Assets and instruments

Three ways to value an instrument

Valuation mode	Its price	Its income	Example
`rebasing`	The price source’s NAV: an index	Paid as new units, each distribution period	A money-market fund
`par`	One unit is one unit of account	None of its own	A tokenized deposit; a stablecoin, minted against a reserve or by its issuer
`accumulating`	Its reserve’s value over what is outstanding, computed on the ledger in each mint and redemption	Grows the price; the number of units is fixed	A note minted against units of a fund

A rebasing instrument names its price source; a par instrument has none; an accumulating one is priced by its reserve, from its assets’ own price sources.

Backed instruments

A backed instrument is minted against deposits of eligible assets into a reserve on the ledger, which the venue, the issuer and the reserve’s own holder sign. The assets can be any registrar’s, the issuer’s own or another’s. See Backed issuance for the reserve, its terms, and the rule it keeps. Every mint and every redemption checks, inside its own transaction, that the reserve still covers what is outstanding (Σ units × price × (1 − haircut) ≥ outstanding × backed price × minimum cover); a settlement that would break it fails, and nothing moves.

Reference structures

Structure	What it holds
A fund alone	A rebasing money-market fund, its price source and its holders: a first deployment
A fund paid on the ledger	The same fund, with a payment asset on its issuer’s own registry, such as a bank’s tokenized deposit or a stablecoin, paying for subscriptions and redemptions; the demo pays in a tokenized deposit
Backed instruments	An accumulating note on the issuer’s own fund, and a par stablecoin on another registrar’s fund, each with its reserve
Opaque ids	Any of these under opaque registry ids (`I-7f3a9c`), each shown with a display name and a symbol

What changes with configuration, and what needs new software

Configuration, approved under four eyes	A new version of the shared software
A new instrument, its valuation mode, its price source, its display	A new kind of behaviour on the ledger: for example the primary market paid on the ledger, the issuer powers, a dealing cycle
A reserve, its assets, haircuts and minimum cover	A move to a new release of the DA Registry or the token standard it is built on
Holder caps and policies; distribution terms and calendar
Admissions, consents, standing approvals

A new version of the shared software is a vetting event: each party’s node approves the new package itself before acting on it. A new asset is never one. An instrument’s display is off the ledger: its name, symbol and display decimals are the venue’s record, shown beside its id and never settled on. Ids may be opaque, since the registry’s operator reads every configuration. Related: Backed issuance · Set up an asset · Price the asset · NodeAsset vs. ERC-3643 and MPL-3643

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Workflows

Foundations

Assets and instruments

Three ways to value an instrument

Backed instruments

Reference structures

What changes with configuration, and what needs new software

​Three ways to value an instrument

​Backed instruments

​Reference structures

​What changes with configuration, and what needs new software

Three ways to value an instrument

Backed instruments

Reference structures

What changes with configuration, and what needs new software