Auditless

peteris erins Verified account @p_e · Nov 21, 2023

Back in 2021, @tarunchitra mentioned an idea he had for a decentralized treasury management protocol.

@gauntlet_xyz had figured out a way to use a network of parameter submitters to collectively satisfy arbitrary treasury management objectives.

Challenge

This was one of the most exciting prompts for protocol design I'd heard.

DAOs didn't have an effective and tailored way to trustlessly manage their capital.

It was also clear that many parts of DeFi (e.g., options protocols) could benefit from organic institutional-style demand.

From there, @auditless was enlisted as an R&D partner to help design and implement successive iterations of the protocol and we got to work.

Solution

@auditless worked closely with the Product, Engineering, Leadership and BD teams at @gauntlet_xyz as well as with our engineering partners @blockvis_team and security partners @SpearbitDAO.

We collectively shaped & developed a trust-minimized treasury management protocol which uses current DeFi instruments and off-chain guardians to satisfy a variety of custom treasury objectives.

The live Aera protocol is pioneering custom treasury objectives for each client, a frictionless deployment process and a path to decentralization through the use of a guardian role.

Results

+$4.3M (and counting) since inception

Auditless helped develop 2 major versions of the Aera protocol which have led to several active treasury deployments.

The flexibility of the underlying smart contracts allows Aera to address distinct needs with each deployment.

These vary from volatility targeting, deepening liquidity, generating yield on idle holdings and diversifying treasury assets.

Clients are drawn to the trust model that Aera provides.

Guardian actions are highly limited and guarded by a variety of pre and post-execution hooks that include action whitelisting, allowance checks and limits on vault value changes — all enforced onchain.

On the flipside, Aera clients have full and immediate control over their funds and are free to utilize their Aera vault as a wallet.

+$8M raised for Aera

The Aera Foundation has now raised $8M from @jump_ and @BainCapCrypto to continue scaling the protocol.

From PR Newswire:

“The Aera team has developed a much-needed solution perfect for crypto-native organizations looking to responsibly manage their treasuries,” said @stefancoh, partner at Bain Capital Crypto. “Aera is the first solution of its kind for DAO treasury management and was built by a team that’s amazingly well equipped to usher in a new era of responsible decentralized finance growth.”

Most importantly – it's been a highlight of my career to collaborate and learn from the many talented individuals in the Aera team: @tarunchitra @ChiangRei @jmo_mx @shaanvaria @JuliusDegesys @mattdobel @_nickborg Victor Xu, Simon Yakunin @BenSchreck @saucekind Trey Sadiq, Jesse Kao, Nick Hewitt @jreem.

This is only the beginning.

View quoted post on X

Devin Walsh Verified account @devinawalsh · Feb 12, 2025

.... and grateful for the support the UF has received from the @auditless team led by @p_e over the last year

as the team assisted us in scaling our team and grants program to support building an L2 chain DeFi ecosystem 🙏

View quoted post on X

Uniswap Foundation Verified account @UniswapFND · Jan 8, 2025

The Uniswap Foundation's 2024 Community Impact Report is Live!

This Report reflects a year of building, growth, and collaboration. We're excited to share our journey with you—to reflect on what we have achieved together, and to plan for what lies ahead.

uniswapfoundation.org/impact

View quoted post on X

peteris erins Verified account @p_e · Dec 3, 2024

.@aerafinance has quietly hit $120M in TVL 🤯.

It's also on a category of its own.

Want to shape the future of treasury management and write a ton of Solidity?

We're looking for a Protocol Engineer to join the Aera team.

View quoted post on X

peteris erins Verified account @p_e · Nov 28, 2023

With @aerafinance, @gauntlet_xyz sought to develop a comprehensive treasury management solution.

The protocol needed to:

– Implement a highly pragmatic and current treasury management vehicle that would allow us to immediately start adding value to clients;

– Scale to support a wide variety of assets, treasury objectives and strategies;

– Provide a noncustodial implementation with strong onchain protections;

– Pave a clear path towards decentralization in accordance with the vision laid out in the @aerafinance Whitepaper.

Here is the process @auditless used behind-the-scenes to deliver on these concerns together with our engineering partners @blockvis_team and security partners @SpearbitDAO to ship two major versions of the Aera protocol.

Design

A modular treasury management solution

The protocol consists of three primary components:

The Vault — a non-custodial contract that holds the treasury assets, handles interactions from the guardian and treasury.

Asset Registry — a whitelist of supported assets and their pricing logic.

Hooks — a set of hooks around common vault operations. Most importantly they constrain which guardian submissions are valid.

The protocol provides a generic interface and default implementation for each module which can evolve independently for future deployments.

Every module clearly isolates its own concerns with vault focusing on custody, the asset registry focusing on asset selection and pricing and the hooks module focusing on vault protection.

All modules act in support of the objective function defined by the treasury.

Trust model that prioritizes safety and availability of treasury funds

From the beginning, we sought to mitigate the risks of centralized treasury management solutions.

Our approach was to limit the actions guardians can take in several ways:

– They can only call whitelisted contracts and whitelisted functions on these contracts

– They cannot reduce the vault value in excess of a pre-defined threshold during each 24-hour period

– They cannot create open allowances for ERC20 tokens.

Equally we wanted to empower the treasury to take arbitrary actions through their funds and they can do so through the execute function.

Spec-first mindset

The Aera protocol was developed with a spec-first mindset. Throughout the course of development we used several types of specifications to build alignment, support the security process and explore variations on our ideas.

1. Executional spec

The earliest Aera specification was a fully working Python prototype used to simulate and explore different execution methodologies.

This was a natural approach, given Gauntlet's expertise in economic simulation.

We used an Ethereum inspired mini-DSL to define smart contract like objects and develop targeted simulations.

2. Written spec & user documentation

Next, we developed a written specification for the different module interfaces and implementations in Aera. After that, we added user documentation from the treasury point of view ahead of developing the protocol in order to achieve our stated goal of low-friction interactions.

We used Notion for this purpose, which helped us with collaboration and supported an easy export feature to share the spec with auditors.

A version of these guides is now published in the Aera Docs.

3. Invariants

Finally, we developed a basic trust model and a set of invariants for each module.

We are continuing to explore & expand on invariant testing starting with Foundry invariants.

Building an internal security capability

We approached security audits as an opportunity not just to solidify the contracts but to train the team on security practices. We followed the @auditless Codex playbook for internal security reviews.

Even non-Solidity engineers participated in our internal audit and despite its heavily time-bound nature discovered critical issues as well as deepened their understanding of the protocol.

As a result, our latest audit by the world class Spearbit team had no critical issues and just 1 High Severity issue, which enabled the Spearbit team to add value in additional ways such as streamlining deployment, helping us plan future iterations of the asset registry and more.

Our goal is to continue developing our internal security capabilities.

A path to decentralization

The use of objective functions and guardians is intentionally included as an enabler for decentralization.

The current architecture is future-proof: it can support an evolution of the guardian in a smart contract and we have completed several streams of investigative work in this direction.

Some of the most important contributions that the Aera protocol will introduce will likely come from these efforts.

Collaborative process

The most distinctive feature of our process has been the cross-functional nature of the solution.

The Aera guardian logic, monitoring stack and strategies were all developed in conjunction with the protocol with many feedback loops.

Every member of the broader Aera team has contributed to both the protocol and the off-chain infrastructure that uses it in some form (and necessarily so).

The collaboration was oriented around a Product Discovery loop that resulted in a sequence of AEPs (Aera Enhancement Proposals) with prioritization derived from overall Aera product objectives.

We look forward to continuing to evolve these operating procedures to support the growth of the protocol and explore more of the treasury management idea maze.

View quoted post on X