Who it is for
COUPON buyers
Section titled “COUPON buyers”You hold USDG and want a high, scheduled cash yield linked to a single stock, and you accept that a large fall (below the barrier at maturity) converts your USDG into that stock at the initial price. You do not want leverage, liquidation risk or counterparty credit risk on an issuer. You should be comfortable reading a payoff diagram and a barrier level. See COUPON.
SHIELD posters
Section titled “SHIELD posters”You hold Stock Tokens and want protection against a deep fall without paying the full price of a vanilla put. You accept that the protection switches off if the stock rallies to the autocall level on an observation date, and that you pay the coupon at every observation where the barrier holds. Natural users are long-term holders, lenders holding stock collateral, and vaults with a mandate to stay invested. See SHIELD.
Desk depositors
Section titled “Desk depositors”You hold USDG and want diversified exposure to the COUPON side across many series, taken only where SHIELD supply exceeds COUPON demand and only within hard caps. Your return is the coupons on Desk-held COUPON units minus any physical-settlement losses. The Desk is an ERC-4626 vault with a withdrawal queue for deployed capital. See Desk.
NOTE and sNOTE holders
Section titled “NOTE and sNOTE holders”You want exposure to protocol fee flow. 90% of protocol fees (specification default) buy NOTE in a continuous Dutch auction and stream it to sNOTE stakers over 7 days; 10% accrues to the Treasury, which backs a guarded redemption floor. NOTE is a governance token with a 100,000,000 hard cap. See NOTE, sNOTE, Buyback auction.
Keepers (anyone)
Section titled “Keepers (anyone)”Observation, strike finalisation, settlement, fee sweeping and series rolls are permissionless cranks; there is no operator-run keeper. The first successful observe after a close earns keeperRewardQuote (default 2 USDG) from accrued fees, a RollPolicy.roll earns the roll bounty, and claim/redeem/settle run any due crank lazily for whoever calls them. See Automation and cranks.
Integrators
Section titled “Integrators”COUPON and SHIELD are ERC-1155 positions with a deterministic id scheme, pull-based accounting and transfer hooks that settle accrued coupons. They can be held by vaults, used as collateral, or distributed as rewards. See Developers.
Who it is not for
Section titled “Who it is not for”- US persons. Stock Tokens are not offered to US persons, and are restricted in the UK, Canada and Switzerland (Robinhood docs). Note Systems inherits those restrictions. See Regulatory.
- Anyone who needs to exit before maturity at a guaranteed price. Legs are transferable but the protocol does not run a secondary market.
- Anyone who cannot tolerate receiving Stock Tokens worth materially less than their deposit.