About OpenCrown

What is OpenCrown

OpenCrown is an open standard for verified on-chain project identity. A project proves ownership of its smart contract once, on-chain, and receives a "crown" — a soulbound credential that serves as the project's portable, verified metadata record.

The standard is chain-agnostic, the verification is trustless, and any platform can resolve a crown without relying on a central authority.

Protocol and Operator Separation

OpenCrown separates the protocol from the operator, the same way DNS separates the naming standard from individual registrars.

• The OpenCrown Standard defines what a crown is, how ownership verification works, and how crowns are governed. It is a public good.
• Operators implement the standard and build products on top of it, profile hosting, analytics, deal facilitation, developer tooling. They compete on features, not on control of the underlying data.

If one operator's platform doesn't suit you, switch to another or run your own. Crown data lives on-chain and on IPFS, so it is not locked to any single operator.

Crowns

A crown is a soulbound ERC-721 token: it cannot be freely transferred on secondary markets. Every ownership change goes through a protocol-defined deal mechanism, which notifies all stakeholders — holders, communities, integrators — before control changes hands.

Crown health is measured by heartbeat, a continuous liveness score based on community activity. Active projects keep their crowns; inactive ones decay, and when a crown's heartbeat drops below threshold anyone can reclaim it. There are no renewal fees; activity alone keeps a crown alive.

When two projects claim the same symbol across chains, the bare name resolves to whichever crown has the higher heartbeat.

Licensing

Each component of the ecosystem is licensed for a specific architectural purpose:

All code is open source under Apache 2.0. This license includes an explicit patent grant, operators who use the official contracts receive a royalty-free patent license for the protocol's innovations.

Governance

The protocol evolves through Open Crown Proposals (OCPs): a structured process for proposing, reviewing, and implementing changes to the standard. Inspired by the EIP and CAIP processes.

How it works:

1. Discuss: open an issue on the oc-standard repository
2. Draft: write an OCP using the template
3. Submit: create a merge request to oc-standard
4. Review: community feedback for a minimum of 14 days
5. Decision: protocol multisig accepts, rejects, or requests changes

OCP types: Core (protocol mechanics), Interface (APIs and data formats), Meta (governance processes), Informational (guidelines and best practices).

Browse the proposal index and full process documentation.

Progressive Decentralization

OpenCrown is designed for progressive decentralization, starting with a small, efficient governance structure and expanding community control as the protocol matures. Each transition is triggered by a measurable milestone (crown holder count, deal volume, governance participation).

The protocol currently operates under multisig governance. As the crown holder base grows, a timelock is added, and eventually full on-chain governance with token-weighted voting.

Read the full roadmap and decentralization plan.

Revenue Model

The DAO earns from two on-chain fee streams: crown claim fees and deal facilitation. It takes 20% of each to fund protocol development. Caps on both are enforced on-chain by the registry contract.

Operators run their own direct services — subscriptions, API access, value-added tooling — and price them at their own discretion. Those services sit outside the protocol's pricing rules, and operators compete on what they offer.

Bootstrap Period (First 24 Months Post-Mainnet)

For the first 24 months after mainnet launch, the DAO subsidizes protocol-level public-goods infrastructure operated by the reference operator. The subsidy is bounded, line-itemed, time-anchored, and publicly reported every quarter.

The subsidy may fund only public-goods infrastructure: multi-chain RPC, indexer operations, smart contract audits, SDK and documentation maintenance, and multi-chain expansion. It may not fund operator-specific work (UIs, marketing, subscription billing, support staff) — those costs are funded by the reference operator's 80% share, like any other operator.

The Hard Ceiling can be raised only by a Tier 2 community vote (8% quorum, >60% approval, 14-day timelock). Spending above the Ceiling without a vote is a governance violation subject to override. The reference operator publishes quarterly transparency reports to IPFS within 30 days of quarter end, with spent vs working budget vs ceiling broken down by line item.

Year 1 Line-Item Allocation

Multi-chain RPC and indexer operations are bundled into "site infrastructure." SDK / docs maintenance begins in Year 2. Ops scaling factor per OCP-0002 §10: approximately $1,500–3,000 per 10,000 additional active crowns per year.

What the Subsidy MAY Fund (and what it MAY NOT)

Sunset and Grant Compatibility

The Bootstrap Period sunsets at T+24 months. After sunset, all protocol infrastructure funding flows through open RFP/grant processes; the reference operator funds its own infrastructure from its 80% fee share or external sources.

Where external grant funding (Optimism RetroPGF, Arbitrum, Gitcoin, Solana Foundation, others) covers Bootstrap Period work, treasury allocations are reduced proportionally so the 20% protocol take accumulates as long-term protocol endowment.

Full specification: OCP-0002 Spec 10. Quarterly transparency reports will be published to opencrown.org/governance/reports as they go out.

Repositories

All specification work happens on GitLab.

Contribute

• Propose a protocol change: Submit an OCP or open an issue
• Report a vulnerability: See the security policy
• Build on the standard: Start with the oc-sdk
• Run an operator: Read the standard and the operator registration OCP