Plain answers, weaknesses included.

CS1 is a treasury-claim token: each token represents a proportional claim on a treasury of VOO shares held at a regulated U.S. custodian. Supply changes only through published, code-enforced events, and every transfer burn permanently increases the backing behind remaining tokens. CS1 does not pay yield or promise returns.

For long-horizon holders: a claim on the S&P 500's total return stream in which turnover accrues to holders rather than to intermediaries. For institutions: CS2's primary market is built to institutional conventions, with batch execution at the close, forward pricing, a gated but non-pausable redemption right, and weeks of timelocked notice before any economic parameter changes. For the on-chain economy: a productive, real-asset-backed unit that lives natively on Base, self-custodied and transparent in a way no off-chain fund share is.

No. CS1 is not pegged to anything and is not designed to maintain a fixed price. It is a proportional claim on real, return-generating assets, whose per-token backing is treasury value divided by supply. That value moves with the treasury and with burns.

No. CS1 is backed by an ETF, never one itself. The treasury holds VOO shares; the token is a programmable claim on that treasury with behaviors no ETF share class can express.

A wrapped tokenized ETF is a 1:1 certificate: one token tracks one share, the blockchain serves as a settlement rail, and the token behaves exactly like the share it replaces, minus the investor protections and plus the smart-contract risk. If the wrapper does nothing the underlying does not already do, the wrapper is pure cost.

Causeway instruments are not wrappers. They are proportional treasury claims engineered to do things a wrapper structurally cannot: transfer burns that permanently increase the backing behind every remaining token, a mint fee that cannot be raised, an operator that cannot receive tokens through any protocol path, and, in CS2, a fee schedule that only steps down, a non-pausable redemption right, and a wind-down that executes without anyone's permission. If it could exist as an ETF share class or a bank product, we do not build it.

Both instruments are backed by VOO shares held at Alpaca Securities, a regulated U.S. broker-dealer custodian, counted together with USDC awaiting sweep and cash in transit at the broker. Neither is backed by emissions, reflexive tokenomics, or mechanisms that require new buyers to pay old ones. The supply side of the equation is read trustlessly from the chain; the treasury side is published continuously and reconciled by independent attestation.

No, and precision matters here. Supply rises when tokens are minted through the primary market and falls permanently when transfers burn. Issuance is capped at a hard maximum written into the contract. There is no treasury-held token inventory, no fees paid in tokens, and no reissuance of burned tokens, ever.

The buyer pays 101% of base cost in USDC to the primary-market contract; 100% mints as CS1 at the current oracle price; the 1% is a one-time mint fee. 99% of swept USDC purchases VOO at the custodian. Because published treasury value counts the incoming USDC immediately, a mint enters the numerator in the same transaction that expands the denominator.

A fraction of the transferred amount is permanently destroyed, tiered from 0.50% down to 0.10% by the USD value of the transfer, priced by the oracle at that moment. Supply falls; the treasury is untouched; backing per remaining token rises.

Yes. Every CS1 transfer burns, on both legs of a pool trade, in wallet-to-wallet movements, and in liquidity operations. There are no exemptions for any address or venue, including Causeway's own wallets. The honest round-trip number at the smallest tier is roughly 1.6% before price impact: the burn on each leg plus pool fees.

Through three mechanisms, each structural. The treasury's VOO position moves with the market and its dividends auto-reinvest, so treasury value compounds inside the numerator. Transfer burns permanently shrink the denominator, concentrating the same treasury into fewer tokens. And in CS2, 10 basis points of every redemption spread are retained in the treasury, so leavers feed remaining holders.

The same arithmetic runs in both directions: when the market falls, treasury value and backing per token fall with it. Causeway states mechanisms, not outcomes, and promises no return.

No. CS1 pays no yield, interest, dividends, or rewards, and distributes nothing outward. VOO dividends auto-reinvest inside the treasury, and burns concentrate backing into fewer tokens. Value accumulation, where it occurs, happens inside the structure.

On CS1: the 1% one-time mint fee. That is the complete list. There is no recurring management fee, no share of burns, and no path by which the operator can receive tokens at all. All operator revenue is in dollars, disclosed, and enumerable. CS2 carries a 10 basis-point mint fee, a redemption spread, and an annualized management fee on a locked schedule that only steps down.

No, and none is planned. Points and reward tokens expand claims without adding backing; staking redistributes value or introduces incentive leakage; airdrops dilute; a governance token introduces discretionary control over stored value. Every one of these mechanisms asks the supply invariant to bend, so Causeway builds none of them. The only tokens that exist are the treasury claims themselves, governed by fixed, transparent rules enforced by code.

Off-chain, at Alpaca Securities LLC, a regulated U.S. broker-dealer custodian. Inbound USDC converts to VOO; dividends auto-reinvest; the custodian charges no commissions on purchases, so treasury inflows reach VOO undiminished.

Here is the precise statement. No on-chain mechanism transfers treasury assets to holders, and no protocol path sends tokens or burns to the operator. Operational movement of custodial assets is executed by the operator under published administrative roles, which are enumerated and disclosed, and every attestation reconciles custodian holdings against the published treasury history and on-chain supply. We prefer this precise framing to a blanket assurance, because a blanket assurance would be trust, and the system is built for verification.

No. CS1 has no redemption mechanism: no queue, no window, no in-kind path. The only exit is a sale on the secondary market at whatever price it offers. This is the deployed design, it is disclosed everywhere the product is described, and it is the specific gap CS2's redemption machinery exists to close.

For CS1: the Uniswap v2 pool trades continuously, so exit is immediate, at whatever price and depth the market offers. That price can differ from stored value per unit, and no window or queue exists because no redemption exists.

For CS2: exit is the weekly redemption window at NAV less 25 basis points. Each window fills up to 10% of the treasury, with unfilled amounts carrying over at first priority, so a large redemption in a heavy week may settle across multiple windows. The right itself is non-pausable: no discretionary suspension exists anywhere in the system, and a holder exiting in full faces no minimum. Timing follows the published gate mechanics, never anyone's approval.

No. Stored value per unit is a treasury accounting metric, not a price claim. Without redemption, no mechanism forces market price toward it, and a discount can persist. CS2 addresses this with a weekly, non-pausable redemption window at NAV.

Read totalSupply directly from the chain, read the published treasury value and its inputs, and check that published per-token value times on-chain supply equals the attested treasury. Independent attestations reconcile custodian records against the published history on a regular cadence. Run the check.

Treasury value declines with it. CS1 does not eliminate market risk; it eliminates structural leakage and dilution. A claim on the S&P 500's return stream carries the S&P 500's drawdowns.

Instruments of this kind are likely to constitute securities under U.S. law. Causeway's posture is to structure with counsel rather than around it: CS2's implementation is expressly gated on securities counsel review, and access to its primary market is expected to be limited accordingly. Regulatory constraint is treated as a design input, not an adversary. Nothing on this site is an offer to sell securities or investment advice.

They are named in the white paper, and here. The treasury is custodial. The pricing oracle is operator-written, anchored by independent attestation. CS1 has no redemption, so price can trade below stored value. Smart contracts carry their own risk, and immutability cuts both ways. Operator continuity on CS1 rests on legal scaffolding rather than code; CS2 answers the same question in code.

For CS2, the answer is written in code: a dead-man clock watching real settlements, a recovery key held outside the founding team that can seat a successor, and a terminal distribution in which every holder claims their exact pro-rata share at final NAV. For CS1, whose immutable contracts cannot carry such machinery, the mitigation is legal scaffolding over the custodial account, treated as a first-order obligation and disclosed as it completes.

CS2 is the anchored treasury claim: the same VOO-backed model, plus redemption at NAV that anchors price to backing, exactly neutral batch minting, a management fee that only steps down, and a wind-down that cannot strand holders. Where CS1 proves the mechanics, CS2 makes the complete promise.

CS2 is in development. Design parameters are locked; implementation is pending securities counsel review and operational confirmation. At launch, access to the primary market is expected to be limited to eligible investors, with a $10,000 minimum mint and a weekly redemption window. We do not publish launch dates, and we do not run waitlists that imply one.

Not at launch. CS2 launches as a primary-market instrument: mint at NAV, redeem at NAV, weekly windows, with no secondary venue. A permissionless secondary market is a deferred capability with stated preconditions, including counsel clearance and a public 14-day minimum timelock, never a promise with a date.

Mint at the official app during published mint windows, or trade on the Uniswap v2 pool on Base. Always verify contract addresses against the Proof of Treasury page. Step-by-step instructions.

USDC on Base. One settlement asset, one depeg rule, one conversion path: this is a standing design position, not a deferral. Holding another stablecoin is not a barrier; swap it to USDC through any exchange or aggregator before minting, at your own cost. The protocol itself never takes intake in any other asset.

Any wallet that supports the Base network: MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, Rabby, and hardware wallets such as Ledger and Trezor through those interfaces. There is no allowlist of wallets on CS1 and no wallet-level special treatment anywhere in the system. Whatever wallet you use, verify every contract address against the Proof of Treasury page before signing.

The pool trades continuously, subject to network availability. The primary market observes published mint windows: it closes from Friday 8:00 PM to Sunday 8:00 PM ET and on U.S. market holidays, so minting stays aligned with custodial execution.

CS1 burns on transfer, so the amount that arrives is the quoted amount less the applicable burn tier. Use routing that supports fee-on-transfer tokens and set slippage at or above the tier plus the pool fee. If the discrepancy exceeds the published schedule, check your network, the contract address, and price impact from pool depth.

CS1 uses verified contract source, transparent on-chain data, and regulated off-chain custody for treasury assets, with published administrative roles and independent attestation. As with any digital asset, smart-contract risk exists and users must manage private keys responsibly.