How to launch an on-chain fund in 2026.

What is an on-chain fund?

An on-chain fund is an investment vehicle where custody, accounting and execution all happen on a blockchain. Investors deposit assets, receive tokens representing their share, and can verify holdings and performance in real time. A manager runs the strategy but - in a properly designed, non-custodial fund - can never withdraw or misappropriate the underlying capital.

That transparency is the whole point. The collapses of recent years (where billions were lost inside structures nobody could see into) happened because investors had to trust opaque intermediaries. An on-chain fund replaces that trust with verifiable, on-chain accounting.

What you configure at deployment

The entire fund is set up in one configuration step - no code. When you deploy a vault on Rethink, you define everything that governs how it operates:

• Hub chain - the network the vault is anchored to.
• Operator address(es) - who is permitted to execute strategy.
• Supported positions - the allowed assets and protocols, with their permissions and NAV methods.
• Fee parameters - management, performance and other fees, each with hard fee caps.
• Settlement cycles - the cadence for processing deposit and redemption flows.
• Whitelist - enabled or disabled, with initial approved addresses if enabled.
• Governance parameters - voting delay, voting period, quorum fraction, proposal threshold, timelock duration and guardian (defaults to the rethink.finance multisig if unspecified).
• Share token - the name and symbol for the token representing investor ownership.
• Base asset - the denomination token used for deposits and redemptions.
• Description and image - fund metadata, stored on-chain.

That is the whole fund: custody on Safe smart accounts governed by depositors, scoped on-chain execution for your operators, automatic on-chain NAV and fee accounting, and a verifiable track record from day one. No custodian, no administrator, no auditor in the loop.

Where to start - and what to add as you grow

You don't need a full regulatory structure to begin. The fastest path is to launch with Starter: a legal compliance wrapper that lets you accept up to 20 investors and build a real, on-chain track record. It costs little and gets you operating immediately.

Once you have traction and a verified track record, layer on the add-ons that open up larger raises and a smoother experience:

• Legal & distribution - graduate from Starter to an EU-regulated structure, then a US-regulated one, to onboard retail and accredited investors at a fraction of a standalone prospectus or qualification.
• Tooling & support - unlock unlimited workspaces and operators, gas relaying, SSO and concierge support as your team scales.
• Instant liquidity - let depositors enter and exit at NAV on demand, with RF Labs filling flows.

Start lean, prove the strategy on-chain, and add structure only when the raise justifies it.

What to avoid

Two common shortcuts reintroduce the very problems on-chain funds are meant to solve. Adapter-based vaults require a bespoke contract for every protocol you touch, adding smart-contract risk and locking you into a short menu of integrations. Tokenized wallets wrap a traditional, custodial fund in a token - keeping the intermediaries and counterparty risk. The goal is a structure that is non-custodial and flexible, with no new contract risk per integration.

Why managers build on Rethink

Rethink is the complete operating stack for on-chain fund management: custody, administration and delegated execution unified into one non-custodial product. You can deploy a vault in under 30 minutes with no Solidity, interact with any dApp on any EVM network, and expand into new protocols and asset classes through governance - without redeploying.

Teams like OpenAlpha, Carrot Funding and soonami.io have launched entire products on this stack without writing a line of Solidity.