Aera, the world’s first autonomous treasury management protocol for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), today announced its official general availability launch and the closing of an $8 million token sale, led by Bain Capital Crypto. The pre-launch funds generated from the token purchase will be used exclusively for development and maintenance of the Aera protocol.
Developed by the team behind Gauntlet, a crypto financial risk management provider with expertise in servicing DAOs, Aera enables these organizations to autonomously manage their treasuries by selecting long-term strategy targets and then simplifying the strategy’s routine maintenance tasks, such as portfolio rebalancing. By minimizing routine maintenance tasks, the need for ongoing DAO treasury governance is also minimized, empowering forward-thinking DAOs to adopt responsive, effective, and sophisticated treasury management practices. With Aera, DAOs can set and monitor long-term financial objectives that respond quickly to changes in market conditions, mitigate custody risks with transparent and noncustodial onchain operation, and minimize dangers associated with misaligned incentives — all without the burden of frequent governance votes.
With billions worth of assets held in DAO treasuries, the need to proactively manage and protect these assets is consequential in scale. As DAOs navigate the current bear market, it has become a categorical imperative for them to optimize their treasuries with the most effective and responsive approaches such as risk-adjusted yield targeting, preserving funding capacity, deepening native token liquidity, or reducing exposure to volatile assets.
“DAOs with clear focus and smart operations were the winners in the last market cycle, and Aera was built to enable focused and efficient treasury operations,” said Tarun Chitra, CEO and co-founder of Gauntlet and visionary behind the Aera protocol. “We harnessed the expertise of dedicated engineers and researchers who understand the intricacies of economic risk management and applied it to Aera. The new protocol gives DAOs sophisticated, yet responsible treasury management capabilities, without requiring costly trade-offs in decentralization, decision-making quality, or incentive alignment.”
Aera uses noncustodial designated accounts, known as “vaults,” to give each DAO a secure way to deposit token reserves (including stablecoins, native tokens and other onchain assets) into the protocol, preserving their individual control and flexibility in managing their funds, without any risk of commingling or misattribution of ownership.
Vault owners benefit from the following features to help optimize treasury management:
- The ability to select from various strategic targets for their treasury, including risk management via volatility targeting, deepening liquidity, generating yield on idle holdings, and diversifying treasury assets
- Continuous autonomous rebalancing of vault assets to track targets, all without the need for routine, burdensome governance votes
- Allow-listing of assets and protocols, ensuring treasury assets are exposed only to pre-approved forms of risk
- Reporting dashboards showing data from the fully onchain protocol, ensuring transparent, realtime information on investment performance
- Noncustodial design with no lockups, ensuring DAOs remain in full control of their assets and can withdraw at any time without penalty
“The Aera team has developed a much-needed solution perfect for crypto-native organizations looking to responsibly manage their treasuries,” said Stefan Cohen, partner at Bain Capital Crypto. “Aera is the first solution of its kind for DAO treasury management and was built by a team that’s amazingly well equipped to usher in a new era of responsible decentralized finance growth.”
Protocols and institutions currently manage more than $4.3 million of their treasuries using Aera. Aera is now available to all DAOs, protocols, and crypto-native institutions seeking a transparent onchain treasury management solution. To learn more about Aera and how to participate, please visit aera.finance.
About Aera
Aera is the world’s first autonomous treasury management protocol for Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), established with a mission to set a new standard for both ease and responsibility in DAO treasury management. Developed by the team behind Gauntlet and leveraging their years of financial risk management and DAO governance expertise, Aera enables DAOs to easily select and implement long-term strategies for their treasuries without complex governance burdens, all with transparent, onchain reporting and noncustodial vaults designed around DAOs’ unique needs. Learn more at https://www.aera.finance/.
