How Caper approaches this An …te (/wiki/governance/voting) .Caper does not mint the IP rig… (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

Topic Intellectual Property N…e (https://www.molecule.xyz) —– open-source IP-NFT contracts…nical-deep-dive/onchain-lab) —– a LabNFT bound to its own sma…es/contracts) ) V3 on-chain (25 Aug6 Oct 2026) 82146 Labs minted (ids 0–8145); 05 IP Tokens ever deployedissued, the first on 18 Sep 2026 Used by VitaDAO (/wiki/desc…desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) DAOs

What the original IP-NFT held …ead access to encrypted files —– the underlying data room of r…ized it into IP Tokens (IPTs) —– ERC-20 (https://eips.ethereu…rogrammes below were built on.

Molecule Labs: the V3 model M…es an account that holds them —– treasury, data anchor, licenc… a plain ERC-721 transferFrom —– “no migration, no re-initial… contracts live Base Mainnet —– LabNFT (proxy) 0x9F96…BE92 (…ad5F2b5d7043B36Ee96B2EeBE92) —– Lab ownership NFT Base Mainnet —– OclTokenizer (proxy) 0x62F5……974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E) —– IPT factory Base Mainnet —– AccessResolver (v3) 0x89a1…b…d4775053Edad0f2fA2d6767b72B) —– roles & file access Ethereum Mainnet —– IPNFT (unmaintained) 0xcaD8……7815728C72D74B4ff4982d54Fc1) —– the original IP-NFT Addresse…ast push was in November 2025.

What is actually deployed on V…run 0 through 81 with no gaps —– ownerOf(81) resolves and owne…/eip-7702) delegated wallets —– fifteen delegating to ZeroDev…n IPT. Its complete event log —– every log it has emitted betw…706,566, and block 50,443,168 —– is still the same seven admin…s above were not re-counted. For anyone modelling governance on top of a Lab, the reading is that the ownership primitive is live and in use while the fractional-ownership primitA third reading on 6 October 2026, at block 52,262,412, found that split starting to close. totalSupply() on the LabNFT returns 146 and ownerOf(146) reverts, so 32 more Labs were added after 16 September. The tokenizer (https://basescan.org/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E) 's nonce now reads 6: it has created five contracts, the first at block 51,476,323 on 18 September 2026. Each is a 45-byte EIP-1167 clone whose name() gives the Lab it was issued for: - Lab 119: MiauMiau (https://basescan.org/address/0x0b55f277676a8715e5de3f5047650a508ce26d2a) , 1,000,000,000 tokens - Lab 125: TON (https://basescan.org/address/0x12161edccd984d682f0270507b4122bea76680d1) , 1,000,000 - Lab 74: BUFOTENINE (https://basescan.org/address/0x86b484b1b068ea87c02a4d6d83d2d1b9b070b98e) , 1,000,000 - Lab 76: HYPNOSSWS0 (https://basescan.org/address/0x1f3ae6e0877faf4bb6c395f0ffb45fc39b23e07e) and HYPNOSSWS0 (https://basescan.org/address/0x6a6797c4a23af5d150024d72c37193c07694e75b) again, 1,000,000 each Lab 76 having two token addresses sits awkwardly with the contract reference's “one fractional ERC-20 IP Token (IPT) per Lab”. Which of the two the Lab treats as its IPT, and whether any of the five that turns a Lab into something a community can hold is not yet in use at all. Every IP Token that has actuallys been sold to fund research, was not checked. For anyone modelling governance on top of a Lab, the reading is that the ownership primitive is in steady use and the fractional-ownership primitive has only just begun: five IP Tokens against 146 Labs, all issued since 18 September. Every IP Token known to have funded research still sits on…length rather than as history.

Coin-to-Company: the token is …debate usually leaves blurred —– and a useful counterpoint for…oken is a claim on the entity.

In practice VitaDAO (/wiki/d…) followed the same sequence —– mint, tokenize, sell IPTs to …for the data-side counterpart.

On Radix On Radix, IP-NFTs wo…r than ERC-721 contract state —– making them more composable, … shape than an addition to it.

How Caper approaches this An …(/wiki/governance/proposals) —– a lab grant, a licensing deal, a milestone payment —– decided by a stake-weighted-…ury, and governance around it —– with a weighted exit (/wiki/… (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

References - Molecule —– Contracts index (Base Labs co…nces/contracts) - Molecule —– Molecule Labs (the five conve…ve/onchain-lab) - Molecule —– Architecture (OnChainLabFacto…n/architecture) - Molecule —– OclTokenizer contract referen…acts/tokenizer) - Molecule —– IPT (IP Token) contract refer…/contracts/ipt) - Molecule —– Coin-to-Company model (lock-a…) - moleculeprotocol/IPNFT —– open-source IP-NFT contracts …rotocol/IPNFT) - Etherscan —– original IPNFT contract, Ethe…– LabNFT proxy, Base mainnet (82146 minted, ids 0–8145, read 25 August6 October 2026) (https://basescan.org/a…d5F2b5d7043B36Ee96B2EeBE92) - BaseScan – OclTokenizer proxy, Base mainnet (nonce 6, five IP Tokens created, read 6 October 2026) (https://basescan.org/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E) - Blockscout – OclTokenizer i…597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns)

What is actually deployed on V… clone, the decisive check is that the tokenizer has zero internal transactions (https://base.blockscout.com/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns) and has therefore never created a contract. T's account nonce. A contract's nonce starts at 1 and rises each time it creates a contract (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-161) ; the tokenizer's still reads 1, while the OnChainLabFactory beside it (https://base.blockscout.comscan.org/address/0xECdF4f05384056507485C90aeAb0a83268760D6E) reads 4. An explorer tab is a weaker test: Blockscout (https://base.blockscout.com/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns) does showlists two internal transactions onfor the same explorer index, which rules out an indexing gaptokenizer, both from its own initialization on 16 July 2026, and neither creates a contract. A second reading on 16 September 2026, at block 51,387,462, found the same split three weeks on: totalSupply() returns 114 and ownerOf(114) reverts, so 32 Labs were added after 25 August, and the tokenizer's nonce was still 1. The ownership and trading figures above were not re-counted. For anyone modelling govern…length rather than as history.

References - Molecule — Cont…l transactions, Base mainnet (empty: no IPTtwo setup calls, 16 July 2026; no clone ever deploytract created) (https://base.blockscout.c…597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns)

How Caper approaches this An …oulbound vote tokens – minted at 0.01 per XRD of gross value on aonly buy as well as 1 per rankedranked ballots, one per ballot, so a backer who never votes still qualifieshas bought but never voted has no exit to take – so a contributor who loses … (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

How Caper approaches this An …overnance around it — with a pro-rataweighted exit (/wiki/governance/voting… (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

How Caper approaches this An …overnance around it — with a participation-gated pro-rata exit (/wiki/governance/voting) open to any contributor holding the caper's soulbound vote tokens – minted at 0.01 per XRD of gross value on a buy as well as 1 per ranked ballot, so a backer who never votes still qualifies – so a contributor who loses co… (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

Topic Intellectual Property N…es/contracts) ) V3 on-chain (1725 Aug 2026) 7482 Labs minted (ids 0–7381); 0 IP Tokens ever deployed …desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) DAOs

What is actually deployed on V…ply. Read off Base mainnet on 1725 August 2026: - Seventy-four, at block 50,443,168: - Eighty-two Labs exist. totalSupply() on …7043B36Ee96B2EeBE92) returns 7482, and the token ids run 0 through 7381 with no gaps. Every one of them was minted inside a single 39-day window, — ownerOf(81) resolves and ownerOf(82) reverts ERC721NonexistentToken. All 82 were minted in the 48 days from 8 July 2026 to 1625 August 2026, the most recent of them hours before this reading, so the whole V3 estate is you…ger than most writing about it and is still being added to. - Control is widely spread and almost never traded. The 7482 mints went to 4751 distinct addresses; 345 of those hold exactly one Lab…o largest hold six each, and 216 of the 4751 are smart accountracts rather than plain externally-owned wallets. Those 21 split into6 are nine Safe (/wiki/dao-governa…ling/treasury/safe) multisigs, ten ZeroDev Kernel ERC-4337 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4337) smart accounts and (three different Safe singleton versions, read off each proxy's storage slot 0) and seventeen EIP-7702 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7702) delegated wallets — fifteen delegating two EIP-7702ZeroDev's Kernel ERC-4337 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7702) delegators, so the account abstraction the Lab stack assumes is present in how Labs are held as well as in what a Lab is4337) implementation, verified on Sourcify as src/Kernel.sol:Kernel (https://repo.sourcify.dev/8453/0xd6CEDDe84be40893d153Be9d467CD6aD37875b28) , and two to MetaMask's EIP7702StatelessDeleGator. Note that the Kernel accounts are 7702 delegations too, not separately deployed proxies: on Base the two smart-account designs differ only in which implementation the wallet delegates to. Across the contract's entire life there have been 7583 Transfer events, of which 7482 are mints, so the "selling th…n IPT. Its complete event log is— every log it has emitted between its deployment block, 48,706,566, and block 50,443,168 — is still the same seven administrative entries …mplementation-pointer updates), with no tokenization among th…length rather than as history.

References - Molecule — Cont…– LabNFT proxy, Base mainnet (7482 minted, ids 0–7381, read 25 August 2026) (https://basescan.org/addres…597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns)

Topic Intellectual Property N….xyz/references/contracts) ) V3 on-chain (17 Aug 2026) 74 Labs minted (ids 0–73); 0 IP Tokens ever deployed Used by VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/…desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) DAOs

References - Molecule — Cont…7a7815728C72D74B4ff4982d54Fc1) - BaseScan – LabNFT proxy, Base mainnet (74 minted, ids 0–73) (https://basescan.org/address/0x9F96027eeAFb9ad5F2b5d7043B36Ee96B2EeBE92) - Blockscout – OclTokenizer internal transactions, Base mainnet (empty: no IPT clone ever deployed) (https://base.blockscout.com/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns)

What is actually deployed on V3 The architecture above is fully shipped. Its adoption is a separate question, and the two halves of V3 have diverged sharply. Read off Base mainnet on 17 August 2026: - Seventy-four Labs exist. totalSupply() on the LabNFT proxy (https://basescan.org/address/0x9F96027eeAFb9ad5F2b5d7043B36Ee96B2EeBE92) returns 74, and the token ids run 0 through 73 with no gaps. Every one of them was minted inside a single 39-day window, from 8 July 2026 to 16 August 2026, so the whole V3 estate is younger than most writing about it. - Control is widely spread and almost never traded. The 74 mints went to 47 distinct addresses; 34 of those hold exactly one Lab and the two largest hold six each, and 21 of the 47 are contracts rather than plain wallets. Those 21 split into nine Safe (/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/treasury/safe) multisigs, ten ZeroDev Kernel ERC-4337 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-4337) smart accounts and two EIP-7702 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7702) delegators, so the account abstraction the Lab stack assumes is present in how Labs are held as well as in what a Lab is. Across the contract's entire life there have been 75 Transfer events, of which 74 are mints, so the "selling the NFT sells the project" property described above has been exercised exactly once, on Lab 0 on 10 July 2026. - No Lab has been tokenized. The OclTokenizer proxy (https://basescan.org/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E) has been deployed, initialized and upgraded, but it has never issued an IPT. Its complete event log is seven administrative entries (Initialized, Upgraded, two ownership steps and two implementation-pointer updates) with no tokenization among them; and because Molecule's own reference states that each tokenization deploys an EIP-1167 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1167) clone, the decisive check is that the tokenizer has zero internal transactions (https://base.blockscout.com/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E?tab=internal_txns) and has therefore never created a contract. The OnChainLabFactory beside it (https://base.blockscout.com/address/0xECdF4f05384056507485C90aeAb0a83268760D6E?tab=internal_txns) does show internal transactions on the same explorer index, which rules out an indexing gap. For anyone modelling governance on top of a Lab, the reading is that the ownership primitive is live and in use while the fractional-ownership primitive that turns a Lab into something a community can hold is not yet in use at all. Every IP Token that has actually funded research still sits on the Ethereum contracts Molecule marks UNMAINTAINED, which is why the legacy model is documented here at equal length rather than as history.

Topic Intellectual Property NFTs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token) (IP-NFTs) & IP Tokens (IPTs) Originator Molecule (https://www.molecule.to/) — open-source IP-NFT contracts (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) Token model One IP-NFT (legal rights + data room) → fractionalized into fungible IP Tokens Used by VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) , Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) / Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) DAOs

Overview IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token) ) tokenize the legal rights to a piece of research as an on-chain asset. The standard was created by Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) , whose open-source contracts (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) describe IP-NFTs as “building blocks for the DeSci economy.” They are the primitive that lets a DeSci DAO (/wiki/desci/desci-daos) own, fund, and govern intellectual property the way it would any other treasury asset. What an IP-NFT actually holds Unlike a collectible NFT, an IP-NFT is a legal-and-data container. Molecule's IP-NFT contract (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts/ip-nft) is an ERC-721 token that “represents onchain intellectual property ownership,” pairing the transferable rights (usage, licensing, revenue sharing) with an access layer that grants time-limited read access to encrypted files — the underlying data room of research materials. The token is the on-chain hook for the off-chain agreement and dataset, not a static ownership record. From IP-NFT to IP Tokens A single IP-NFT is indivisible, so Molecule's Tokenizer contract (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) fractionalizes it into IP Tokens (IPTs) — ERC-20 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum) fungible tokens whose holders share governance and economic rights over the research. Fractionalization is what turns a one-off asset into something a community can fund: it enables broad participation, fundraising, and secondary-market liquidity for very early-stage science ( Molecule: Tokenizer contract (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts/tokenizer) ). In practice VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) pioneered the model in production: it sold a share of the IPTs behind a longevity research programme (its VITA-FAST offering) to fund the work, directly linking community capital to a specific scientific outcome. The same pattern — mint an IP-NFT, tokenize it, sell IPTs to fund the research, let holders govern commercialization — now underpins the biotech DAOs coordinated through Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) . See DeSci funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) for how these raises are structured. On Radix On Radix, IP-NFTs would be native NFT resources (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/nfts-on-radix) rather than ERC-721 contract state — making them more composable, safer against approval-drain exploits (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-concepts/native-assets-vs-token-approvals) , and directly visible in the Radix Wallet (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/radix-wallet) . Fractionalizing an IP-NFT into IPTs maps cleanly onto minting a fungible resource against a held non-fungible one, executed atomically in a single transaction manifest (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/transaction-manifests) . How Caper approaches this An IP-NFT tokenizes the legal rights to a specific research asset; a caper (/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) tokenizes the collective that funds and governs that research. A research group can open a caper with a bonding-curve (/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) treasury, raise from supporters who receive the caper's own fractional tokens, then direct that capital toward acquiring or developing IP through a governance-approved PAYOUT proposal (/wiki/governance/proposals) — a lab grant, a licensing deal, a milestone payment — decided by a stake-weighted-by-participation vote (/wiki/governance/voting) . Caper does not mint the IP rights on-chain the way an IP-NFT does: the acquired IP is held and licensed off-chain by the collective, while the caper handles the fundraising, treasury, and governance around it — with a participation-gated pro-rata exit (/wiki/governance/voting) so a contributor who loses conviction can withdraw their treasury share rather than being locked in. See DeSci funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

Topic Intellectual Property NFTs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token) (IP-NFTs) & IP Tokens (IPTs) Originator Molecule (https://www.molecule.xyz) — open-source IP-NFT contracts (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) Original model (V1–V2) One IP-NFT (legal rights + data room) → fractionalized into fungible IP Tokens Current model (V3) Molecule Labs (https://docs.molecule.xyz/technical-deep-dive/onchain-lab) — a LabNFT bound to its own smart account, tokenized into one ERC-20 IPT per Lab Chains Base (Labs core, chain ID 8453); Ethereum Mainnet (legacy IPNFT, marked UNMAINTAINED (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts) ) Used by VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) , AthenaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao) , Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) / Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) DAOs

Overview IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token) ) tokenize the legal rights to a piece of research as an on-chain asset. The standard was created by Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) , whose open-source contracts (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) state that “IP-NFTs allow their users to tokenize intellectual property” and describe themselves as “building blocks for the DeSci economy.” They are the primitive that lets a DeSci DAO (/wiki/desci/desci-daos) own, fund, and govern intellectual property the way it would any other treasury asset. The design has been through three generations. The original IP-NFT and its Tokenizer (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) shipped on Ethereum Mainnet and carried every production DeSci raise through 2024. As of Molecule Protocol V3 those contracts are marked UNMAINTAINED in Molecule's own contract index (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts) , and the live stack is Molecule Labs on Base. Both models matter here: the older one is what the funded research actually sits on, and the newer one is where new projects are minted.

What the original IP-NFT held Unlike a collectible NFT, an IP-NFT is a legal-and-data container. The IPNFT contract on Ethereum Mainnet (https://etherscan.io/address/0xcaD88677CA87a7815728C72D74B4ff4982d54Fc1) is an ERC-721 token recording IP ownership, paired with an AccessResolver that grants time-limited read access to encrypted files — the underlying data room of research materials. The token is the on-chain hook for the off-chain agreement and dataset, not a static ownership record. A companion CrowdSale contract ran the token sales that funded the work. From IP-NFT to IP Tokens A single IP-NFT is indivisible, so Molecule's Tokenizer contract fractionalized it into IP Tokens (IPTs) — ERC-20 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-20) fungible tokens whose holders share governance and economic rights over the research. Fractionalization is what turns a one-off asset into something a community can fund: it enables broad participation, fundraising, and secondary-market liquidity for very early-stage science. That IP-NFT-plus-Tokenizer pair is the design most DeSci writing still describes, and it is the one the funded programmes below were built on.

Molecule Labs: the V3 model Molecule's current primitive is not an IP-NFT wrapping a document but a Lab: “an NFT (ERC-721) that is permanently bound to its own smart contract wallet (ERC-6551), enhanced with account abstraction (ERC-4337), and extensible through a modular plugin architecture (ERC-7579) secured by an onchain attestation registry (ERC-7484)” (https://docs.molecule.xyz/technical-deep-dive/onchain-lab) . Five standards converge into one object, so the research project stops being a token that points at assets and becomes an account that holds them — treasury, data anchor, licences, and any other ERC-721 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-721) or ERC-20 an Ethereum account can hold. Two consequences are worth understanding before modelling governance on top of a Lab: - Identity and control are separated. A Lab's identity is its token-bound account (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-6551) address, which is deterministic and permanent; its controller is whoever currently holds the LabNFT. Molecule's docs are explicit that owner() resolves the current NFT holder on every call, so ownership transfer is “an emergent property” of a plain ERC-721 transferFrom — “no migration, no re-initialization, no key rotation” (https://docs.molecule.xyz/introduction/architecture) . Selling the NFT sells the project, history and treasury included. - Capabilities are installed, not forked. Licensing logic, royalty distribution, and governance arrive as attested modules (https://docs.molecule.xyz/technical-deep-dive/module-registry) : anyone can write one, but an ERC-7484 (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-7484) attestation from a trusted Molecule attestor is required before any Lab can install it. That is a deliberate trade of permissionlessness for a security gate, and it means Molecule retains a veto over what a Lab can be extended to do. One IPT per Lab Tokenization moved with it. The OclTokenizer “turns a Lab into a liquid asset: it deploys one fractional ERC-20 IP Token (IPT) per Lab, gated by a signed membership agreement” (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts/tokenizer) . Each IPT is an EIP-1167 minimal-proxy (https://eips.ethereum.org/EIPS/eip-1167) clone of a LabToken template, so every Lab has its own token address rather than a shared registry. Supply is controlled by three levers documented in the contract reference: issue (tokenizer or Lab controller only), cap (“once capped, issue reverts TokenCapped() forever, giving holders supply certainty”), and holder-initiated burning. Tokenizing requires both LabNFT control and a signed membership agreement, bound to a specific document hash so the signature cannot be replayed against a different one. Where the contracts live Base Mainnet — LabNFT (proxy) 0x9F96…BE92 (https://basescan.org/address/0x9F96027eeAFb9ad5F2b5d7043B36Ee96B2EeBE92) — Lab ownership NFT Base Mainnet — OclTokenizer (proxy) 0x62F5…c84E (https://basescan.org/address/0x62F532C3f563D974deEc103AAb8cC597f4f9c84E) — IPT factory Base Mainnet — AccessResolver (v3) 0x89a1…b72B (https://basescan.org/address/0x89a14Be8f7824d4775053Edad0f2fA2d6767b72B) — roles & file access Ethereum Mainnet — IPNFT (unmaintained) 0xcaD8…4Fc1 (https://etherscan.io/address/0xcaD88677CA87a7815728C72D74B4ff4982d54Fc1) — the original IP-NFT Addresses and status per Molecule's contract index (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts) , which lists the Base stack as “Molecule Labs core (v0.1.0)” and heads the Ethereum and Sepolia IPNFT blocks “UNMAINTAINED.” The public IPNFT repository (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) is not archived, but its last push was in November 2025.

Coin-to-Company: the token is not equity The hardest question about any tokenized-research asset is what the token actually entitles you to. Molecule's answer in V3 is unusually direct: “Tokens are not equity. They do not confer legal ownership, board representation, dividend rights, or the protections that come with being a registered shareholder in a legal entity.” (https://docs.molecule.xyz/technical-deep-dive/rwa-equity) What IPTs give holders is governance voice, token-gated data-room access, and economic exposure. The Coin-to-Company (C2C) module is the opt-in bridge for holders who want the real thing. It is a lock-and-qualify process: swap liquid IPTs one-for-one for non-transferable locked tokens, complete KYC/AML to receive a soulbound credential attesting verification, and only then become eligible to sign ordinary share-purchase or subscription documents with the project's legal entity. The equity grant itself happens off-chain through standard corporate process. Once a holder is designated a shareholder their locked tokens cannot be unlocked; exiting the shareholder position requires an off-chain request and administrative approval. The design is explicitly regulatory: keeping the token separate from equity is what stops the broader holder base from being pulled into securities treatment, and the lock is what stops someone completing KYC, receiving shares, and immediately selling into the open market. It is the clearest statement in DeSci of a boundary the wider DAO tokenomics (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-tokenomics) debate usually leaves blurred — and a useful counterpoint for any DAO whose members assume their governance token is a claim on the entity.

In practice VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) pioneered the model in production on the original Ethereum contracts: it sold a share of the IPTs behind a longevity research programme (its VITA-FAST offering) to fund the work, directly linking community capital to a specific scientific outcome. AthenaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/athenadao) and the other biotech DAOs coordinated through Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) followed the same sequence — mint, tokenize, sell IPTs to fund the research, let holders govern commercialization. That history is why the legacy contracts matter even though they are unmaintained: they still hold live research assets. For a DeSci DAO the tokenized IP is the treasury's core holding, which makes treasury management (/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-treasury-management) a question of stewarding illiquid, high-variance research bets rather than a stack of liquid tokens. See DeSci funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) for how these raises are structured, and research data ownership (/wiki/desci/research-data-ownership) for the data-side counterpart.

On Radix On Radix, IP-NFTs would be native NFT resources (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/nfts-on-radix) rather than ERC-721 contract state — making them more composable, safer against approval-drain exploits (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-concepts/native-assets-vs-token-approvals) , and directly visible in the Radix Wallet (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/radix-wallet) . Fractionalizing an IP-NFT into IPTs maps cleanly onto minting a fungible resource against a held non-fungible one, executed atomically in a single transaction manifest (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/transaction-manifests) . The V3 Lab is a closer fit still: Radix components are already accounts that own resources and hold badges, so the ERC-6551 plus ERC-4337 plus ERC-7579 stack Molecule assembles from five standards is closer to the platform's default shape than an addition to it.

How Caper approaches this An IP-NFT tokenizes the legal rights to a specific research asset; a caper (/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) tokenizes the collective that funds and governs that research. A research group can open a caper with a bonding-curve (/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) treasury, raise from supporters who receive the caper's own fractional tokens, then direct that capital toward acquiring or developing IP through a governance-approved PAYOUT proposal (/wiki/governance/proposals) — a lab grant, a licensing deal, a milestone payment — decided by a stake-weighted-by-participation vote (/wiki/governance/voting) . Caper does not mint the IP rights on-chain the way an IP-NFT does: the acquired IP is held and licensed off-chain by the collective, while the caper handles the fundraising, treasury, and governance around it — with a participation-gated pro-rata exit (/wiki/governance/voting) so a contributor who loses conviction can withdraw their treasury share rather than being locked in. See DeSci funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

References - Molecule — Contracts index (Base Labs core v0.1.0; Ethereum/Sepolia IPNFT blocks marked UNMAINTAINED) (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts) - Molecule — Molecule Labs (the five converging standards, identity vs controller, what Labs own) (https://docs.molecule.xyz/technical-deep-dive/onchain-lab) - Molecule — Architecture (OnChainLabFactory, proxy delegation chain, ownership transfer) (https://docs.molecule.xyz/introduction/architecture) - Molecule — OclTokenizer contract reference (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts/tokenizer) - Molecule — IPT (IP Token) contract reference: issue, cap, burn (https://docs.molecule.xyz/references/contracts/ipt) - Molecule — Coin-to-Company model (lock-and-qualify, KYC credential, off-chain equity) (https://docs.molecule.xyz/technical-deep-dive/rwa-equity) - moleculeprotocol/IPNFT — open-source IP-NFT contracts and subgraphs (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) - Etherscan — original IPNFT contract, Ethereum Mainnet (https://etherscan.io/address/0xcaD88677CA87a7815728C72D74B4ff4982d54Fc1)

Overview IP-NFTs (Intellectua…is a legal-and-data container. Per Molecule's documentation IP-NFT contract (https://docs.molecule.xyz/core-concepts/tokenized-ips) , each IP-NFT embeds a legal assignment agreement definreferences/contracts/ip-nft) is an ERC-721 token that “represents onchain intellectual property ownership,” pairing the transferable rights (u…, licensing, revenue sharing) alongsidewith an access layer that grants time-limited read access to encrypted referencfiles to— the underlying data room of research materials. Molecule frames them as “programmable assets that can generate ongoing revenue,” not static ownership records — tThe token is the on-chain hook for anthe off-chain contracagreement and dataset, not a static ownership record. From IP-NFT to IP Tokens A…e science ( Molecule: Tokenized IPsr contract (https://docs.molecule.xyz/core-concepreferences/contracts/tokenized-ipsr) ). In practice VitaDAO (/… (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

Overview IP-NFTs (Intellectua…ocols/transaction-manifests) . How Caper approaches this An IP-NFT tokenizes the legal rights to a specific research asset; a caper (/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) tokenizes the collective that funds and governs that research. A research group can open a caper with a bonding-curve (/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) treasury, raise from supporters who receive the caper's own fractional tokens, then direct that capital toward acquiring or developing IP through a governance-approved PAYOUT proposal (/wiki/governance/proposals) — a lab grant, a licensing deal, a milestone payment — decided by a stake-weighted-by-participation vote (/wiki/governance/voting) . Caper does not mint the IP rights on-chain the way an IP-NFT does: the acquired IP is held and licensed off-chain by the collective, while the caper handles the fundraising, treasury, and governance around it — with a participation-gated pro-rata exit (/wiki/governance/voting) so a contributor who loses conviction can withdraw their treasury share rather than being locked in. See DeSci funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) .

Topic Intellectual Property NFTs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token) (IP-NFTs) & IP Tokens (IPTs) Originator Molecule (https://www.molecule.to/) — open-source IP-NFT contracts (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) Token model One IP-NFT (legal rights + data room) → fractionalized into fungible IP Tokens Used by VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) , Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) / Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) DAOs

Overview IP-NFTs (Intellectual Property Non-Fungible Tokens (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-fungible_token) ) tokenize the legal rights to a piece of research as an on-chain asset. The standard was created by Molecule (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/molecule) , whose open-source contracts (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) describe IP-NFTs as “building blocks for the DeSci economy.” They are the primitive that lets a DeSci DAO (/wiki/desci/desci-daos) own, fund, and govern intellectual property the way it would any other treasury asset. What an IP-NFT actually holds Unlike a collectible NFT, an IP-NFT is a legal-and-data container. Per Molecule's documentation (https://docs.molecule.xyz/core-concepts/tokenized-ips) , each IP-NFT embeds a legal assignment agreement defining the transferable rights (usage, licensing, revenue sharing) alongside encrypted references to the underlying data room of research materials. Molecule frames them as “programmable assets that can generate ongoing revenue,” not static ownership records — the token is the on-chain hook for an off-chain contract and dataset. From IP-NFT to IP Tokens A single IP-NFT is indivisible, so Molecule's Tokenizer contract (https://github.com/moleculeprotocol/IPNFT) fractionalizes it into IP Tokens (IPTs) — ERC-20 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethereum) fungible tokens whose holders share governance and economic rights over the research. Fractionalization is what turns a one-off asset into something a community can fund: it enables broad participation, fundraising, and secondary-market liquidity for very early-stage science ( Molecule: Tokenized IPs (https://docs.molecule.xyz/core-concepts/tokenized-ips) ). In practice VitaDAO (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/vitadao) pioneered the model in production: it sold a share of the IPTs behind a longevity research programme (its VITA-FAST offering) to fund the work, directly linking community capital to a specific scientific outcome. The same pattern — mint an IP-NFT, tokenize it, sell IPTs to fund the research, let holders govern commercialization — now underpins the biotech DAOs coordinated through Bio Protocol (/wiki/desci/ecosystem/bio-xyz) . See DeSci funding (/wiki/desci/desci-funding) for how these raises are structured. On Radix On Radix, IP-NFTs would be native NFT resources (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/nfts-on-radix) rather than ERC-721 contract state — making them more composable, safer against approval-drain exploits (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-concepts/native-assets-vs-token-approvals) , and directly visible in the Radix Wallet (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/radix-wallet) . Fractionalizing an IP-NFT into IPTs maps cleanly onto minting a fungible resource against a held non-fungible one, executed atomically in a single transaction manifest (https://radix.wiki/contents/tech/core-protocols/transaction-manifests) .