Introducing the Congruent Labs DAO Custody Services

Congruent Labs, a specialist cybersecurity and cryptography services company, is excited to announce its new DAO Custody Services for the cryptocurrency market. These services are designed to offer emerging and existing projects the ability to delegate control over smart contracts that operate Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs).

As the market for cryptocurrency projects and DAOs has erupted in popularity in 2020 and 2021, there is an emerging need for projects to operate in truly decentralized structures to prove that no single entity retains control over the project, and specifically the smart contracts that run the underlying project. In some projects this results in an event referred to as "renouncing ownership" - or effectively transferring the ownership of the smart contracts to a "dead" address (an address that is impossible to use). Renouncing ownership of an address then prevents the smart contract from ever being able to be modified if it contains any modifiable parameters. In other projects the ownership may instead be passed to a "foundation" legal entity, who's function is to serve as a custodian of the contract.

For contracts that aren't renounced, and aren't connected in some way to a foundation, there then remains a question over who the owner of the contract is. Can they be trusted to not make changes against the wishes of the DAO? Could they transfer that ownership to someone else that might? Typically the team that established the DAO is then forced to make their affiliation to the smart contract public to assure the community that their intentions are not malicious.

To help shepherd in the use of DAOs in more broad contexts, Congruent Labs now provides a DAO Custody Service that DAO creators can opt to assign ownership to. This service is designed so that Congruent Labs will act as an impartial key holder for the project. Congruent Labs won't have an interest in the project itself, but instead simply hold private key ownership of any smart contracts that the DAO requires a third party to hold, and only perform actions with those keys as a result of any successful DAO vote that requires use of those keys.

Using this service, DAO creators can now safely prove that they do not retain ownership over the keys themselves - the impartial 3rd party retains it. The DAO retains the right to transfer that ownership away from Congruent Labs at any time (so the DAO still always controls that decision), the DAO can trust that the keys are managed by a provider that will handle key material correctly and safely, and the DAO creators can safely operate without needing to reveal their identities to the community.

To learn more about how to use the DAO Custody Service, please contact sales@congruentlabs.co