--- title: "What is a caper" url: "https://caper.network/wiki/foundations/what-is-a-caper" updated: 2026-08-20 last_verified: 2026-08-01 license: CC-BY-4.0 license_url: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" --- # What is a caper | | | | --- | --- | | **Topic** | Core concept | | **Components** | Governance token · Treasury · Bonding-curve AMM | | **Supply** | 100bn, fixed at genesis | | **Proposals** | Payout · Invest · Divest · Vote · Upgrade | | **Exit** | Open to any member whose ballot has been released – the treasury share equals your voting weight | | **Related** | [Getting started](/wiki/foundations/getting-started), [Bonding curve](/wiki/markets/bonding-curve), [What is a DAO?](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao) | A **caper** is an organization that anyone can launch in one click. Each caper has its own token, treasury, and community of holders who steer it by making proposals and voting. Caper is the launchpad that creates these organizations and keeps them honest. The four promises: - **Launch and raise instantly.** No paperwork, no team, no upfront capital. Pick a name, sign one transaction, and your token is live with a market open for backers. - **Always tradeable.** Every caper has a built-in market — buy in or cash out at any time against a pool that never disappears. - **Real say.** Holders vote on every meaningful decision, and voting weight is the product of the tokens you hold and the votes you have actually cast. No insiders with hidden allocations. - **Exit on demand.** Once you have voted, burn your stake and walk away with your share of the treasury. The door is never locked on a member who has taken part. ## The three permanent components - A fixed-supply **governance token** — 100 billion units, minted once at genesis. The resource has no mint or burn role, so supply is structurally unchangeable. - A **treasury** that holds XRD and any tokens the DAO accumulates. - A perpetual **bonding-curve AMM** that mediates every buy and sell of the governance token. All 100bn tokens are minted into a single inventory vault on the curve. There is no upfront founder allocation and no pre-allocated Caper Commons bucket — both accrue continuously, per buy, as a small fraction of each trade. ## The life of a caper **1 — Launch.** One transaction creates the token, the treasury, and the curve, and hands the founder a badge. Nothing else is needed — see [Raising funds](/wiki/markets/raising-funds) for what the founder does and doesn't get. **2 — Trade.** Backers buy and sell against the [bonding curve](/wiki/markets/bonding-curve) at a price set by a fixed formula, not by matching counterparties — so the market exists from the first second and can never be rugged away. A 0.5% fee on each trade is what funds the system; the buy-side fee flows into that caper's own treasury. Details in [Trading](/wiki/markets/trading). **3 — Govern.** Any member can raise a proposal, and a proposal is either _legislative_ – a signal-only vote that records an outcome and touches nothing on-chain – or _executive_, in which case each option carries exactly one of five on-chain actions: **Payout** (send treasury funds to a recipient), **Invest** (spend treasury XRD buying another caper's token), **Divest** (sell a token this treasury already holds back into that caper's curve for XRD), **Vote** (cast this caper's treasury weight in _another_ caper's governance — capers can be members of capers), or **Upgrade** (swap the platform's shared logic, reserved to the $CAPER caper itself). The full set is broken down in [Proposals](/wiki/governance/proposals). Ballots are complete rankings settled by a [Borda count](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/voting/ranked-and-alternative-ballot-methods) rather than an instant runoff: every voter must rank every option, and a partial or duplicated ballot is rejected outright. Voting weight rewards commitment twice over: it scales with both the tokens you have _staked_ into the caper's ballot box and the soulbound vote tokens you have earned by participating in past votes. See [Proposals](/wiki/governance/proposals) and [Voting](/wiki/governance/voting). **4 — Exit.** At any time, a member who has voted can burn their stake and receive their share of the treasury — computed by the _same formula_ as their voting weight, so influence and exit rights can never drift apart. The call surrenders governance tokens and soulbound vote tokens together and asserts both buckets are non-empty, so a holder who has never voted has no exit to take rather than a zero-valued one. Vote tokens are minted when a proposal's ballots are released, so the door opens on your first released ballot rather than on your first cast. This is the strongest form of the [rage-quit right](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/membership/rage-quit-and-exit-rights) pioneered by MolochDAO: not a proposal, not a grace period — a standing door. ## Founder economics Founders are paid by the market, not by a pre-mine. On each buy, a small and steadily shrinking slice of the newly-sold tokens routes to the founder's vault instead of the buyer, and 1/31 of that slice goes to the $CAPER treasury — so every caper launched strengthens the commons. The slice tapers to zero as the token distributes, which means a founder's upside comes from growing the caper, not from dumping an allocation. Full mechanics in [Raising funds](/wiki/markets/raising-funds). ## Capers in the DAO landscape A caper is a [DAO](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/what-is-a-dao) in the strict sense — treasury, token-weighted votes, on-chain execution — but it bundles into one contract what most DAOs assemble from parts: a token launch, an AMM pool, a [treasury custody solution](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/treasury/safe), a [voting system](/wiki/dao-governance/tooling/voting/snapshot), and an execution layer. That single-contract design closes the gaps where DAO failures historically live — unfunded treasuries, [governance](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/dao-governance-models) that can't execute, and members trapped behind [treasuries](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/treasury/dao-treasury-management) they can't reach. Where it sits in the industry's arc — and what it inherits from a decade of experiments — is covered in the [history of DAOs](/wiki/dao-governance/concepts/fundamentals/history-of-daos). ## The fee structure A caper charges six fees. Trading fees are small and paid in XRD; the founder reward is paid in the curve’s own composition — two thirds in XRD, one third in the caper’s own token — and fades to zero as the curve fills. Nothing is burned — every fee recycles into a treasury, and two of them feed the **$CAPER** treasury, which collects a slice of every caper on the platform. CAPER PROTOCOLFee structureSIX FEESXRDpaid in XRDTOKENpaid in the caper’s own tokenTHE SIX FEESACTIONAMOUNTPAID INFLOWS TOCreate a caperone-time registration10 – 1,000,000 XRDby ticker lengthXRD$CAPER treasuryBuyon the bonding curve0.5%of the XRD spentXRDthis caper’s treasurySell · Swap · Exitleave a position0.5%of the XRD receivedXRD$XRD treasuryFounder rewarda slice of each buy15% → 0%fades out by 30% soldXRD + TOK⅔ xrd · ⅓ coin · $CAPER 1/31Proposeopen a vote500 XRDdeters proposal spamXRDthis caper’s treasuryVotecast a ballot100 XRDskin in the gameXRDthis caper’s treasuryTHE FOUNDER’S SHARE FADES TO ZERO0%5%10%15%0%10%20%30%40%15% at launch0% at 30% sold% of the caper’s supply soldShare vs earningsThe founder’s cut of each buy is largest atlaunch, when risk is highest, and falls tozero by 30% sold. But price starts nearzero, so actual earnings aren’tfront-loaded: they build with activity, thenfade as the rate does.Paid ⅔ in XRD, ⅓ in the coin – 30/31 founder, 1/31 $CAPER.WHERE VALUE POOLSTHIS CAPERFED BYBuy fee0.5%Propose500 XRDVote100 XRDFunds the caper you’reactive in — its own war chest.$XRDFED BYSell · Swap · Exit0.5%Shared by every $XRD holder— the platform’s base layer.INDEX FUND$CAPERFED BYCreation feesXRDFounder reward1/31XRD + a token from everycaper — an index fund onall of Caper.All figures are platform-level settings, changed only with the protocol admin badge.caper.networkCaper’s six fees and where each one flows · platform-level settings, changed only with the protocol admin badge.