Steward

Stewards are often responsible for researching, drafting, and submitting formal governance proposals. This involves:

• Technical Specification: Outlining code changes, parameter adjustments, or treasury allocations.
• Community Signaling: Gauging sentiment and building consensus before an on-chain vote.
• Example: A Uniswap delegate proposing a new fee switch mechanism for the protocol.

A core duty is to actively participate in governance votes, either directly or by managing delegated voting power. Responsibilities include:

• Vote Execution: Casting votes on proposals in alignment with a stated platform or constituency.
• Delegation Strategy: For delegates, transparently managing the voting power entrusted to them by token holders.
• Vote Justification: Publishing rationales for voting decisions to maintain accountability.

Stewards oversee the protocol's treasury, ensuring its assets are managed responsibly and allocated to further the project's goals. This includes:

• Budget Approval: Voting on grants, operational budgets, and incentive programs.
• Asset Diversification: Proposing or approving strategies for managing treasury holdings (e.g., stablecoin conversion, staking).
• Transparency Reporting: Ensuring clear reporting on treasury inflows, outflows, and balances.

Stewards manage the core economic and technical parameters of a protocol. This is a critical technical governance function.

• Risk Parameters: Adjusting loan-to-value ratios, liquidation penalties, or fee structures in DeFi protocols.
• Protocol Upgrades: Voting to approve or reject smart contract upgrades, often executed via a Timelock contract.
• Example: A MakerDAO vote to adjust the Stability Fee for a specific collateral type.

Stewards often act as facilitators and moderators within the community's social layer.

• Forum Management: Guiding discussions, summarizing debates, and maintaining productive discourse.
• Dispute Resolution: Helping to mediate conflicts or interpret governance rules in edge cases.
• Onboarding & Education: Creating resources to help new participants understand governance processes.

Stewards are tasked with fostering the long-term health and growth of the ecosystem surrounding a protocol.

• Grant Program Oversight: Reviewing and voting on funding requests from developers, researchers, and community projects.
• Partnership Evaluation: Assessing proposals for strategic partnerships or integrations.
• Incentive Design: Shaping liquidity mining, staking rewards, and other incentive programs to align participant behavior with protocol goals.

A DAO appoints a multi-signature wallet controlled by elected stewards to manage its protocol treasury. Their duties include:

• Executing approved budget allocations for grants and development.
• Managing the treasury's asset portfolio, including swapping between stablecoins and native tokens.
• Facilitating on-chain voting to authorize large transactions, ensuring no single entity has unilateral control.

Stewards administer vesting schedules and token grants for projects. They are responsible for:

• Holding locked tokens in a secure escrow contract.
• Releasing tokens to team members and investors according to a pre-defined, transparent cliff and vesting schedule.
• Acting as a neutral third party to enforce the agreement's terms without bias.

In many bridges, a committee of stewards (or validators) is tasked with securing the movement of assets. Their critical functions include:

• Verifying and signing off on valid withdrawal requests on the destination chain.
• Holding the custodial assets or mint/burn authority on the connected chains.
• This creates a trusted but decentralized checkpoint, as opposed to a purely trustless light client bridge.

After a governance vote passes, technical stewards (often a Protocol Guild or core dev team) are responsible for its on-chain execution. This involves:

• Deploying and configuring new smart contract code.
• Updating protocol parameters like fee rates or collateral factors.
• This separates the voting power of token holders from the technical risk of execution, a concept known as minimal viable governance.

An NFT project with a community treasury elects stewards from its holder base. These stewards manage funds generated from primary sales and royalties to:

• Finance community events, merchandise, and marketing initiatives.
• Fund strategic acquisitions of NFTs from the project's own collection or others (floor sweeping).
• Propose and execute budgets that are ratified by the community via Snapshot votes.

A Steward acts as a trusted executor for protocol governance decisions. Their primary functions often include:

• Parameter Management: Updating system variables like interest rates, fees, or collateral ratios.
• Treasury Operations: Executing budget allocations or managing a community treasury.
• Emergency Response: Pausing contracts or mitigating exploits in crisis scenarios via a pause guardian role.
• Upgrade Execution: Facilitating smart contract upgrades after a governance vote.

Stewardship represents a delegated trust model, where token holders grant limited, time-bound authority. This is distinct from direct, on-chain voting for every action. The model balances agility (quick execution) with accountability (revocable mandates). Key mechanisms include:

• Multisig Wallets: Requiring multiple signatures (e.g., 3-of-5) for any action.
• Timelocks: Enforcing a mandatory delay between a proposal's approval and its execution by the Steward, allowing for community review.
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC): Granular permissions within smart contracts.

Concentrating power in a Steward introduces specific centralization risks and attack vectors:

• Single Point of Failure: A compromised private key or malicious actor can inflict significant damage.
• Governance Capture: An entity may influence governance to appoint itself as a malicious Steward.
• Implementation Bugs: Flaws in the Steward contract's logic can be exploited.

Mitigations include using audited multisig contracts (like Safe), enforcing strict quorums and delays, implementing circuit breakers, and maintaining clear, transparent off-chain operational procedures.

MakerDAO's PSM Stewards: Manage parameters for the Peg Stability Module. Compound's Pause Guardian: A designated address (often held by a multisig) with the power to pause specific market functions in an emergency. Uniswap's UNI Grant Stewards: A committee responsible for distributing grants from the community treasury, as mandated by governance votes. Lido's Node Operator Stewards: Curate and manage the set of node operators for the Ethereum staking protocol, subject to DAO oversight.

These are distinct but related components of decentralized governance:

• Steward: The executive role or entity that performs actions.
• Multisig Wallet: A common technical implementation for a Steward, requiring M-of-N signatures.
• DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization): The broader governing body (token holders) that grants authority to the Steward via proposals and votes. A typical flow: The DAO votes to approve a parameter change → The approved action is queued in a timelock → The Steward (via multisig) executes the change after the delay.

The concept is evolving towards greater decentralization and robustness:

• Progressive Decentralization: Starting with a foundational team as Steward, with a clear path to distributing or automating the role.
• Minimal Privilege: Granting only the specific permissions absolutely necessary for the defined tasks.
• Transparency & Accountability: Public logs of all actions, mandatory reporting, and easy paths for the DAO to revoke permissions.
• Automation via Smart Contracts: Replacing human-executed tasks with trustless, automated keepers where possible, reducing reliance on active stewardship.