Split, consolidate, buy back, pay income and put resolutions to holders on the token they already hold. A corporate action on a tokenised security has usually meant burning the old token, issuing a new one and reconciling two registers, with the cash paid from somewhere else. In DALP 3.2 the action runs against each holder's balance of the same token, from one record that keeps its terms, its review and the transactions that applied it.
One record holds the terms, the review, the approval and the transactions that applied them
Your institution decides the event and its legal terms. DALP stores those terms on the action, shows every holder's change before anything moves, and links the record to the transactions that carried it out.
- Action types
- Thirteen, from cash dividend to spin-off
- Supply changes
- Mint or burn on each holder's balance
- Second approver
- Once your organisation turns it on
- Votes
- Resolutions executed after a timelock
Before and after
Before 3.2: A split or a capital decrease meant reissuing the token or adjusting balances one wallet at a time, then proving the new register matched the old one. Dividends were calculated in a spreadsheet and paid by a separate system, and a board resolution that changed the instrument waited for someone to carry it out by hand.
With 3.2: the Console records thirteen corporate action types: cash dividend, distribution, bond coupon, maturity redemption, conversion, bonus issue, rights issue, capital decrease, stock split, spin-off, partial redemption, buyback and coordinated distribution. A supply change mints or burns against each holder's balance of the existing token, so the register before and after the event is one holder history. Income pays out from a treasury you fund, a sensitive action can wait for a second approver, and a resolution that passes a holder vote is queued and, after a timelock, executed to apply its changes to the token.
A corporate action runs on the existing token after review and any second approval, and its record links the transactions that applied it.
Change supply without reissuing the token
A stock split, reverse split, bonus issue, capital decrease, partial redemption or buyback becomes a mint or burn against each holder's balance of the token itself. A supply change can let holders elect whether to take part before a deadline, and holders who do nothing get the default option. An issuer records a 2-for-1 split, and the review lists every holder under “Holder”, “Before”, “After” and “Change”, with the holders receiving, the supply before and after and the snapshot the figures come from. Split shares then records it with the issuer's wallet verification and runs it, or “Send for approval” hands it to a second approver. When the allocations change after the review, the Console shows “Holdings changed since you opened this review. Check the new figures.” and the platform refuses the stale confirmation. The register after the split is the same token's register, with no holder left on a retired token.
An issuer reviews what a bonus issue changes for each holder before confirming it.
From the moment a supply change is recorded until it completes or is aborted, the platform refuses another supply change and a plain mint or burn on that asset, whether or not the action needs an approver. Spin-offs and tradable rights issues mint onto a separate token, and a rights issue can instead add the entitled holders to the allow list of an existing sale. The platform enforces the one-at-a-time rule on its own routes, so a supply manager who calls the token contract directly can still mint or burn.
A holder who exercises every right in a tradable rights issue can apply for excess shares in the Investor portal and pays for them in the subscription asset when applying. At close, the lapsed rights are shared among the applicants pro-rata to what each applied for and rounded down to whole shares. The Excess applications table in the review shows each applicant with “Applied for”, “Paid”, “Allocated” and “Refund”. Closing mints the allotted excess with the exercised shares and refunds the rest of each payment in the subscription asset. When the organisation turns on approval for corporate actions, the excess allotment waits for the same second approver as the rest of the close.
Hold sensitive actions for a second approver
When your organisation turns on the Corporate actions row of its approval policy, recording a sensitive action waits for a second person. That covers a stock split, a rights issue, a capital decrease, a partial redemption, a buyback that pays cash, a dividend, coupon or distribution paid in tokens, the funding of a cash dividend, coupon or distribution, and a coordinated distribution across share classes. The approver is another organisation owner or a platform administrator, and cannot be the person who recorded the action or ran its last preview. On an instance SettleMint operates, a platform administrator can be SettleMint staff. A company secretary records a capital decrease, and a second organisation owner sees the same holder table and cash card before approving it. The rule is off by default, and while it is off, or while the organisation has no other owner who could approve, the Console warns that the action runs on the signature of whoever confirms it.
Pay dividends and interest from a treasury you fund
Two income types join the coupon. Dividend yield pays a declared amount per unit on a payment date you choose, and interest yield accrues on a deposit or fund at an annual rate, continuously or on an ACT/360 day count. Income does not arrive in holders' wallets on its own. Each holder claims what the register at the record date entitles them to, from a treasury you fund in an on-chain payout asset such as a stablecoin. Before a dividend is declared, the platform checks that the payout asset can reach the treasury and the 250 largest entitled holders, and refuses the declaration when one of them could not receive it. Holders beyond those 250 are not checked at declaration, and the check reports that it stopped there. An issuer paying a dividend in a stablecoin learns at declaration, before any money moves, that one holder's wallet cannot receive that stablecoin. An instrument with several share classes can pay them through a distribution waterfall, which takes one pool from the treasury and splits it across the classes by rank. A holder opens Collect all and collects every return one wallet is owed from one screen, and each claim is still its own transaction.
Buy back units only against cash
A buyback or partial redemption that pays cash burns each holder's units and pays them in the same transaction, so no holder's units burn without that holder's payment. The confirmation is refused while the paying treasury holds less than the plan owes, and the review and approval screens show the cash paid per holder and where it is paid from. A fund buying back units at a set price sees the shortfall before the first unit burns. Burn and payment settle together in batches of up to ten holders, so a run that stops part way leaves the paid batches applied until a follow-up pays the rest.
Let holders vote on resolutions that execute
A vote asks a token's holders to approve a resolution, choose between options or answer a poll, and a poll changes nothing on the token. A governance manager creates the vote with a record date, and each holder's weight is the voting power they have activated by that date, by delegating it to themselves or to someone else with “Activate voting power”. A resolution can carry changes from a fixed list of token operations, such as the supply cap, the yield schedule, maturing the token or fee rates. Once it passes, the governance manager chooses Queue for execution, and “Execute” after the timelock delay applies those actions to the token. Fund holders who vote to raise the supply cap see the new cap land on the token once the governance manager executes the passed resolution, with the ballots and the outcome on record. A holder who has not activated voting power before the record date carries no weight, and a holder of the token's governance role can cancel a queued resolution during the delay.
Pay a recovered wallet its coupons and interest
A wallet that identity recovery marked lost can no longer claim fixed-yield coupons or interest, and the Actions list no longer offers it the claim. The recovered-wallet-claims routes of the fixed treasury yield and interest yield features pay what the lost wallet is owed to its replacement wallet.
Post each coupon claim and redemption to your ledger
When a holder claims a coupon or redeems a bond at maturity, the platform sends token.coupon-claim.final or token. once the block is final, with the cash amount, the payout asset and the holder. The accounting team posts each claim's cash when the holder receives it, instead of booking the coupon when it is recorded. The posting preset maps both events. An organisation that stores its configuration from the preset adds a servicing. account for each quote asset in its ledger currency, and writes its configuration again, as Bond payout events describes.
Upgrading
Corporate actions and dividends run only where the operator, whoever runs your deployment, keeps offerings on. That is the default in 3.2, and a deployment whose operator turns offerings off has no corporate actions or dividends either, as Decide on the offerings surfaces describes. Existing assets and their coupons keep working. Dividend yield, interest yield, distribution waterfalls and holder elections need token features that 3.2 adds, so an organisation runs System updates before it attaches them. Integrations should expect a mint or burn to be refused while a supply change on the asset is in progress, as Mint and burn during a corporate action describes. The approval rule for corporate actions starts off, so an organisation that wants a second approver turns it on in its approval policy.
Why it matters
- Banks: coupons, dividends and interest pay from a treasury your institution funds and controls, with a second approver when your policy asks for one.
- Exchanges, CSDs and market infrastructures: A split or consolidation keeps one token and one holder history, so listings, positions and the register carry on through the event.
- Regulators: each action keeps its terms, its review, who approved it and the transactions that applied it in one record.