How ballast works

Ballast is a treasury of tokenized real-world assets that a project holds in an on-chain contract. BALLAST reads that contract, prices its contents with Chainlink, and shows the result as backing per token.

The one number

backing per token       = Σ(treasury asset balance × live price) ÷ total supply
locked backing per token = Σ(locked balances × live price) ÷ total supply
backing ratio           = market price ÷ backing per token

This is arithmetic on public data. It is not a rating, a seal of approval, or an opinion. The value of the treasury is what the assets are worth right now — no more, no less.

Locked vs creator-withdrawable

Every treasury separates two kinds of ballast, and BALLAST always shows them apart:

Locked forever. Assets deposited by third parties. Once accepted, they can never be withdrawn by anyone — not the depositor, not the creator.
Creator-withdrawable. Assets the creator deposited themselves. They can be withdrawn, but only after a public announcement and a fixed waiting period.

Locked backing is the more meaningful figure, because it cannot leave.

The notice period is fixed at launch

A creator chooses a withdrawal notice period — 7, 30, or 90 days — when the project is deployed. After that it cannot be changed. A creator cannot advertise 90 days to earn trust and quietly shorten it later. Every withdrawal is announced publicly first, with a countdown everyone can see before a single asset moves.

Why the equity value sometimes rests

Tokenized equity feeds run 24/5 — regular, pre-market, post-market and overnight sessions — so weekday nights are covered. They hold their last price over weekends, market holidays, and thin overnight windows. When a price is resting, BALLAST shows the last update and its timestamp next to the figure. We never estimate, smooth, or forward-project a price we do not have — the moment you smooth a number, you are making a claim.

Corporate actions

Tokenized stock tokens implement ERC-8056. Dividends and splits do not change balances; they move a per-token multiplier. Because dividends are reinvested through that multiplier, a stock token tracks the total return of the underlying, so a treasury can compound on its own. BALLAST reads the Chainlink feed price, which already accounts for this — it never double-counts the multiplier.

Next: What ballast is not →