---
title: "Getting started"
url: "https://caper.network/wiki/foundations/getting-started"
updated: 2026-08-27
last_verified: 2026-08-01
license: CC-BY-4.0
license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Getting started

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Topic** | Onboarding |
| **Requires** | Radix Wallet + Connector extension |
| **Auth** | ROLA — free, no transaction |
| **Cost to launch** | 10 XRD for a 6-character cashtag, ×10 for each character shorter |
| **Related** | [What is a caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper), [Raising funds](/wiki/markets/raising-funds), [Trading](/wiki/markets/trading) |

Starting an organization on caper takes one transaction and one payment. You connect a Radix wallet, pick a name and a cashtag, and submit; the transaction mints the token, opens the treasury, starts the bonding curve, and hands you a founder badge. The only money that leaves your wallet is the registration fee, which is **10 XRD** for a six-character cashtag and rises tenfold for each character shorter. There is no allocation to configure, no treasury to pre-fund, and no application to be approved.

## How do I start a DAO on Caper?

Five steps, all of them in the browser:

1. **Install the Radix Wallet** and link it to your browser with the Radix Connector extension. Both are free; details below.
2. **Connect.** Tap the wallet icon in the top navbar and sign the challenge. Signing in is off-ledger and costs nothing.
3. **Choose a cashtag.** One to six characters, uppercase letters or digits. This is the ticker your token trades under, and it fixes your registration fee.
4. **Fill in the name and description** on [Create a caper](/create-caper), then submit the transaction. You need the registration fee in XRD on the connected account before this step.
5. **You are live.** The token, treasury, and market exist from that block onward, and anyone can buy in against the curve straight away.

Nothing about the organization has to be decided up front. Members arrive by buying the token, spending is decided by proposal afterwards, and the rules that govern the treasury are the same contract rules for every caper.

## How much does it cost to start a caper?

One payment: a registration fee in XRD, priced by how short your cashtag is. Shorter tickers are scarcer, so they cost more.

|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| **Cashtag length** | **Registration fee** |
| 6 characters | 10 XRD |
| 5 characters | 100 XRD |
| 4 characters | 1,000 XRD |
| 3 characters | 10,000 XRD |
| 2 characters | 100,000 XRD |
| 1 character | 1,000,000 XRD |

The contract charges ten to the power of seven minus the length, and rejects the transaction if the payment is even slightly off. Cashtags must be uppercase letters A to Z or digits 0 to 9, and two are reserved by the protocol.

Beyond that fee you pay only the Radix network fee for the transaction itself. There is no listing charge, no monthly cost, no minimum treasury, and no revenue share on the way in.

**Where the fee goes.** Not to a company. Registration fees are banked in the treasury of the $CAPER caper — the first caper the protocol registered, and one whose own members hold tokens, vote, and can exit on the same terms as any other. The protocol funds itself through a caper rather than around one.

What it costs to _run_ a caper is separate, and it is not a per-caper setting: every caper on the platform trades through one shared logic component that holds a single fee schedule for all of them. Raising a proposal and casting a vote are both paid into your own treasury. The 0.5% trade fee is charged on both legs, but the two legs land in different places – the buy leg into the treasury of the caper being bought, the sell leg into the treasury of the root **$XRD** caper, where every sell, swap and exit fee on the platform pools. Nothing is split between the two. [Raising funds](/wiki/markets/raising-funds) works both legs through, and [Trading](/wiki/markets/trading) covers what happens when a swap fires them at once.

## Can the fees change after I launch?

Yes, but not by you and not per caper. All four levers – the trade fee, the collateralization peak that sizes the [founder reward](/wiki/markets/raising-funds), the proposal fee and the vote fee – are stored fields on the one shared logic component every caper trades through, rewritten together by a single `update_fees` call restricted to the registry's protocol admin badge. Your caper's [proposals](/wiki/governance/proposals) govern its treasury, not the schedule it trades under.

What that badge cannot do is move them anywhere it likes. Every one of the four arrives with an assertion:

|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **Lever** | **Live value** | **What the contract enforces** |
| Trade fee | 0.5% | Must sit in [0, 10%] – a ceiling twenty times the current rate |
| Collateralization peak | 0.15 | Must sit in [0, 0.15]; the founder's sub-5% ceiling is derived from it |
| Proposal fee | 500 XRD | Must cover the per-proposal settlement-gas budget, which is itself 500 XRD |
| Vote fee | 100 XRD | Must be non-negative – the one lever with no ceiling |

Those are live values rather than documented ones, and the point of the column is that you can check it instead of trusting it: all four are readable fields on whichever logic component the registry currently points at, so resolve `current_main` on the [registry](https://stokenet-dashboard.radixdlt.com/component/component_tdx_2_1crd7wmgsa465q4ceqnlcwh9pc8pmsxhdthat86379axx74cse5ml4d) and read the fields off the component it names. Resolve it there rather than copying an address: a retired registry keeps answering, and keeps naming its own retired logic component, so a stale citation looks exactly as healthy as a live one. The values above were read from [the logic component that registry currently names](https://stokenet-dashboard.radixdlt.com/component/component_tdx_2_1cr0wpsnnfk3rkxzkn9e39n2su5sgd9nctfcxh4rmt9dtpre2ngalht) on 26 August 2026, and all four survived the platform's 25 August redeployment unchanged.

Two numbers on that same component are not on the list, and the omission is the safeguard. `voting_period_in_seconds` and `execution_delay_period_in_seconds` – 600 each on the live deployment, the ten-minute window a proposal stays open and the ten-minute wait before a passed one can execute – are written once when a logic component is instantiated and never assigned again. `CaperMain` exposes exactly two admin setters – `update_fees`, whose four arguments are the levers above, and `update_veto`, which tunes the [market veto](/wiki/governance/execution)'s drop threshold and tail. Neither takes a voting or execution-delay period, so the badge that can retune every fee in place cannot shorten the window you get to vote in. It _can_ lengthen the wait before a passed proposal settles, through the veto tail, which is a different thing and a much less dangerous one. Moving either takes a whole new logic component plus a move of the registry's `current_main`, which is the platform-upgrade path: open to the protocol admin badge, and also to a settled `$CAPER` [UPGRADE proposal](/wiki/governance/proposals) through `propose_main_via_governance`, which is gated to the current logic rather than to any operator key. That path carries no waiting period today – the registry's own `upgrade_delay_seconds` read **0** at state version 424790388.

The proposal-fee floor is the one worth understanding, because it is the only fee the badge cannot cut. Settling a proposal is permissionless, and whoever calls it draws the gas from the caper's own treasury against a per-proposal allowance. That allowance is a fixed contract constant, and it is the proposal fee that is pinned to it rather than the other way round, so a proposal can never cost more treasury to settle than the member who raised it paid in. Cut the fee below it and the settle path would start bleeding the treasury; the contract refuses the call.

## What do I need before I can take part?

A Radix wallet, and nothing else. Tap the **wallet icon** in the top navbar – it carries no text label, and its accessible name is “Connect wallet” – then choose an account and sign the connection challenge — caper uses ROLA (Radix Off-Ledger Auth), so signing is free and produces a session, not a transaction.

Some surfaces are gated by an XRD balance check. Holding any XRD on the connected account unlocks them; you never send XRD to caper to authenticate.

The Radix Wallet is a free, self-custodial app. Install it on your phone, then — on desktop — link it to your browser with the Radix Connector extension so dApps like caper can talk to it. The official portal at [wallet.radixdlt.com](https://wallet.radixdlt.com/) links every download. Once installed and linked, come back and tap the **wallet icon**.

## How do I join a caper without launching one?

Buy its token. Browse the live capers and buy in directly against the [bonding curve](/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) — no order book, no counterparty, instant settlement, and the price follows supply rather than a quoted spread. Holding the token is what membership is; there is no separate application or allowlist. How pricing and the fee legs work is in [Trading](/wiki/markets/trading).

## How does governance work once I hold a token?

Holding a caper's token makes you a voting member. You can raise a [proposal](/wiki/governance/proposals) or rank every option on someone else's. Proposals are settled by a [Borda count over complete rankings](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/voting/ranked-and-alternative-ballot-methods), so partial or duplicated ballots are rejected outright.

A proposal that passes executes on-chain. The executive actions a caper can take are **Payout** (send treasury funds to a recipient), **Invest** (buy into another caper's curve), **Divest** (sell a held position back into that caper's curve), **Vote** (cast this caper's weight in another caper's governance) and **Upgrade** (swap the platform's shared logic, reserved to the $CAPER caper).

Voting is two acts rather than one: you stake governance tokens into the caper's ballot box, then cast a complete ranking against a proposal. Each accepted ballot earns a soulbound vote token, minted when that proposal's ballots are released rather than at the moment you cast, and your [voting weight](/wiki/governance/voting) is the product of the staked balance and that accumulated record – so a large balance that has never voted counts for very little, and a long record with no stake counts for nothing either.

## How do I leave and get my money back?

Two routes, both open at any time and neither needing anyone's permission. You can sell back to the curve at the price the curve quotes, or exit outright by handing back your tokens and your vote record together — the contract requires both — and take your share of the treasury. The vote record has to exist first, and it is minted when a proposal's ballots are released, so the exit opens from your first _released_ ballot rather than from your first cast. That share is your voting weight, the same product of stake and participation that decides your vote, so influence and exit rights can never drift apart.

The [exit right](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) is built into the contract rather than granted by a vote. No majority has to approve it and no grace-period window has to be open.

## The life of a caper

Every caper moves through the same four stages — launch, trade, govern, grow — and a holder can exit at any point along the way.

CAPER PROTOCOLThe life of a caper4 STAGESFROM ONE CLICK TO A LIVING ORGANIZATION1LAUNCHOne transaction mintsthe token, treasury,and bonding curve —and hands you afounder badge.2TRADEAnyone buys or sellson the curve. Pricefollows supply; thereserve backs everytoken.3GOVERNHolders proposeactions, rank-votewith skin in the game,and execute on-chain.4GROWThe treasurycompounds. Invest inother capers. $CAPERindexes them all.Exit any time – hand back tokens and vote record together; the treasury share is set by both.How a caper is born, traded, and governed.caper.networkLaunch → trade → govern → grow · exit any time.

## Where next

Start with [What is a caper](/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper) for the model in five minutes. If you're new to DAOs entirely, the knowledge base opens with [What is a DAO?](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao) and the [history of how the industry got here](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/history-of-daos). If you're reading this through an AI agent, [Querying a caper from an AI agent](/wiki/foundations/querying-a-caper-from-an-ai-agent) documents the read-only MCP servers. Questions? Try the [FAQ](/wiki/help/faq).