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Tally SafeGuard

Tally SafeGuard is Audited by OpenZeppelin

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Project Abstract

SafeGuard governance accountability tool built around the Gnosis Safe multisig. It's a multisig system that allows governance to retain veto power over Gnosis Safe contracts, and allows governance to reclaim funds entrusted to multsig holders without requiring multisig signatories approval.

Example use cases include giving final veto power on the execution of multisig transactions to token holders, and the ability to reclaim funds from a multisig where the signatories are unable or unwilling to sign a refund transaction.

Background

On chain governance is slow and cumbersome, requiring coordination of many individual voters as well as substantial gas expenses. This can make it unsuitable for managing day to day operations or expenses.

Protocols can help scale their governance capacities and increase agility by delegating authority to smaller decision making bodies such as multi sigs. But this presents a tradeoff between reducing friction and maintaining security, as governance has no way to claw back funds or authority from a multisig without the cooperation of the multisig signers.

Problem

Current multi sigs are a one-way delegation of power. Multi-sigs are secure but lack oversight, transparency and accountability. This lack of accountability limits protocols ability to delegate authority to subcommittees, bottlenecks protocol growth and limits the effectiveness of governance.

Solution / Vision

Create a modular open source framework built around Gnosis MultiSig, OpenZeppelin Timelocks, Nomic Labs HardHat, and Compound Governor alpha that supports optimistic multi-sig governance.

The proposed solution would work alongside existing governance structures, require no modifications to existing smart contracts, and be entirely optional. The solution would work for any governance ecosystem where the underlying token is an ERC20 and uses a checkpointing system similar to Uniswap and Compound.

User Stories

As a governance, I want to entrust a budget to a multisig with the confidence that governance has the ability to reclaim funds without requiring the approval of the multisig signers.

As a governance, I want some quorum of governance token holders to have ultimate authority to delay or cancel transactions approved by multisig signers.

Preliminary Specification

The figure below shows how the proposed mechanism works and interacts with existing governance systems. New components are highlighted in yellow, while process flow is shown via the numbered elements.

New components:

Guardian: A modified version of the Governor Alpha contract Main governance timelock has ability to change guardian parameters including voting period, quorum, and proposal threshold

Multisig timelock: A modified version of the Compound timelock contract Admin powers to cancel transactions are split from admin power to queue or execute transactions

Process flow:

Token holders submit and approve a regular Governor Alpha proposal to transfer funds or authority to an external entity/multisig.

Multisig signers generate and sign a transaction, and queue the transaction into the multisig timelock.

If the main governance token holders believes that the multisig took improper actions, the token holders can cancel pending transactions or sweep funds and permissions from the multisig timelock back to the governance timelock. They do this by submitting and passing a proposal through the guardian contract.

If no action is taken to stop the queued transaction, it can be executed by the multisig after the timelock period elapses.

Development

Pre Requisites

Before running any command, make sure to install dependencies:

$ yarn install

Compile

Compile the smart contracts with Hardhat:

$ yarn compile

TypeChain

Compile the smart contracts and generate TypeChain artifacts:

$ yarn typechain

Lint Solidity

Lint the Solidity code:

$ yarn lint:sol

Lint TypeScript

Lint the TypeScript code:

$ yarn lint:ts

Test

Run the Mocha tests:

$ yarn test

Coverage

Generate the code coverage report:

$ yarn coverage

Report Gas

See the gas usage per unit test and average gas per method call:

$ REPORT_GAS=true yarn test

Clean

Delete the smart contract artifacts, the coverage reports and the Hardhat cache:

$ yarn clean