A Framework for Trustless Single Stock Option Indices

Call options already attract billions of dollars. This proposal gives that market a simple on-chain product: a spot token that continuously maintains a single stock’s call exposure.

The proposed options NAVCoin holds a portfolio of fully paid calls. A published rulebook specifies contract selection, rebalancing and replacement as options age. The investor holds one token through successive baskets. Post Fiat supplies the verification infrastructure behind the strategy and, in the full product, its backing and share accounting.

The business case starts with existing demand. Buyers already pay for the possibility of a large upside payoff with a defined amount at risk. A token serves that buying behavior by making the exposure easy to access and maintain in a wallet. Its usefulness comes from the desired payoff and the convenience of owning it; the calls can have negative expected financial returns.

Our initial sizing found $8.05 billion of outstanding at-the-money and out-of-the-money call premium value in Nvidia and Micron alone. The opportunity is to bring an established buying behavior on-chain through a token that wallets, exchanges and other applications can integrate as a spot asset.

$8 billion of outstanding call value in two stocks

For these two stocks, listed calls dwarf the tracked equity-perp market. We measured every returned call expiration in the full Schwab chains for NVDA and MU, keeping strikes at or above the stock reference price. This isolates the ATM/OTM calls that buyers use for upside optionality.

Snapshot: Schwab chains captured September 5, 2026, with September 4 quotes; perpetual observations September 7. Premium value is open interest × 100 shares × the quoted midpoint. Perp totals cover tracked venues with available OI. Calculation data, NVDA perp markets, MU perp markets.

Figure 02

Two stocks already support billions in call premium.

NVDA + MU · ATM/OTM calls$8.05 billionCurrent value of outstanding call premiums

Illustrative product scale1% of this premium value = $80.45M of assets

The premium base measures the value of existing call positions: capital in a funded options product would own that kind of asset. The notional measures the stock exposure those contracts reference. The selected call notional is roughly 237 times NVDA’s reported perp OI and 134 times Micron’s—about 181 times combined. These are indicative comparisons with tracked venues; exchange OI counting conventions vary.

The $8.05 billion includes calls held outright and within spreads and hedges. It establishes the scale of existing activity. The captured stock references were $230.36 for NVDA and $1,016.59 for MU; over 80% of each premium total comes from options expiring after 2026. The initial customer is someone already buying and rolling single-stock calls who values access through a spot token. How many such buyers adopt the product depends on its strategy, fees, liquidity and distribution.

The activity also repeats over time. OCC reported 8.27 billion single-stock option contracts traded in 2025, covering calls and puts, up 26.8% from 2024. That annual trading count provides context for the ongoing market; the table above measures the value outstanding in a two-stock snapshot. OCC annual volume.

The product opportunity is a standard spot interface for that ongoing activity: buy a single stock’s call strategy once, then let the portfolio maintain it.

One token maintains the call strategy

Maintaining a call position means repeatedly choosing contracts, sizing the purchase and deciding when to replace them. A holder who wants ongoing Nvidia call exposure must keep doing that work as individual contracts expire.

An options NAVCoin makes the strategy continuous. The investor buys one token; the portfolio rebalances its calls and rolls into replacement contracts under a published rulebook. The options expire. The token carries the strategy across those expirations.

The rulebook specifies the eligible maturities and strikes, premium allocation, position sizing and roll conditions. Each observation produces a target: the contracts and quantities the strategy should hold. In the funded product, the portfolio operator executes the rebalance through the broker, and actual holdings are reconciled against that target. Replacement purchases use portfolio assets. The token holder has no automatic obligation to add capital.

Illustrative roll accounting: a portfolio starts with $80 of old calls and $20 of cash. It sells the old calls for $80, then buys $85 of replacement calls. It now holds $85 of calls and $15 of cash: the same $100 NAV before execution costs. A hypothetical $1 total trading cost leaves $99 of net assets. Buying the new calls exchanges cash for an asset; subsequent price changes, time decay, implied volatility and fees change its value. This is arithmetic to explain the mechanism; the $1 is an illustrative cost assumption.

The demonstrated Nvidia and Micron strategies each selected five calls in a common expiration. Their historical selection parameters are in the demo record. Each stock has its own basket. The product’s identity stays attached to its published method while its holdings evolve.

Why package it as a spot token?

The spot format turns that maintained strategy into something existing crypto applications can use:

• Investors buy a persistent position in one transaction. Choose a stock and a dollar amount, then hold the same wallet asset through successive rolls.
• Wallets and exchanges integrate a spot asset. An ERC-20 balance and a trading pair provide a familiar way to distribute stock-option exposure.
• Liquidity providers get a new category of trading pairs. Secondary trades transfer shares of an existing portfolio, allowing the same underlying basket to support repeated token trading.
• Product builders can offer a family of single-stock exposures. Each stock and declared strategy can use the same verification and accounting machinery.

The investor is buying convexity: a call’s participation can increase as the stock rises, with loss limited to the premium paid. A call gives its holder the right to buy shares at a fixed strike price during its exercise period. OIC long-call mechanics.

In the fully funded design, someone buying $1,000 of tokens commits that $1,000, plus transaction fees. The holder can keep the position through an interim drawdown without maintenance-margin top-ups. The portfolio pays for subsequent calls from its assets; the investor continues to hold the token.

Figure 06

Pay for convexity. Define the amount at risk.

Downside budgetPremium paid upfront

The buyer commits a fixed amount of capital to the call.

Upside participationRoom for a large move

The call can participate in a recovery while it remains alive.

The diagram shows the payoff the buyer pays for: a $100-strike call bought for $10 per share loses at most $10 and earns $30 if the stock finishes at $140.

A fully paid call can survive a temporary drawdown and participate in a recovery before expiry. A leveraged perp may liquidate during that drawdown. Each call still has a finite life, and a rolling basket’s results depend on successive purchases and sales. The entire token investment can be lost. Perp holders manage margin and funding, which can be paid or received. Liquidation and funding mechanics.

Ethereum distributes it; Post Fiat verifies it

An options NAVCoin connects the existing listed-options market to Ethereum wallets and liquidity. The architecture gives each system a concrete job.

The broker holds the actual calls and brokerage cash. Post Fiat checks the strategy evidence and supplies the canonical verification and accounting layer in the NAVCoin design. Ethereum contracts represent investor ownership, hold settlement USDC and enforce authenticated issuance and settlement authorizations. Ethereum and Uniswap are the proposed distribution route, subject to the product’s holder and transfer terms. An ERC-20 balance represents the investor’s shares; pool trades transfer those shares between holders.

NAV per token = (options value + cash − liabilities and accrued fees) ÷ valid token supply.

For a portfolio with $1 million of net assets and 100,000 tokens, NAV is $10 per token. Portfolio gains and losses change that value. Subscriptions add assets and shares together; redemptions remove them together. Pool liquidity determines how easily tokens trade, while the portfolio determines their backing.

A redeemable implementation offers two exits: sell an existing token through Uniswap, or request settlement against portfolio value. Subscriptions and redemptions give traders a way to arbitrage premiums and discounts. Their costs, timing and availability determine how closely the market follows NAV.

The token can trade while the options market is closed, when the last verified NAV may be stale and the market price can diverge. Primary settlement can use a queue tied to the fund’s valuation and cash settlement process. ERC-7540 provides a standard interface for this request-and-claim pattern. Earlier NAVCoin research also describes a model with bounded market support and no standing redemption right. Those are different product terms; the shared primitive supports an explicit choice between them.

Verification makes the product reusable

An investor wants the strategy they bought. A wallet wants a result it can check. A fund administrator wants calculations it can reconcile. A shared proof gives all three a common answer to “Were these rules applied to these inputs?”

Trustless verification applies to the declared calculation. A verifier can check it independently using the proof and registered policy. The underlying listed options remain in broker custody, with ownership rights defined by the fund’s documents.

The collector, a program that fetches the brokerage inputs, runs inside an AWS Nitro enclave and uses an encrypted TLS connection. Hardware attestation identifies its software and binds its input statements. A program in the SP1 proving system checks those bindings and computes the target. Its proof lets other systems check the calculation while the full brokerage response remains private. AWS attestation, SP1.

Try the verification walkthrough:

The registered method, inputs and output commitments travel together. Changing the parameters, inputs or target invalidates the corresponding check. An accepted run has a unique receipt on the Post Fiat ledger, PFTL. Every wallet and application can verify that same receipt instead of relying on an operator’s assertion about which strategy ran.

This common record lets applications integrate a strategy without recreating its administrator’s calculation process. The full NAVCoin architecture extends the evidence model to reserves, liabilities, token supply and settlement. Each additional claim needs its own authenticated evidence and acceptance checks.

What is built, and the path to the funded token

On September 6, 2026, the Nvidia and Micron runs produced five-call targets from real, attested Schwab inputs. Both Nitro/SP1 proofs passed independent replay and verification. Both receipts passed isolated local four-validator PFTL tests, including restart/replay, the CLI and viewer.

The demonstrated component is the strategy calculation and proof. The funded token adds live execution, custody, account reconciliation, reserve valuation, share issuance and its chosen settlement terms. The demo used hypothetical capital. A funded implementation must connect executed holdings to the accepted targets, value those holdings and reconcile assets, liabilities and issued shares before authorizing investor issuance or settlement. Demo record, implementation PR, verification map.

The assurance rests on the brokerage data source, the measured collector’s correctness, Nitro hardware attestation, the proof program and cryptography, and ledger finality. The operator and broker remain responsible for execution and custody. A target receipt proves the calculation covered by those inputs; evidence of actual fills and backing belongs to the funded implementation.

Product terms complete the architecture. Fund and share documents must establish rights to portfolio assets, custody and segregation, fees, permitted holders and transfers, and settlement. They must also define valuation during market closures and treatment of exercise and corporate actions. The issuer needs appropriate offering, fund and adviser treatment and a compatible distribution route. The SEC staff’s January 28, 2026 statement explains that tokenization preserves the application of securities law and that ownership rights depend on the structure; this staff position has no independent legal force. The SEC’s private-fund overview describes exemption and adviser considerations relevant to evaluating one possible structure. A legal wrapper and fee schedule remain product-design work. SEC staff statement, SEC fund-formation overview.

A product family built around demand for convexity

The NAVCoin proposal provides the portfolio-token architecture. One Portfolio, Many Access Venues separates backing from distribution. UltraShort NAVCoins apply the pattern to perpetual positions, while Glass explores institutional use of verified reserve claims. External platforms such as Enzyme Onyx demonstrate the wider portfolio-share model.

The options version serves an established buying behavior through a new interface: one spot token that keeps a single stock’s call strategy running across rebalances and expirations. Investors already commit billions to calls. A continuously maintained token gives that market an on-chain home, with a defined capital commitment for the buyer and a common verification system for the applications that distribute it.