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A protocol for financing physical hardware against production milestones rather than equity. This page explains the reasoning, the current state of the build, and the limits we are not going to paper over.
Financing physical hardware is awkward. Equity capital is expensive: founders give up 20-35% of a company to buy tooling and inventory, then wait years for an illiquid outcome. Consumer crowdfunding is the opposite failure — backers hand over the full amount before tooling is proven, with no escrow, no tranche control and no recourse if the build stalls.
Neither structure lets a backer fund a specific product line and exit when they want to. Both force an all-or-nothing bet on the whole company or on a single promise.
ProtoRWA treats a hardware build as a series of verifiable production checkpoints rather than a single bet. Capital is escrowed on-chain and released tranche by tranche, and each release is gated on evidence that claim holders approve.
The result is a structure where the founder keeps the cap table, backers keep leverage over the money until production is demonstrated, and the position stays tradeable throughout. Each party's incentive points at the same thing: getting real units built.
What exists and is verifiable in the repository:
ProjectRegistry, MilestoneEscrow, ClaimToken (ERC-1155) and SecondaryMarket — built on OpenZeppelin primitives.The protocol removes some risks and leaves others entirely alone. Escrow means a founder cannot withdraw undisbursed capital, but it does not make hardware easy to build. Production can slip, suppliers can fail, and a build that works as a prototype can fail in volume.
Disputed milestones are resolved by a protocol administrator, which is a real trust assumption in an otherwise automated mechanism. It is stated plainly rather than described as decentralised.
The claims above are checkable. The contract rules are described on the How It Works page, and the risk disclosure is in the FAQ.