Meet Fennec Async Kit

Written By Hecto

At Exponent, we are creating a next generation Web3-native solution that enables teams to coordinate and manage their assets in a risk-conscious manner. Our suite of tools aim to simplify treasury operations while allowing teams to retain transparency, security, and functionality at the highest capacity.

This week, we ran an internal hackathon with the goal of building a product that solves a critical fundamental pain point of treasury operators After careful deliberation, our team decided to build a scheduler that automates multisig transactions.

The Multisig Execution Challenge

Executing multisig transactions is cumbersome and time-consuming, requiring planning, coordination, and organization from the signers. It turns something as simple as a swap, a relatively easy task for crypto natives, into a logistical nightmare.

A swap transaction has to be signed and executed within a given timeframe or the transaction would time out. Just this condition alone makes it cumbersome.

Now, what if your team wanted to schedule swaps? Say, your team wanted to buy ETH at a certain price, or wanted to DCA into it. Does that mean all signers would have to monitor the market and always remain ready to sign and execute transaction when their price target is met? What if your treasury signers are located in different timezones? Even if you could sign a large swap order, how would you prevent getting front run? How do you ensure that gas price and gas estimate is in ideal condition based on the gas market? What if you have multiple operations waiting to be confirmed in the transaction queue? If you outsourced this function to a contributor, how do you mitigate the principal-risk agent problem, and ensure they act in good faith?

Clearly, scheduling multisig transactions is logistically, operationally, and technologically complex. But there also seems to be a lack of tools to do so, until now.

Enter the Fennec Async Kit

Fennec Async Kit is a tool that allows Web3 organizations to trustlessly schedule transactions beforehand, and execute when their set parameters are met.

Key Features

With Fennec Async Kit, teams will be able to place limit orders or DCA into ETH based on conditions they set. Key features of v 1.0 include:

  • Organization login via Web3

  • Set limit orders or a DCA schedule

  • Adjust order parameters including:

    • Setting a limit price

    • Amount to purchase

    • Start date

    • Purchasing frequency (for DCA)

    • End date

  • Automatic, gas-free execution once the order is placed

Design Philosophy

Below are some engineering design philosophies we have when defining this product:

  • Unburden Gnosis Safe users from the complexity of time sensitive operations, gas management, nonce management, and swap configurations.

  • Inherit and build on the security of the Gnosis Safe’s M-of-N threshold assumption instead of compromising the contract with the module’s own security model.

  • The module stays non-custodial. The delegate address (the backend service agent executing the transaction) does not have the ability to execute transactions without the valid signatures.

  • Introduce a new model for asynchronous, inflight transactions instead of relying on synchronous, FIFO queues.

  • Give Gnosis Safe signers the ability to opt-out of any inflight transaction they have committed to.

  • Orders are 100% private and will only be revealed atomically as transaction gets settled.

Find out more on our Engineering specs below on how we build this product, across the stack from backend, client and the smart contract👇

Fennec Async Kit Specs

Why We Built Fennec Async Kit

We’re on a mission to create Web3-native solution that will allow teams to coordinate and manage their treasury assets in a simple, risk-conscious manner. With Fennec Async Kit, teams will be able to schedule transactions so they can focus their efforts on building out their project.

No longer will signers have to monitor charts and organize themselves to execute a transaction whenever their parameters are met. They can simply set a limit order or a DCA schedule, and let it execute autonomously. Teams can have multiple open orders concurrently, and cancel any orders they no longer wish to make. Best of all? They can do all of this gas-free.

What’s Next?

At its core, Fennec Async Kit is a scheduler that uses pre-confirm approvals to schedule unlimited single or recurring transactions. This unlocks a variety of use cases that require automating tasks such as:

  • Team payroll: Teams can schedule consistent payouts instead of having to do it manually each month.

  • Token vesting: Easily setup, approve, or revoke scheduled token vesting specific to each team member.

  • Vendor payment: Define single or multiple recurring payments to contributors and vendors.

Multisigs provide a trustless and transparent way to operate a treasury on-chain. However, they also introduce execution coordination problems. Fennec Async Kit unblocks one of the main issues surrounding execution by enabling multisig signers to schedule transactions. We’re super excited to keep building features and use cases around this. Product testing and feedback are more than welcome! Reach out to us via:

Hecto
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