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A share class defines a category of equity with its own rights, preferences, and authorized share count. Common examples include Common Stock (typically held by founders and employees) and Preferred Stock series (typically held by investors, such as Series Seed Preferred or Series A Preferred). Every security on your cap table must belong to a share class. Share classes live at Cap Table → Stock Classes. You’ll need at least one share class before you can issue any securities.

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What’s on a share class record

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Creating a share class

1

Go to Stock Classes

Navigate to Cap Table → Stock Classes in the left sidebar.
2

Click Add share class

Select Add share class from the top-right action area.
3

Enter the class name and type

Give the class a descriptive name (e.g. “Common Stock” or “Series Seed Preferred”). Select Common or Preferred as the class type.
4

Set authorized shares and par value

Enter the number of authorized shares — this is the ceiling for issuance in this class. Add the par value if your incorporation documents specify one.
5

Configure voting and seniority

Set votes per share (commonly 1 for Common, 10 for founder shares, 0 for non-voting Preferred). Set the seniority rank to determine liquidation priority relative to other classes.
6

Add preferred terms (if applicable)

If the class type is Preferred, fill in the liquidation preference multiple (e.g. 1 for 1x non-participating) and, if the shares are participating, the participation cap multiple.
7

Save the share class

Click Create. The share class appears in the list. Tokenization starts automatically in the background — see below.
If you’ve uploaded an incorporation charter or board consent to the Dataroom, Launchboard may extract and create share classes for you during the document merge step.

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Tokenization status

Each share class has a tokenization status that tracks whether it has been represented on-chain: When you create a share class, Launchboard automatically begins the tokenization process in the background. This takes roughly 60–90 seconds. You don’t need to wait for it to complete before issuing securities.

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What tokenization means

When a share class is tokenized, Launchboard creates two linked assets on Solana via the OASIS API:
  • A Metaplex NFT — the class certificate, visible in wallets like Phantom, containing metadata about the share class.
  • A fungible SPL mint — the token that represents individual share units. When you mint a security to a stakeholder, tokens from this mint are sent to their Solana wallet.
The connection between the NFT and the SPL mint is encoded in the NFT metadata, creating a verifiable link between the class-level certificate and the individual share units held by stakeholders.
Minting tokens to individual stakeholders is a separate step that happens at the security level, not the share class level. Once a share class is tokenized, you can mint from it when issuing or activating securities. See Securities for the full minting flow.