convertible positions record investment amounts and terms. Equity compensation positions manage grants and vesting status, and warrant positions track exercise terms. A real-time tracking of security ownership has been implemented through these specialized position types, depending on the category of security. Such a tracking enables complex operations like position consolidation and transfers while maintaining a complete audit trail..
● Transactions: Refers to every state change recorded through an immutable event system. The transaction log captures basic transfer operations, as well as complex events like plan adjustments, share authorization changes, and security conversions. This creates a verifiable history that can be used for audit, state reconstruction and waterfall simulations.
Four distinct security types form the basis of the protocol, each with its behavior and constraints.
● Stock: Represents the fundamental unit of company ownership. The stock positions are tracked with precise share quantities and prices, supporting multiple stock classes with specific rights and restrictions. OCP enforces authorization limits at both the issuer and class level, preventing unauthorized dilution while enabling controlled share issuance.
● Convertible security: Refers to any convertible instrument and consists in a) tracking investment amounts rather than share quantities, b) implementing specific conversion terms and c) maintaining seniority relationships. When a complex event occurs, such as a conversion event, OCP automatically creates new stock positions while maintaining the complete transaction history.
● Equity-based compensation: Refers to options (ISO, NSO), restricted stock units (RSUs), phantom shares, restricted stock awards (RSAs) and are tightly integrated with stock plans. The system tracks exercise prices, vesting schedules, and other grant-specific terms. When exercises occur, the protocol automatically validates conditions and creates the resulting stock positions.
● Warrant: Benefits from their own specialized tracking, managing exercise conditions and purchase prices. The system maintains the relationship between warrants and their underlying stock classes, enabling controlled exercise operations when conditions are met.
While these four security types cover most common scenarios, the protocol's modular design enables the addition of new security types as market needs evolve.
The top US securities law firms came together to create the Open Captable Format (OCF) [5][6]. For the first time, an industry-backed standard emerged for representing capitalization data, marking a pivotal shift toward commoditization of cap table management. This wasn't just another technical specification—it was the industry's top legal minds agreeing on a) how to represent every aspect of private company ownership and b) how to bring capitalization data control back to the stakeholders, after years of virtual lockup by SaaS cap table vendors.
The Saas cap table platforms ended up joining the coalition, implementing capitalization data import and export functions using this new standard format. This effectively enables companies to maintain ownership of their data regardless of which service providers they choose. Law firms can verify cap tables using standardized tools. Most importantly, the industry has a common language for representing ownership—from simple common stock issuances to complex convertible instruments with specific rights and preferences.
Recognizing OCF's transformative potential early, we became participants in the initiative, giving technical feedback and porting the standard onchain. Enabling OCF as both a data standard and a foundation for programmatic equity operations.
Traditional cap table systems use mutable records that update share counts and ownership directly, the protocol enforces an immutable event log that captures the complete history of a cap table. Each operation generates specific events that are appended to this log, creating a verifiable chain of transactions. When shares are issued, for example, the system doesn't simply update a number—it records an issuance event containing quantity, price, stakeholder details, and associated terms.
The transaction system implements distinct event types for each cap table operation:
● Investment Operations: Convertible security events record investment amounts, conversion terms, and seniority relationships. When conversions occur, the system generates linked events showing the relationship between the original investment and resulting stock positions.
● Stock Operations: Events capture issuances, transfers, and cancellations, recording share quantities, prices, and stakeholder details. Each transfer maintains the link between source and destination positions, enabling complete ownership tracing.
● Compensation Events: Option grants, vesting events, and exercises are recorded with their specific parameters. The system maintains connections between grants and their stock plans, tracking how each grant affects the overall share pool.
Traditional offchain cap tables are plagued by inefficiencies—manual reconciliation, fragmented records, and opaque ownership tracking. In contrast, this event-driven architecture eliminates these frictions. Every state change is programmatically verifiable, removing the need for manual reconciliation. The complete audit trail allows ownership to be verified at any point by replaying events, ensuring transparency. Regulatory compliance is also strengthened through immutable record-keeping, reducing errors and disputes inherent in offchain systems.
The Diamond Pattern [7] is a smart contract architecture designed to overcome the limitations of monolithic contracts. By splitting functionality across multiple facets—each acting as its own contract while sharing a unified storage layer—it eliminates byte-size constraints and optimizes gas efficiency. This modular design ensures scalability and enables controlled upgrades, allowing the cap table to evolve without disrupting its core integrity. Without this approach, traditional contract architectures would hit storage limits or become prohibitively expensive.
The factory contract manages consistent deployment and initialization of new cap tables. For each deployment, it:
- Creates the foundational diamond contract
- Sets up the initial issuer configuration
- Installs the core facets
- Initializes access control
This standardized process ensures that every cap table starts with proper security controls and data structures while enabling future extensibility.
The facet system organizes functionality into logical components that align with cap table operations:
● Core facets manage fundamental data structures—issuer details, stock classes, and stakeholder records. These facets implement strict access controls and validation logic to maintain data integrity.
● Operation facets handle dynamic processes like stock issuance, transfers, and conversions. Each facet implements specialized logic for its security type while maintaining consistent event generation and position tracking. Extension facets demonstrate the system's ability to add new functionality. Each extension maintains proper access control while gaining immediate access to the core storage layer, enabling seamless integration with existing cap table data.
The storage model implemented respects the Diamond Storage pattern. All facets operate on a common state, eliminating cross-contract calls while enabling atomic updates across different aspects of the cap table. This unified storage approach is crucial for maintaining data consistency during complex operations like security conversions or corporate actions.
The upgrade system enables controlled evolution of the protocol. New facets can be added to implement additional features, existing facets can be replaced to fix bugs, and storage models can be extended to support new security types. Each upgrade preserves existing data while maintaining proper access controls.
Cap table management requires strict controls to maintain compliance with securities regulations. With this in mind, we designed a comprehensive role-based access control system that has been designed to enable programmatic interactions while enforcing proper authorization.
The system defines three primary roles, each with specific capabilities:
● The Admin role maintains control over fundamental cap table configuration. This includes managing share authorizations, creating new stock classes, and controlling protocol upgrades. Admin operations are limited to essential configuration tasks, maintaining separation of concerns from day-to-day operations.
● The Operator role enables regulated entities like transfer agents and broker-dealers to manage cap table operations. These entities can execute regulated transactions, manage stakeholder identities, and access complete cap table data. This role is crucial for maintaining compliance while enabling efficient operations.
● The Investor role provides stakeholders with secure access to their own holdings. Investors can view their positions, verify transaction history, and participate in authorized operations.
Meeting stringent securities regulations and data protection requirements is a cornerstone of OCP’s architecture. The protocol enforces compliance at every step, ensuring that only authorized, regulated entities can execute or approve transactions and maintain official ownership records. At the same time, robust event logging and immutable onchain history provide complete audit trails, enabling quick verification by regulators or external auditors.
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Securities Compliance
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Transfer Agents and Issuers: Retain direct oversight of cap tables, maintaining records that meet official ownership and transaction documentation standards. This preserves the chain of custody for each share, supporting mandatory filings and disclosures.
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Broker-Dealers (Operators): Gain controlled access to core ownership data, allowing them to facilitate secondary market transactions within legal boundaries (e.g., accredited investor checks, transfer restrictions, lockups). Built-in role-based access prevents unauthorized actions while simplifying day-to-day operations.
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Identity Verification & Privacy
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Secure Mapping System: Issuers and/or regulated operators validate stakeholder identities offchain, creating onchain identifiers decoupled from personal information. This ensures full legal compliance with KYC/AML and other identity checks without exposing sensitive data on the blockchain.
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Separation of Concerns: Personal data stays offchain, while transaction records remain public and immutable—balancing transparency for regulatory oversight with confidentiality for individuals.
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Enforcement of Regulatory Constraints
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Programmable Controls: OCP’s smart contracts automatically enforce transfer restrictions, vesting schedules, and other compliance rules (e.g., ownership thresholds, accredited status verification).
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Real-Time Audits: Every transaction is captured in an immutable event log, making it straightforward to audit the system’s state at any point in time—an essential feature for satisfying record-keeping and reporting obligations.
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By combining role-based permissions, onchain event logging, and offchain identity management, OCP exceeds the usual requirements for regulated securities handling, creating a transparent yet secure environment for modern equity markets.
Privacy-by-design is foundational to OCP's architecture, ensuring appropriate protection of sensitive equity information while maintaining the transparency required of a definitive settlement layer. As the source of truth for ownership records, OCP implements privacy controls that balance confidentiality requirements with the operational visibility needed by authorized participants. The specific privacy guarantees and mechanisms employed by OCP are tailored to the capabilities of the underlying blockchain infrastructure, allowing the protocol to optimize confidentiality across diverse deployment environments.
When deployed on privacy-enabled blockchain networks[8][9], OCP leverages the inherent confidentiality features of these platforms to simplify privacy implementation. Such networks offer built-in privacy capabilities that naturally complement OCP's architecture.
In these environments, the underlying blockchain infrastructure already handles many privacy concerns through domain-based isolation, confidential transactions, or similar mechanisms. This alignment allows OCP to focus on equity-specific functionality while the network provides the privacy foundation, creating a seamless integration that maintains high standards of confidentiality with minimal additional complexity.
Each issuer's cap table can operate within the network's privacy boundaries, where only authorized participants access specific data according to their roles and entitlements. This approach is particularly effective for regulated environments, enabling transfer agents and issuers to maintain a unified view of ownership records while satisfying jurisdictional privacy constraints.
On public blockchains, OCP's architecture incorporates additional layers of protection through application-level privacy solutions. This approach expands OCP's utility to widely accessible blockchain environments while maintaining appropriate confidentiality.
For enhanced privacy in these environments, OCP maintains permanent monitoring of emerging encryption technologies such as Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE), which may eventually offer new possibilities for confidential data processing in public blockchain contexts[10][11]. Various network extensions also focus on privacy with support for confidential transactions as token extensions.[12]
In the meantime, OCP applies careful data partitioning to ensure that sensitive information remains protected. The protocol maintains appropriate separation between public and private data, with sensitive elements stored in secure off-chain systems while public blockchains handle non-sensitive transaction records.
Regardless of the underlying blockchain environment, OCP's identity architecture maintains consistent privacy principles. Personal information (PII) remains entirely off-chain, while on-chain operations rely on pseudonymous identifiers that cannot be reverse-engineered to reveal stakeholder identities.
The identity verification flow implements a strict separation of concerns: regulated operators and/or issuers confirm identities off-chain through standard KYC/AML procedures, then create corresponding on-chain identifiers using cryptographic approaches rather than personally identifiable data. These identifiers enable secure transaction processing while maintaining a verifiable audit trail that satisfies regulatory requirements.
Through this layered approach to privacy, OCP creates a framework that adapts to diverse regulatory environments and blockchain architectures while consistently protecting sensitive stakeholder information.
The position management system forms the core of cap table operations, tracking real-time ownership while enabling complex transactions. Each security type maintains its own position structure, optimized for its specific requirements.
Stock positions track share quantities and prices, maintaining links to their stock classes. When transfers occur, the system automatically consolidates positions and tracks new prices. This consolidation process maintains transaction history while simplifying future operations.
The transfer system handles partial transfers through sophisticated position splitting. When a stakeholder transfers a portion of their holdings, the system:
- Consolidates relevant source positions 2. Creates new positions for the transferred shares
- Maintains remainder positions for the original holder
- Updates all related indices and mappings
Corporate actions such as stock split or conversion, are handled through specialized position operations. Stock split automatically adjusts quantities across all affected positions. Conversion creates new positions while maintaining links to the original securities. These operations preserve the complete audit trail while ensuring accurate ownership records.
Every position operation undergoes multiple validation layers:
● Share authorization checks ensure operations remain within issuer and class limits. The system tracks available shares at multiple levels, preventing unauthorized dilution while enabling controlled issuance programs.
● Transfer restrictions are enforced through programmable rules. Vesting schedules, lockup periods, and regulatory requirements are checked before any transfer is executed. This ensures compliance while enabling automated processing of approved transactions.
The Open Cap Table Protocol (OCP) architecture is modular by design, enabling continuous evolution through new facets. Each facet gains immediate access to the core storage layer and inherits OCP’s robust access control framework, facilitating rapid feature development—whether for advanced compliance, enhanced reporting, or additional security types.
This modular design fosters a dynamic ecosystem of extensions, allowing developers to quickly build new capabilities while ensuring consistency and security across the protocol.
Historically, physical share certificates provided tangible proof of equity ownership—something shareholders could hold in their hands. This extension reimagines this traditional certificate as an onchain certificate in the form of a non-transferable NFT, providing:
● Real-Time Visibility: Ownership details automatically update when share transfers or vesting events alter stakeholder positions.
● Privacy Preservation: Anonymous identifiers ensure no personal data appears onchain.
● Easy Integration: External applications, such as cap table dashboards or financing platforms, can query NFT metadata in real-time, eliminating manual reconciliations and streamlining verification processes.
Transferable tokens introduce significant legal uncertainty and operational challenges. Questions often arise regarding whether a token triggers the exercise of a token warrant, how its transferability is enforced, or if the underlying legal agreements even recognize a token as a representation of equity. Automatically issuing transferable tokens can expose issuers to contractual ambiguities and unintended obligations. Moreover, current securities regulations impose strict controls on the unrestricted transfer of tokens, typically requiring involvement from regulated intermediaries such as broker-dealers.
In contrast, OCP fundamentally reimagines equity management by treating cap tables—not tokens—as the core ownership mechanism. Rather than defaulting to the issuance of transferable tokens, OCP implements cap tables as a series of smart contracts that record equity ownership onchain. This token-agnostic model creates a precise, legally robust digital record that prioritizes clarity, compliance, and verifiability.
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Immutable Ownership Record. By recording every change in equity onchain, OCP creates a single, definitive source of truth that stakeholders—such as transfer agents—can rely on with confidence.
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Token-Agnostic Flexibility. OCP does not require the issuance of transferable tokens; however, it remains open to integrating tokenization frameworks when market and regulatory conditions allow (e.g., Directive Tokenization).
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Legal Certainty. By ensuring that the onchain record unequivocally represents actual equity ownership, OCP provides clear legal standing and avoids the ambiguities often tied to tokens.
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Minimized Issuer Risk. Decoupling ownership records from token transfers protects issuers from unintended contractual pitfalls, reducing exposure to legal liabilities.
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Regulatory Compliance. Focusing solely on recording ownership allows OCP to circumvent the complexities of free token transferability. At the same time, the protocol can integrate with compliant token solutions under proper regulatory frameworks.
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Future-Proof Integration. OCP’s design remains highly adaptable. Its extension-based architecture and token-agnostic model enable new features—such as automated compliance checks or advanced tokenization methods—to be seamlessly incorporated.
Ultimately, OCP’s design treats the cap table as the definitive record of equity—ensuring that every ownership change is immutably recorded onchain. OCP offers a secure, auditable, and legally robust foundation for managing equity by deprioritizing transferable tokens while remaining flexible enough to integrate under the right conditions. This approach reflects a commitment to delivering a future-proof solution that aligns with evolving financial and regulatory landscapes—without being confined to a one-size-fits-all token model.
The protocol has moved beyond theory into active production on Base L2, supporting multiple platforms and real-world use cases. Fairmint[13] and Plural Energy are both leveraging OCP on Base, demonstrating its scalability and efficiency in private market securities.
Fairmint[14] is using OCP in production as its core cap table infrastructure and, to this day, recorded over $1B in equity value onchain. This implementation spans companies from early-stage startups to later-stage private entities, validating the system's flexibility across different company stages and structures.
For Plural Energy [15], the protocol is the settlement layer for their clean energy tokens, enabling instant, onchain settlement of assets and payments between purchasers and issuer. Transactions are recorded atomically, and the OCP smart contracts ensure compliance with existing regulations. To date, $30M in assets have been settled onchain, marking real traction in bringing energy markets onchain.
Fairmint brings equity onchain—making it easy to issue, manage, and transfer. As an active member of the Open Cap Table Coalition, Fairmint championed the onchain implementation of the Open Cap Table Format (OCF) and integrated it into its product suite, delivering companies—from early-stage startups to later-stage private enterprises—with the tools to unlock the benefits of onchain equity.
● Total Asset Value Onchain: Over $1B in equity has already been recorded by Fairmint, demonstrating OCP’s scalability and resilience.
● Flexibility: OCP accommodates multiple company stages and share structures, staying agile as cap tables become more complex.
● EVM Core Integration: Fairmint relies on OCP as its primary cap table system on Base L2, benefiting from a hybrid onchain/offchain design.
● Beyond EVM: A full Rust implementation for Solana is in progress, retaining feature parity with the EVM version and validating cost-efficiency alongside higher performance.
● Privacy-Enabled Network Integration: Fairmint has joined the Canton Network as a validator, with a daml implementation of OCP in progress. This enables Fairmint to offer OCP on Canton's privacy-preserving architecture in the future.
Fairmint’s mission is to move equity onchain. As a registered Transfer Agent, it fulfills the original vision of a distributed network of regulated agents and issuers, enabling seamless, onchain equity transactions and settlement without intermediaries. By bringing equity onchain, Fairmint aims to drive a new wave of innovation in capital formation and liquidity mechanisms.
Plural Energy required a modern settlement layer for clean energy tokens that could atomically process asset transfers (energy tokens) and payments under strict compliance rules.
● Settlement Layer on Base L2: Plural Energy used OCP to execute asset and payment transactions simultaneously, ensuring instant and verifiable onchain settlement.
● Regulatory Compliance: Automated compliance checks reduce risk and streamline interactions between purchasers and issuers.
● Onchain Volume: Over $30M in assets have already been settled onchain for Web3-enabled energy markets..
Plural Energy sees OCP as a foundation for further innovation in tokenized energy markets, enabling scalable, transparent trading of clean energy assets and fostering global participation.
As equity markets move steadily toward fully digital operations and blockchain integration, OCP is taking a pivotal role in shaping this evolution. Having demonstrated its robustness in private markets, OCP already enables early-stage and growth-stage companies to achieve unprecedented efficiency and transparency in equity management. As more sophisticated enterprises adopt onchain workflows, the natural evolution will include complex cap tables, enhanced secondary market liquidity, and regulatory innovations around tokenized equity securities.
However, the vision extends well beyond private markets. The historical trajectory of financial infrastructure — from paper certificates to electronic trading—suggests that once new systems prove secure, efficient, and scalable, they reshape even the most prominent public markets. A future where public offerings are conducted directly onchain—eliminating layers of legacy intermediaries—is rapidly moving from speculative to achievable. With the right legal frameworks and industry collaboration, a fully onchain IPO could be the next major milestone.
● Regulatory Engagement: OCP continues to work with broker-dealers, transfer agents, and policymakers to streamline compliance for onchain securities.
● Technical Advancements: Upcoming extensions will introduce automated compliance checks, cross-chain coordination, and integrations with DeFi —opening new avenues for liquidity and financing.
● Ecosystem Growth: The OCP community spans developers, issuers, investors, and law firms. By pooling expertise, we can push forward innovations in both technical and regulatory spheres.
OCP is open source under the MIT license, and we invite developers, law firms, regulated entities, and anyone passionate about modernizing equity markets to participate. Potential avenues for contribution include:
● Extension Development: Build new facets or tools that enhance compliance, reporting, or cross-chain functionality.
● Research & Standards: Collaborate on refining open standards (like OCF) to ensure maximum interoperability.
● Legal & Regulatory Expertise: Help shape the evolving compliance frameworks governing onchain equity.
● Community Engagement: Provide feedback, share insights, and foster discussions on design, governance, and future directions.
Whether you’re a regulated intermediary eager to streamline workflows, an issuer seeking robust and cost-effective equity infrastructure, or a developer building the next wave of financial applications—we invite you to join us. You can contact us by email at ocp at fairmint.com.
By aligning around a flexible, standards-based protocol today, OCP paves the way for transparent, efficient, and accessible equity issuance at any scale—private, public, and global. The path ahead calls for collaboration among technologists, policymakers, and market participants. Let’s seize this moment to redefine equity markets, forging a future where frictionless, programmable ownership drives unprecedented innovation and opportunity.
We thank the following reviewers for their valuable feedback:
- Alex Svanevik, Nansen
- Bernhard Elsner, Digital Asset
- Austin Federa, DoubleZero
- Anna Yuan, Perena
- Nathan Worsley, Euphoria
- Nick Ducoff, Solana Foundation
- Alex Fagella, Day One
- Yev Muchnik, Launch Legal
[1] Securities and Exchange Commission. Securities Transaction Settlement Cycle Concept Release. SEC.gov, 2015. Available at: https://www.sec.gov/files/rules/concept/2015/34-76743.pdf. The Paperwork Crisis can be found on page 17, the Rockwell study on page 21, and the formation of NCC on page 24
[2] SEC. Transfer Agent Regulations. Federal Register, 2015 https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2015/12/31/2015-32755/transfer-agent-regulations#page-81953.
[3] Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). Our History. https://www.dtcc.com/annuals/history
[4] Peirce, Hester. The Journey Begins: Statement on the SEC’s Crypto Task Force & Securities Tokenization. SEC.gov, 2025. Available at: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/peirce-journey-begins-020425
[5] Open Cap Table Coalition. Open Cap Table Format (OCF) Specification. OpenCapTableCoalition.com, 2023. Available at: https://www.opencaptablecoalition.com/format
[6] Jeff Higgins, Managing Partner, Gunderson Dettmer, Joe Green, Chief Innovation Officer, Gunderson Dettmer, Naveen Pai, Chief Knowledge Officer, Gunderson Dettmer. Where does the cap table industry go now? The Open Cap Table Coalition should lead the way, 2024 Available at: https://medium.com/@gundersondettmer/where-does-the-cap-table-industry-go-now-13ac917670d8
[7] Mudge, Nick. EIP-2535: Diamond Standard – A Proxy Architecture for Smart Contracts. Ethereum.org, 2021 Available at: https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-2535
[8] Digital Asset. “Canton Network Documentation: An Enterprise-Grade Interoperable Blockchain.” Canton.network, 2023. Available at: https://www.canton.network/docs
[9] Aztec. “Aztec Network Documentation.” Aztec.network, 2023. Available at: https://docs.aztec.network/aztec
[10] Zama. “FHEVM Documentation.” Zama.ai, 2023. Available at: https://docs.zama.ai/fhevm
[11] Fhenix. “Writing Smart Contracts with FHE-sol.” Fhenix.zone, 2023.
Available at: https://docs.fhenix.zone/docs/devdocs/Writing%20Smart%20Contracts/FHE-sol
[12] Solana Program Library. “Confidential Token: An Overview.” Solana.com, 2023. Available at: https://spl.solana.com/confidential-token
[13] Fairmint.com. Fairmint Achieves Milestone as Newly SEC-Registered Transfer Agent, 2024.
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/fairmint-achieves-milestone-as-newly-sec-registered-transfer-agent-30
2052346.html
[14] Fairmint. Fairmint brings equity onchain—making it easy to issue, manage, and transfer. Founders raise seamlessly, while investors hold their equity directly in their wallets. Available at: https://fairmint.com
[15] Plural Energy. Plural Energy | Onchain financing for climate assets. https://www.pluralfinance.com