💂Angle Guardian

The Guardian to take rapid decisions in a crisis

🔎 TL;DR

• Like in any protocol, it may be necessary to rapidly pause some functionalities, to change some parameters or references in the protocol in order to react rapidly to unforeseen events.

• The protocol has a multisig on each of the chains on which it is deployed which has the rights to perform such changes.

💡 Need for a Guardian

The Guardian role is a privileged role granted to some addresses on every chain where the protocol is deployed. All the privileges of the guardian are also available to the governor addresses (e.g. the Timelock addresses) of the Angle Protocol.

This guardian role is currently held on every chain by a 2/3 Gnosis Multisig controlled by the same Angle Labs team members as those in the emergency multisig (the 3 co-founders of the project).

If a guardian role with specific rights is needed, it is because there could be some situations in the protocol which are time sensitive. In case there is a flaw in one of the contracts where an attacker can systematically make a profit, we should be able to pause the necessary parts of the contract without having to wait for the end of a governance vote for its execution.

Note however that governance can revoke the guardian ability to any address at any time.

Address of the 2/3 guardian multisig across different chains can be found here.

🔘 Responsibilities

In clear terms, the guardian role enables to:

• Pause and unpause some contracts functionalities

• Update rapidly some parameters like users minting and burning fees, or the debt ceiling for an asset in the borrowing module

• Some governance votes have also granted a guardian address with the ability to occasionally sponsor the acquisition of some collateral assets within the Transmuter system on a budget granted by governance

Angle smart contracts have been designed to limit a guardian's ability to impact the protocol in a way that is harmful to the system. For instance, a guardian cannot modify references to an oracle contract and hence manipulate prices at its advantage.