Cap (CAP) is the native token of Cap Labs' credit protocol, deployed on Ethereum (mainnet). The protocol describes itself as a covered credit application consisting of a digital dollar (cUSD), a credit platform, and a financial guarantee market. Cap Labs was founded in 2024, and the protocol's on-chain deployment dates to 2026-05-08.
CAP functions as the governance and utility token for the system, which lets operators borrow against staker-delegated collateral to back cUSD issuance.
Cap isolates lending risk per operator by capping each operator's borrowing to collateral that stakers delegate into guarantee vaults, containing losses to a single operator rather than the whole pool.
Holders paying protocol fees in CAP receive discounts of up to 50%, and staked CAP backstops the system through an Insurance Fund funded by cUSD mint/burn fees. The protocol's total value locked has recently been reported near $259.94M on Ethereum, with cUSD's market capitalization above $282M.
CAP functions as both a governance and a utility token within the Cap protocol.
CAP's maximum supply is fixed at 10,000,000,000 tokens; circulating supply is 1,560,000,000 CAP as of 2026-09-02.
Investor, team, and Echo allocations vest over a 12-month cliff plus 3 years linear, completing near June 2030. No new tokens can be minted beyond the 10 billion cap, but circulating supply is still expanding toward it via ongoing unlocks — a near-term inflationary trend within a hard-capped total.
CAP launched via a public token auction that closed 5.5x oversubscribed, with $16.4M in commitments across 1,002 unique bids at a $0.011 clearing price. The implied FDV at close was $106M, and the ICO tranche — 5% of total supply — raised approximately $5.5M.
Token generation occurred June 26, 2026, while the protocol's on-chain contract was deployed 2026-05-08 — after Cap Labs' 2024 founding. Prior to the public sale, Cap Labs raised $12.9M in venture funding ($1.9M pre-seed, $11M seed led by Franklin Templeton, with Susquehanna, Laser Digital, GSR, Kraken Ventures, and Robot Ventures among investors).
Cap (CAP) is deployed on Ethereum (mainnet), which secures the network through proof-of-stake consensus.
An identical contract address also resolves on BNB Smart Chain, but that deployment shows negligible trading and holder activity and is not treated as the token's native chain.
Cap Labs was founded in 2024 by Benjamin Peillard, who previously founded the DeFi/stablecoin project QiDAO before starting Cap Labs.
Backers from Cap Labs' seed round include Franklin Templeton as lead investor, alongside Susquehanna, Triton Capital, Laser Digital, GSR, Kraken Ventures, and Robot Ventures, plus angel investors Spencer Noon, Bryan Pellegrino (founder of LayerZero), and Jason Yanowitz (founder of Blockworks).
Cap Labs, Inc., founded in 2024, develops and maintains the Cap protocol, including cUSD and the CAP token.
The organization has raised $12.9M in venture funding to date, comprising a $1.9M pre-seed round and an $11M seed round led by Franklin Templeton. Cap Labs' code is published under the github.com/cap-labs-dev organization.
CAP functions as the protocol's governance token, granting holders rights over protocol parameters, collateral management, operator onboarding, and protocol fee settings.
Stakers additionally shape underwriting decisions by delegating collateral to operators through guarantee vaults, tying governance influence to the capital backstopping the system. A 2026 dispute over changes to the project's "stabledrop" airdrop terms drew public criticism from parts of the community over how the decision was made.
Cap protocol has undergone eight security audits from firms including Zellic, Trail of Bits, Spearbit, Electisec, Recon, Sherlock, Certora, and Octane, conducted between February 2025 and March 2026. A Sherlock-run bug bounty offers rewards of up to $1M.
Structural risks include thin on-chain liquidity relative to market capitalization (a DEX liquidity ratio near 0.17%) and high supply concentration: the top 10 Ethereum addresses hold roughly 99% of total supply, including vesting team, investor, and ecosystem allocations rather than solely independent holders.