The capital-markets standard for fine gemstones
No continuous price. No fractional access. No transparent settlement. For five hundred years, the world's rarest stones have changed hands in private rooms, priced by reputation rather than market. CaratShares introduces the missing layer — each stone vetted by accredited laboratories, tokenised at the carat level, traded continuously and settled on-chain.
Colored gemstones are a $50 billion asset class with no public market. No order book. No daily price. No way for capital to enter or exit without a buyer flying to a Geneva safe deposit box.
A Burmese ruby that traded at $300,000 a carat in 2014 might trade for a million today — or half — and no one outside the trade really knows. Provenance is a handshake. Liquidity is a phone call.
We're building the rails for what comes next: tokenized facets of vaulted, certified stones, with appraisals from independent gemologists, governance the holders vote on, and a continuous market open to anyone with a wallet.
For investors
For the trade
For the platform
No one else has done this
We're not borrowing terms from equities or DeFi — we're naming what didn't exist. Each standard below is implemented in the smart contracts, documented in the white paper, and free for the trade to adopt.
The primary issuance of facets on a freshly listed stone. Named for the moment a finished gem first catches light after the cutter's bench.
Each share is one facet of the stone. A 560-facet listing is divided like the surfaces of a brilliant-cut diamond, each tradeable, each whole.
Naming for secondary trading, consolidation bids, governance votes, and physical redemption is being finalised with the trade. Watch this space — or read the white paper when it lands.
Why this exists
The idea came out of a frustration the gem trade has lived with for centuries: the world's most concentrated stores of value are also the most illiquid. A grandfather inherits a stone, keeps it in a safe, and passes it on. The market sees nothing.
Public-market infrastructure took two hundred years to build for equities. We don't have that kind of time, but we have the tools — open contracts, independent audits, and the fact that every facet can now carry a verifiable history. The thesis is that what was built once for shares can be built again, faster, for stones — and once it's built, the rest of the trade will route through it.
Founder note & full origin story to be published with the white paper.
The full technical specification. Contract architecture, valuation methodology, custody chain, governance design, and the regulatory thesis — parameters quoted from the deployed contracts.
Read the paper → Live · Pre-seedThe pre-seed thesis: market sizing, the FLO/Facet standard, five revenue streams, the $3M raise, and a working on-chain demo. Slide deck and one-pager included.
Read the deck → LiveThe full legal terms governing facet ownership, the Floor, governance votes, custody, redemption, and dispute resolution.
Read terms → Live · TestnetThe current set of stones — with on-chain status, FLO progress, NAV per facet, and direct links to each stone's order book and trade history.
Browse catalogue →Platform raise · Open
The protocol is live on Base. The next round funds custody partnerships, regulatory work in Switzerland and the Caymans, and the first wave of curated listings. If you invest in financial infrastructure or in luxury-asset markets, we'd like to talk.
Contact the teamCaratShares (sometimes written "Carat Shares") is a fractional-ownership and trading platform for investment-grade coloured gemstones. Vaulted, lab-certified stones — rubies, sapphires, emeralds, spinels — are tokenised at the carat level and traded on a continuous on-chain order book, settled on Base.
Each stone is held in insured vault custody and certified by an accredited laboratory (GIA, SSEF, Gübelin, AGL). Ownership is split into carat-level facets offered through a First Light Offering (FLO). After the FLO, facets trade continuously on the stone's on-chain order book — any size, any time, against a transparent mid-market price.
No. CaratShares is not affiliated with Karat Packaging Inc. (NASDAQ: KRT), the Carat media agency, the CARAT cryptocurrency, or any carsharing service. CaratShares is an independent platform for fractional ownership of physical coloured gemstones.
A full working demo runs on the Base Sepolia testnet today — catalogue, order books, governance, and redemption. Mainnet launch with the first vaulted stones follows the pre-seed round; the early-access waitlist is open above.