Funds

Fund instruments on DALP are pooled-investment tokens that hold investor shares of a managed portfolio. Use DALP to model the fund token, enforce subscriber eligibility, accrue management and transaction fees, record subscriptions and redemptions on chain, and produce balance snapshots for investor reporting. NAV calculation, portfolio management, fund-manager regulatory status, custody of the underlying assets, and cash movement remain external operating responsibilities.

Who should read this: Fund managers, fund administrators, transfer agents, and architects deciding whether a pooled investment instrument fits DALP.

Business challenge

A fund vehicle holds many investors against one portfolio. The manager defines the fund mandate and decides who can subscribe. Subscriptions are recorded against NAV, redemptions release units back to the fund, and a management fee accrues against assets under management. The administrator publishes the NAV, reconciles the share register, and produces tax and regulator reports for the lifetime of every position.

Traditional fund administration spreads these duties across the manager, the administrator, the transfer agent, the custodian, and the regulator. DALP provides a controlled EVM execution layer for the fund token and its lifecycle. The platform does not replace the fund manager's investment process, the administrator's NAV book, the custodian's holding of the underlying assets, or the regulator-facing filings unless those responsibilities are explicitly integrated into the target operating model.

DALP fund templates

DALP ships seeded system templates for common fund shapes. Each template selects the required token features and the metadata schema operators populate during asset creation.

Operators choose a template in the Asset Designer or pass templateId to the API. Each template's requiredFeatures apply automatically at deployment; configurable parameters like feeBps, recipient, and denominationAsset come from the operator during asset creation.

What DALP enforces

DALP supports a fund instrument through a fixed set of platform behaviours:

• Holder eligibility is enforced through identity registration and the active compliance modules. The fund template can require an identity-verification claim plus an investor-classification policy before a wallet may hold subscriptions.
• Subscriptions and redemptions execute on chain through controlled mint and burn paths. The platform records the transaction, emits a lifecycle event, and updates indexed balances for investor reporting.
• The aum-fee token feature accrues a periodic management fee against the configured asset base. The fee rate and recipient are configurable per asset.
• The transaction-fee (or transaction-fee-accounting) token feature charges or records fees on subscription, redemption, or secondary transfers, depending on the template.
• The historical-balances token feature emits balance-checkpoint events that downstream systems use to produce investor statements and tax reports without scanning the full event log.
• The voting-power token feature, present on fund and private-equity-fund templates, supports limited-partner-style voting where the governance model needs it.

What stays external

Fund operations require workstreams that DALP does not provide:

• NAV calculation. The administrator computes NAV against the fund's portfolio and provides the value to DALP through the issuer-signed scalar feed integration. DALP records the value; it does not produce it.
• Portfolio management. Custody of the underlying assets, investment decisions, and the regulator-facing fund mandate live with the manager and the custodian.
• Cash movement. Fiat subscription and redemption settlement runs through the fund administrator's cash account or a payment provider, not the chain.
• Fund-manager regulatory status. AIFM, UCITS, or jurisdiction-specific manager licenses are commercial and regulatory items the issuer holds.
• Investor reporting templates. DALP exposes the balance and fee-accrual data; the administrator generates the investor statement and tax forms.

Operating model

The fund use case combines a fund manager, a fund administrator, a transfer agent (where applicable), and the DALP operator team. Treat DALP as the controlled execution layer for the fund token, not as a replacement for any of those parties.

• The fund manager owns investment decisions and the regulator-facing mandate.
• The fund administrator owns NAV calculation, position reconciliation, and investor statements. The administrator submits NAV values through the issuer-signed scalar feed.
• The transfer agent or in-house operator team approves new investors, manages identity claims, and operates subscriptions and redemptions through the Asset Console or the platform API.
• The DALP operator team configures the fund template, enforces compliance modules, and monitors the platform's operating evidence.

Read next

• Instrument templates for the Asset Designer flow that publishes a template-backed fund.
• Compliance overview for the identity and policy modules that gate fund subscriptions.
• Token features for the AUM fee, transaction fee, and balance-snapshot behaviour referenced above.
• Feed update flow for the issuer-signed scalar-feed path that carries NAV values onto chain.