Over the last years, Squads has become the leading multisig solution on Solana, helping the ecosystem’s largest projects secure their assets.

But more than a simple multisig for storing assets, the Squads app is closer to a powerful platform for organizations to manage their operations on Solana. This can range from securing treasuries to performing program upgrades, as well as deploying a token.

This short article aims to cover the importance of Squads for existing and new enterprises looking to start operating on Solana.

Squads - The Platform for Companies Operating on Solana

Operating on a blockchain like Solana as a company involves managing multiple types of assets collectively. Standard crypto wallets don't offer the necessary operational setup for these companies to divide decision-making power over their assets and operations with multiple members.

This is where Squads comes in, allowing organizations to manage assets collectively through multi-signature rather than with a single private key/wallet. Squads offers a platform tailored for enterprise needs that fits a wide range of their operations into one environment. With permissions and spending limits, enterprises can also mirror the specific rights and authorizations team members require for asset management.

Moreover, the multisig functionality of the Squads app provides an added layer of security. Instead of relying on a single point of failure (one person's private key), program upgrades or financial transactions require approvals from multiple team members. This significantly reduces the risk of unauthorized actions, theft or compromise

Treasury Operations

Treasury management is a vital aspect of most crypto projects, as it involves ensuring funds for operational costs (e.g. salaries) and growth expenses. It can take many forms:

• Funds raised from investors/the public;

• Fees generated by the protocol/project;

• Grants received;

• Expenses like salaries, audits, RPC nodes;

• Liquidity mining rewards as a marketing expense;

• And any on-chain liquid assets, such as NFTs, held by the company.

All of this can be stored in a self-custody Squads account. From there, a team can then manage all its treasury operations, whether it is paying employees on-chain, storing liquidity mining rewards for future marketing campaigns, as well as accumulating revenue from on-chain activities like fees generated by a protocol or dapp.

On top of that, the Squads app features plenty of integrations to allow for smooth management of treasury assets. Users can trade with Jupiter (market and limit orders), off-ramp to their US/EU bank accounts through our Coinflow partner, as well as stake their SOL holdings with liquid staking providers and validators.

Ultimately, using Squads for treasury management helps mitigate risks associated with single points of failure, human error, or external attacks thanks to the requirement for multiple approvals to perform actions.

Program Management

A crucial aspect for protocols or companies with a deployed program on Solana is program management. This involves securing the upgrade authority key, which is essential for performing upgrades to the project’s program. This could be devastating and impact users if this key falls in the hands of malicious actors.

Most teams today use Squads to secure their program upgrade authority key and ensure only the team members designated can perform upgrades. Through Squads, projects can select the number of signatures required to perform transactions, as well as view the history of upgrades.

Squads streamlines the process of deploying program upgrades, automating workflows that traditionally require manual intervention. This can save enterprises with a deployed Solana program significant time and effort, allowing them to focus on development rather than administrative tasks.

Projects can also leverage the Squads Github action to automate program deployments directly from their Github CI/CD pipeline to a program upgrade proposal in their Squads multisig. It simplifies the process of building and deploying a program buffer account, as well as initializing an upgrade proposal.

Validator Security

In the same way many enterprises operating on Solana have a program to manage, we are seeing more of them launching a Solana validator. Squads is used by several enterprises managing a validator and looking to protect:

• their validator withdraw authority;

• the revenue generated from their validator commission and additional rewards like MEV and priority fees.

The validator withdraw authority has the power to change the validator identity as well as the authorized voter, adjust the commission rate or withdraw rewards. The core business of a validator depends on this "master" authority - if something happens to it, the validator's operations could be severely damaged. Using Squads, validators can be sure this key is secured under a robust setup requiring multiple approvals for changes.

By delegating the withdraw authority to a multisig, a validator can split the ownership among various owners/private keys, each having decision-making power to execute transactions involving the validator's key.

Through Squads, organizations can easily manage their validator’s commission rate as well as withdraw the staking revenue generated to their secure Squads multisig. This setup is perfectly suited for validator teams or organizations where multiple stakeholders are involved.

Token Management

Many crypto enterprises at some point launch a token, either to decentralize their protocol or because it is essential for their project (e.g. RWA or DePin projects). Having a Solana token involves several important factors:

• Managing its mint and freeze authorities;

• Setting up token distributions to stakeholders such as investors and employees;

• And deploying initial liquidity for the token.

Squads supports the Solana token standard and enables easy SPL token creation through a simple-to-use interface. Teams can use the Squads app to create their token and then manage its mint and freeze authorities directly from the app. These authorities are crucial for managing the token, as they allow managing its supply (mint/burn), as well as freezing tokens in on-chain accounts.

Using Squads, enterprises can ensure token authorities are safeguarded and managed collectively by team members through multi-signatures, preventing unauthorized actions.

Moreover, with SquadsX, the extension allowing users to connect their Squads multisig to any dapp on Solana, projects can distribute their token and/or deploy liquidity for it. Token distributions from a Squads account can be done either with Streamflow or Magna, allowing enterprises to create vesting plans for stakeholders that are owned by their Squads multisig. Teams can also deploy liquidity using the funds in their Squads account and with multisig security on any major DEX venues like Orca, Raydium, Meteora and Kamino.

Powered by Solana’s Most Secure Multisig Program

What makes the Squads platform ideal for enterprises is that it is powered by multisig security at its core. As said earlier in this article, a multisig solution adds an extra layer of security when managing treasury assets by requiring multiple signatures for transactions to be executed.

The Squads platform is the most advanced solution for enterprises to run their on-chain operations with the security they require. They can create the secure environment they need to manage company assets, split control between stakeholders and reduce the risk of unauthorized/malicious activity.

The program powering the Squads app, v4, has been audited 7 times to date by leading industry auditors such as OtterSec, Certora, Neodyme and Trail of Bits. It also has been formally verified two times. Leading projects such as Jito, Marginfi, Helium, Kamino, Drift, Raydium, Render, Ondo and many more rely on Squads for their operations.

If you are a company launching on Solana, wait no more and set up your Squads account today to start managing vital aspects of your operations with the best security standards on Solana.

About Squads Labs

Squads Labs is a core contributor to Squads Protocol, the leading multisig infrastructure on Solana. In addition to helping maintain the protocol, Squads Labs makes the Squads platform, an institutional-grade multisig platform for Solana-based teams. The Squads platform helps web3-native teams manage and secure digital assets on-chain. To learn more about Squads Labs, please visit https://www.sqds.io/.

About Squads Protocol

Squads is a multisig protocol that helps web3-native teams manage and secure digital assets on-chain. Squads Protocol v3 is the first formally verified program on Solana. Squads Protocol v4 introduces time locks, spending limits, roles, sub-accounts, fee relayers, multiple-party payments, support for SquadsX and more. Squads v4 has already been audited by Neodyme, OtterSec, and Trail of Bits. It is currently undergoing two formal verifications, one by OtterSec and the other by Certora. To learn more about Squads Protocol, please visit https://squads.so/protocol