Guide to DALP concepts for regulated digital asset systems

The concept library follows the asset lifecycle: deployment, modeling, issuance, settlement, controls, records, and integration.

Each concept page defines its subject and explains its controls and limits. Cards also link to platform and API reference pages where those pages own the detail.

Read Where to start next for the fastest way in, based on why you are here.

Where to start

Four entry points cover most arrivals.

To work out what DALP is and where it runs, start at DALP Instance, then read Platform Architecture for how the platform divides responsibility across named systems.

For issuing or servicing an instrument, Asset Lifecycle carries the whole arc, and Instrument Templates explains how one product shape is defined once and reused.

For compliance, audit, or day-to-day operating, Compliance Policy covers what gates a transfer, Audit Trail covers the off-chain record of who did what, and Platform Health covers how you read the platform's own condition.

Integration work starts elsewhere again. API Key covers how a request authenticates, and Idempotent Write covers the one rule that keeps a retried instruction from settling twice.

The platform

What you deploy, and how it is divided.

DALP Instance

A DALP Instance is one self-contained copy of the Digital Asset Lifecycle Platform, deployed inside a boundary you choose (your data center, your cloud, or dedicated infrastructure run on your behalf) and connected to ledger networks you approve.

Platform Architecture

Platform Architecture is how DALP divides one regulated-asset platform into named systems with clear responsibility: what each owns, what crosses its boundary, and where a request stops being reversible.

EVM Contract Set

The EVM Contract Set is the identity, compliance, custody, and settlement contracts DALP deploys on EVM chains around one composable security token, so a regulated transfer is checked and enforced inside the same transaction that moves value.

System Version

A System Version is how far an organization's deployed on-chain components have advanced against the platform's current module set, and migrating is the process of repointing the components that have fallen behind.

Modeling assets

What an instrument is, from template to token.

Composable Token

A Composable Token is one regulated smart contract configured from an Instrument Template with the features and compliance rules that an instrument needs, so issuers can model new product shapes without adding another fixed token contract.

Instrument Templates

An Instrument Template defines one financial product shape: the facts the instrument records, the on-chain behaviours it carries and the compliance rules it follows, so issuing that product means configuration rather than a new contract.

Asset Class

An Asset Class is an economic category that groups reusable product definitions by the kind of instrument they represent, so institutions can organize their catalog and report exposure consistently.

Denomination Asset

A Denomination Asset is the one asset a payout-bearing Token Feature, such as Maturity Redemption or a yield feature, pays a holder per unit.

Stablecoin

A Stablecoin is the DALP Instrument Template business class for a Composable Token with a declared reference price against one currency.

Issuing & markets

How assets reach investors, and where they trade.

Asset Lifecycle

Asset Lifecycle is the whole working life of a regulated tokenized instrument, from issuance through day-to-day servicing to final redemption, governed end to end on one platform instead of crossing between separate systems at each stage.

Primary Offering

A Primary Offering is the contract-governed first sale of newly issued digital assets from an issuer to investors; it covers the process from funding through delivery and refunds investors only when an optional minimum raise is missed.

Corporate Action

A Corporate Action is a named lifecycle event on a tokenized security that turns announced legal terms into on-chain payouts, supply changes, or holder entitlements through capabilities attached to the instrument when it was created.

Token Distribution

Token Distribution is the platform's umbrella term for a Merkle-proof distribution of token allocations, implemented as three contract families differing in whether a recipient claims their allocation or the sender pushes it to them.

Trading Venue

A Trading Venue is a permissioned exchange with its own markets and order books. DALP tokens are reserved in trader wallets; plain ERC-20 tokens move into escrow before delivery.

Settlement

How value moves, and what makes it final.

Transaction Lifecycle

The Transaction Lifecycle tracks an accepted on-chain instruction through preparation, signing, submission, and its recorded outcome.

Transaction Queue

The transaction queue is what happens between a submitted write and a settled on-chain fact: how the platform queues the work, retries it, deduplicates it, and reports what happened.

Settlement Verdict

A Settlement Verdict is the recorded outcome of an on-chain operation submitted to the platform, one of four end states (completed, failed, dead letter, or cancelled), and the only signal from which success may be reported.

XvP Settlement

XvP Settlement escrows and nets local asset flows. Local-only execution is atomic; hashlocks coordinate external legs, with deferred delivery possible after commitment.

Workflow Engine

The Workflow Engine records activity results and waits during multi-step operations. Replay reuses recorded results; unfinished activities can run again.

Compliance & identity

Who may hold it, and what gates a transfer.

Participant

A participant is the platform's one record of a compliance subject, a person, an organisation, or an account, that a role grant, a claim, an audit row, and a delegated action all point at.

On-Chain Identity

An On-Chain Identity is the ledger record of one subject, a person, an institution, or an asset, carrying the verifications issuers signed about it, which a regulated token reads before it lets that subject's wallet receive.

Compliance Policy

A Compliance Policy combines a reviewed Policy Template of reusable asset rules with live Global Controls for the whole platform, so both layers approve a regulated asset token's transfer before value moves.

Transfer-Path Compliance

Transfer-Path Compliance runs the token's applicable rules inside ordinary transfers and mints. A failed check reverts the transaction; bypass and recovery paths have separate controls.

Role Grant

A role grant is the on-chain permission an access manager holds for one address, checked at the moment of a privileged call before the underlying contract will run it.

Delegated Authority

Delegated Authority is the arrangement in which a signed-in operator works inside another party's context, where the operator's own entitlement decides which contexts they may enter and the party's own roles decide what happens there.

Custody & signing

Who holds the keys, and who approves signing.

Smart Wallet

A Smart Wallet is an account that is code on the chain rather than a private key, so it carries its own rule for how much signing authority an instruction needs, and enforces that rule before it acts.

Multisig

Multisig is how DALP provisions a weighted multi-signer Smart Wallet: a creator drafts the signer list and threshold, invites each signer, and finalizes once to deploy the wallet with whichever signers have joined by then.

Custody Provider

A Custody Provider is the signing service an organization enables for its accounts, resolved by a stored provider configuration rather than hard-wired into the platform.

Custody Approval

Custody Approval is the decision required before signing when the selected wallet's policy names approvers for the payload.

Maker-Checker

Maker-checker is the pattern where one party proposes a change and a different party must approve it, before anything takes effect.

Operator Wallet

An operator wallet signs platform operations, such as bundler submissions. Operators monitor and fund its gas balance under the deployment's policy.

Records & evidence

What is recorded, and what an auditor reads.

Ledger Data

Ledger Data is the platform's queryable record of the ledger networks it follows: it follows blocks and chain reorganisations, decodes the events inside into business records, and answers platform reads from that record, not the live network.

Market Data

Market Data is the governed on-chain source for asset prices, valuations, and exchange rates: each subject and topic resolves to one active feed that can be verified or replaced, while its observations are indexed for consistent use.

Audit Trail

An audit trail is the off-chain record the platform writes for every state-changing and sensitive request: who acted, under what role, and what happened, since a chain signature alone cannot show which human authorized it.

Reconciliation

Reconciliation is the recurring comparison between your off-chain register and the platform's on-chain ledger, run to confirm the two agree and to route any unexplained difference to a person.

Reporting Obligation

A reporting obligation is the regulatory reporting duty your organisation is subject to; publishing it freezes an immutable version, and that version's cadence generates the filing periods you owe.

Events out

What the platform reports to your systems.

Platform Event

Platform Event is one entry in a generated catalog of occurrences the platform will report, where one list binds each name to a single payload shape and every delivery carries its own identifier and lifecycle state.

Webhook Delivery

Webhook Delivery sends signed event notifications and records attempts. Eligible failures retry for up to three days; consumers must deduplicate repeated messages.

Operating

How you read its health.

Platform Health

Platform Health is what the platform reports about its own condition: a single operator-facing verdict that rolls up API errors, chain connectivity, workflow completion, and data freshness, kept separate from the narrow event-loop check Kubernetes uses to decide whether to restart a process.

API & integration

The contract every request follows.

API Key

An API key is a long-lived secret sent as the X-Api-Key header that authenticates a Platform API request the same way a signed-in session cookie does.

CLI Session

A CLI Session is the identity the command line establishes by trading a one-time device-code login for a durable API key, then storing that key locally so every later command can authenticate without a browser.

Command Tree

The command tree is the generated set of dalp commands: one fixed translation of an API operation's HTTP method and URL into a verb-first sequence of words, so a caller can predict a command nobody listed.

Error Envelope

An error envelope is the platform's promise that every failure arrives with a stable identifier and a machine-readable class, so a caller can decide what to do next without reading the message text.

Page Window

The page window is the one paging contract every DALP list endpoint speaks: ask for a window by offset and size, and read the response's next link to learn whether anything remains behind it.

Idempotent Write

An Idempotent Write uses an Idempotency-Key to identify one intended operation. Replays must preserve the sender, network, and wallet selection within the matching window.

Object Storage

Object storage keeps every stored file in one bucket per deployment, where a file's key alone settles the question that matters: is this readable by anyone, or private to one user, one organization, or the deployment itself.

DALP concepts

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