Institutional Treasuries

Crypto treasuries, whether held by public companies, DAOs, foundations, or asset managers, face a recurring operational problem: proving to auditors, regulators, and stakeholders that a given on-chain address is owned and operated by the institution, and that every transfer is traceable to an authorized signer. Spreadsheets, internal wikis, and signed PDFs fall apart at audit time. Notareum gives treasuries a cryptographically anchored, machine-readable record: signed .nota files for every treasury address, receipts for every material transfer, and registry entries that auditors can query without asking the treasury team for a screenshot.

What treasuries publish

A treasury publishes three classes of .nota file:

Address .nota for every treasury wallet (hot, warm, cold, multisig). Signed by the treasury admin key.
Contract .nota for any protocol treasury’s deployed contracts (vaults, timelocks, multisig implementations).
Receipt .nota for each outgoing transfer above a policy threshold, signed by the authorized signer at transfer time.

Together they form a self-describing, continuously updated map of the treasury’s on-chain footprint.

Address registration

import { Notareum } from "@notareum/sdk";

const ntm = Notareum({ provider, signer: treasuryAdmin, contracts });

async function registerTreasuryAddress(opts: {
  address: string;
  chainId: number;
  label: string;
  custodyType: "multisig" | "hsm" | "mpc" | "cold";
  signersPolicy?: { threshold: number; total: number; signerRefs?: string[] };
}) {
  const nota = await ntm.nota
    .create({
      type: "address",
      chainId: opts.chainId,
      chainName: chainIdToName(opts.chainId),
      identifier: opts.address,
      name: opts.label,
      description: `Treasury wallet, custody=${opts.custodyType}`,
      resourceMetadata: {
        custodyType: opts.custodyType,
        signersPolicy: opts.signersPolicy,
        classification: "treasury",
        entity: "Acme Foundation",
        jurisdiction: "CH",
        registeredAt: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000),
      },
      issuerName: "Acme Foundation Treasury",
      issuerEntityType: "organization",
      issuerDid: "did:web:treasury.acmefoundation.org",
    })
    .validate()
    .sign(treasuryAdmin);

  await ntm.registry.registerResource(nota);
  await ntm.verification.requestVerification(nota.resourceId(), {
    level: "institutional",
  });
  return nota;
}

Each address is verified at INSTITUTIONAL level, which triggers the 15-validator quorum and the strongest on-chain trust signal. Block explorers, auditors, and counterparties querying the registry see the address with a “Treasury, institutional-verified” badge.

Signer transparency

A treasury that wants maximum transparency can publish the multisig signer set as part of the address .nota:

{
  "signersPolicy": {
    "threshold": 3,
    "total": 5,
    "signerRefs": [
      "notareum:resource:0xabc...",
      "notareum:resource:0xdef...",
      "notareum:resource:0x123...",
      "notareum:resource:0x456...",
      "notareum:resource:0x789..."
    ]
  }
}

Each signerRefs entry resolves to another registered .nota for the individual or sub-entity signer, forming a verifiable org chart. Revoking a signer’s entry (e.g., on departure) is immediate and propagates.

Transfer receipts

For each transfer above the treasury’s policy threshold, the signing operator produces a receipt:

async function issueTransferReceipt(opts: {
  txHash: string;
  chainId: number;
  from: string;
  to: string;
  amount: string;
  token: string;
  purpose: string;
  approvalRef: string;
}) {
  const nota = await ntm.nota
    .create({
      type: "transaction",
      chainId: opts.chainId,
      chainName: chainIdToName(opts.chainId),
      identifier: opts.txHash,
      name: `Transfer: ${opts.purpose}`,
      resourceMetadata: {
        from: opts.from,
        to: opts.to,
        amount: opts.amount,
        token: opts.token,
        purpose: opts.purpose,
        approvalRef: opts.approvalRef,
        approvedAt: Math.floor(Date.now() / 1000),
      },
      issuerName: "Acme Foundation Treasury",
      issuerEntityType: "organization",
    })
    .sign(treasuryAdmin);

  await ntm.registry.registerResource(nota);
  return nota;
}

Receipts link:

from and to to registered .nota addresses (both sides of the transfer contextualized).
approvalRef to the governance proposal, board resolution, or ticket system entry authorizing the transfer.
purpose to a free-text field with a controlled vocabulary (payroll, grant, investment, rebalance, operational).

Audit queries

An auditor holding the treasury’s public issuer DID can run a fully external query:

import { Notareum } from "@notareum/sdk";

const ntm = Notareum({ provider, contracts }); // no signer needed

async function auditPeriod(issuerDid: string, fromTs: number, toTs: number) {
  const issuer = await ntm.registry.getIssuerByDid(issuerDid);

  const addresses = await ntm.registry.listByIssuer(issuer.id, { type: "address" });
  const receipts = await ntm.registry.listByIssuer(issuer.id, {
    type: "transaction",
    signedAfter: fromTs,
    signedBefore: toTs,
  });

  const totalsByToken = new Map<string, bigint>();
  for (const r of receipts) {
    const { token, amount } = r.resourceMetadata;
    totalsByToken.set(token, (totalsByToken.get(token) ?? 0n) + BigInt(amount));
  }

  return { addresses, receipts, totalsByToken };
}

The auditor does not need the treasury to send anything: the on-chain record plus the off-chain receipt set is self-sufficient. The treasury does not need to produce a custom report: their day-to-day transfer discipline produces the audit trail as a byproduct.

Governance approval linking

DAOs can tie receipts to governance proposals in both directions:

A governance proposal includes a receipt template (to, amount, token, purpose).
On execution, the treasury produces the receipt with approvalRef = "snapshot:proposal:0xabc..." or approvalRef = "aragon:vote:42".
Indexers cross-reference proposal outcomes and actual transfers in real time.

Failures show up as missing receipts for executed transfers, not just missing votes.

Cold-wallet attestations

Cold wallets rarely move. Periodic proof-of-reserves for cold wallets can be produced as signed .nota files without moving funds:

const pora = await ntm.nota
  .create({
    type: "attestation",
    chainId: 1,
    identifier: coldAddress,
    name: "Monthly cold wallet attestation",
    resourceMetadata: {
      attestationType: "balance_snapshot",
      snapshotBlock: 19832144,
      snapshotTimestamp: 1713571200,
      assets: [
        { token: "ETH", balance: "12500.0" },
        { token: "USDC", balance: "45000000.0" },
      ],
      challengeNonce: "0xa1b2c3...",
    },
  })
  .sign(coldWalletSigner);

The signature proves the cold key was live at snapshot time without exposing the wallet to an on-chain transfer.

Operational controls

Key rotation. When a signer rotates keys, revoke the old .nota and issue a new one. History remains queryable.
Segregation. Separate .nota records for operational, strategic, and grant-specific pools make policy enforcement programmable.
Multi-jurisdiction. Each entity (parent, subsidiary, grant recipient) publishes its own issuer .nota. Receipts cross-reference entities for audit and tax purposes.

Integration patterns

Treasury dashboards (Gnosis Safe, Squads, Utopia) import .nota records to render portfolio views.
Accounting software (Cryptio, Bitwave, Integral) consumes receipts as tagged transaction records.
Regulators run queries against the on-chain registry with the entity DID.
DAO treasuries link proposal outcomes to receipts for end-to-end transparency.

Getting Started

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Reference

Resources

Institutional treasuries

Institutional Treasuries

What treasuries publish

Address registration

Signer transparency

Transfer receipts

Audit queries

Governance approval linking

Cold-wallet attestations

Operational controls

Integration patterns

​Institutional Treasuries

​What treasuries publish

​Address registration

​Signer transparency

​Transfer receipts

​Audit queries

​Governance approval linking

​Cold-wallet attestations

​Operational controls

​Integration patterns

​Related pages

Institutional Treasuries

What treasuries publish

Address registration

Signer transparency

Transfer receipts

Audit queries

Governance approval linking

Cold-wallet attestations

Operational controls

Integration patterns

Related pages