Llama: Access Management and Governance Platform for Smart Contracts

The full version of this post was originally published on Llama’s blog.

Smart contract applications have accrued billions of dollars in value locked and treasury holdings. However, securing and governing these protocols is still complex.

Llama has launched a fullstack platform that makes access control and governance more effective and secure. We are now live on all major EVM chains.

Using Llama, teams can deploy fully-independent instances that define granular roles and permissions for executing transactions, known as “actions.” Actions include upgrading a protocol, transferring funds, changing protocol parameters, or activating an emergency pause.

Llama action builder

Llama has previously contributed to the largest protocols and communities in crypto — Aave, Nouns, Lido, dYdX, and ApeCoin. We used our learnings to build the product we wish we had.

With Llama, decentralization is achieved through access control. Each governance participant is granted the minimum amount of power to perform the function they are best suited to do.

Llama is designed for role-based governance. Examples of role-based workflows include:

  • Risk parameters: risk managers have the ability to optimistically update risk parameters, so the change will be executed after a time delay unless vetoed by token holders.
  • Protocol grants: grant reviewers have a low approval threshold for small grants, but require a high approval threshold for large grants.
  • Emergency updates: team members can activate an emergency pause with a high approval threshold and instantly execute the action once that threshold is met.
Llama Access Card

Llama empowers protocols with an onchain policy engine to set permissions for action creation and roles for action approvals and disapprovals. Protocols have an onchain audit trail of their roles and permissions, providing guarantees to users and investors.

Through Llama’s native accounts feature, teams can set granular rules for token approvals and transfers. They can have multiple accounts for distinct capital allocation decisions rather than one big treasury for every decision.

Protocols can progressively decentralize by incrementally adding new policyholders and expanding the set of governable actions.

Today, protocols are spending precious engineering resources forking open-source frameworks, integrating complex access control modules, and hacking together custom frontends. Llama provides a fullstack solution for access control and governance that lets teams focus on what they do best: building their core product.

We currently onboarding customers who are building smart contract applications. If you are looking for an onchain access control and governance solution, book a demo or fill out our contact form.