Your legal entity

5 min read · Updated Oct 2026

A treasury protected by code is only half of a company. The other half is a real legal entity that can sign contracts, own intellectual property, hold a bank relationship, and be held accountable in a court. Backable prepares the information in the wizard; formation is completed through MetaLeX after the documents and outstanding issues are reviewed.

What gets created

Three names get used for this, and they are three different things. Everywhere else on Backable we say your Cayman company, which means the second one:

The Cayman SPC , one segregated portfolio company, shared by every company on Backable. It already exists. Nothing is created here.
Your segregated portfolio , a compartment opened inside that SPC, holding only your business. This is the part that is created for you, and the part that owns your work. Cayman law ring-fences it: one portfolio's liabilities cannot reach another portfolio's assets, so a company that fails next to yours cannot touch it.
MetaLeX , the firm that forms and files the portfolio. A provider, not the entity, and not your lawyer.

The portfolio is not a separate company or a tax exemption for its founders. Your residence, team locations and customers can create tax, employment, securities and consumer-law obligations elsewhere. Obtain advice for the jurisdictions that apply to you.

What the entity holds

The company's intellectual property, code, brand, designs, whatever you assign to it.
The domain and the accounts that run the business.
Contracts with suppliers, contractors, and customers.
The relationship to the DAO, which is what makes the treasury and the entity one company rather than two unrelated things.

Who controls it

The entity answers to the DAO. Founders operate it day to day within the monthly budget, but decisions that dispose of what it holds, selling the brand, licensing the IP, winding it up, require a proposal decided by a decision market. That is the mechanism that stops a founder from raising into a DAO and then quietly moving the valuable parts into a company they own personally.

Assigning your IP

The wizard asks you to declare what intellectual property exists and to confirm, clause by clause, what is being assigned to the entity. This is the part founders are most tempted to skim, and the part backers should read first. A company whose code still sits in a founder's personal account has a treasury protected by code and an asset protected by nothing.

Assignment and licensing differ. Standard Founder CIIAA §3(g) conditionally delays assignment until the first raise meets its configured minimum. Section 3(b) separately grants a perpetual license over certain inventions used in the business. That license, confidentiality and Services Agreement §2 obligations are not expressly conditional on a successful raise. A failed raise does not automatically release them.

What backers see. Your IP declaration appears on the raise page. The checklist and private disclosure questions are together in Legal → Prepare. If you cannot transfer an asset or have an agreement that limits your work, contact MetaDAO. You can continue preparing, but the issue may prevent a raise. Private disclosures do not override the signed CIIAA or make a retained asset an approved exception.

Your role as Operator

Signing the pack makes you the Operator of your portfolio under a Services Agreement. Three of the terms it includes:

You are an at-will independent contractor of the portfolio, not an employee. Either side can end the relationship.
You agree to run the business through the portfolio and to submit the decisions the Operating Agreement requires to decision markets.
MetaLeX is not your law firm. Nothing in the formation flow creates an attorney–client relationship or constitutes legal advice.

Read the eight source templates in the legal pack before signing. The Legal step prepares downloadable services, operator and founder-disclosure schedules from your answers. They remain proposals until counsel and MetaLeX incorporate them into the adopted documents. Match the final populated packet against your downloads and retain its electronic signature evidence; a recorded formation transaction alone does not establish which proposed schedules were accepted.

Founder’s guide to the formation documents

The guide and PDF library now have a dedicated page: The legal pack. Read by topic, open individual agreements, or download the complete Standard pack before preparing your details.

The transparency filing

Separate from the entity, the B1 filing is Blockworks' Token Transparency template, which Backable has adopted. It covers prior token sales, market-maker arrangements, insider allocations, and known risks. The template is voluntary outside Backable, but every Backable raise must answer the required B1 fields before submission.

What it costs and what it doesn't do

Formation happens inside the create flow and costs you nothing, Backable and MetaDAO cover MetaLeX setup, and the only Backable fee anywhere is the $15 saved-draft charge. What the entity does not do: it does not make you compliant with securities law in your own country, it does not replace tax advice, and it does not turn an idea into a business. It gives the company a legal body that outlives any individual founder, which is the prerequisite for everything else.

Not legal advice. This page describes what the tooling creates. Whether that structure suits your situation is a question for a lawyer in your jurisdiction.

Launching a raise8 min read Doing your own research6 min read Start your raise$15 to draft