Assets

Metal can represent fungible financial assets such as stablecoins, tokenized deposits, fund interests, securities, commodities, and internal settlement units. The issuer defines what an asset represents and which rights its holders have. Metal provides two connected models for holding and moving this value onchain:

• MIP20 for transparent balances, transfers, policy controls, and transaction fees
• MIP410 for notes backed by MIP20 balances held in a shared shielded pool

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Asset models

MIP20 records transparent balances against onchain identities. Shielding transfers MIP20 balances to the pool, which creates MIP410 notes representing that value.

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Transparent assets with MIP20

MIP20 is Metal’s standard for transparent payment tokens. MIP20 assets can move as payments, apply identity-scoped policy, and pay transaction fees without requiring users to hold a separate native gas currency. MIP20 provides:

• ERC-20-compatible balances and transfers
• receive rules for each recipient, with rejection or quarantine of refused credits
• ERC-3009 authorizations that let another account submit a signed payment
• canonical deployment through the MIP20 factory

Factory deployment adds the token to the MIP20 allowlist so it can pay transaction fees. For issuable MIP20 assets, the deployer becomes the token owner and can mint additional supply or transfer ownership.

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Shielded value with MIP410

MIP410 is Metal’s shared shielded pool. It represents supported MIP20 assets as notes, hiding the asset, amount, sender, and recipient while value remains inside the pool. The pool holds and accounts for the MIP20 balances that back those notes. The private payments guide explains what the network exposes and how privacy changes at the pool boundary.

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Paying transaction fees

Metal has no native gas currency. Every transaction pays its fee in a MIP20 token. The account that signs the transaction pays the fee from its MIP20 balance. The validator that includes the transaction receives the fee. Metal designates a default MIP20 for standard transactions and also supports other MIP20 tokens, so users do not need a separate native gas currency.

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Who controls what

The same organization may be both the issuer and the institution operating an identity. Its policy does not automatically apply to every holder of the asset, so different institutions can hold the same MIP20 while enforcing their own requirements.

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