Roles

Index DTFs employ a modular governance structure composed of scope-constrained onchain roles. Governance can be flexibly customized by assigning different actors or contracts (e.g., DAOs, multi-sigs, EOAs) to each role.

Each role is deliberately sandboxed to the smallest set of function calls and parameter ranges needed for its mandate, and every high-impact action must pass through a timelock or hard-coded ceiling. These guardrails guarantee that no single key can abuse the system—another role (or broader governance) always has time and authority to intervene.

A Reserve Index DTF has 4 roles, 3 of which have abilities that affect the operation of the DTF itself. Additionally, the DAOs that govern DTFs may or may not employ a Guardian.

The rest of this section will discuss DTF roles within the context of how Index DTFs are deployed via the Reserve App. The smart contracts being used are open-source and fully permissionless, but the Reserve App deploys DTFs and their governing bodies in a specific manner to maximize decentralization of control over the DTF.

DAO Governance

The Admin and Auction Approver roles are expected to be held by DAOs composed of the DTFGovernor.sol and TimelockController.sol contracts (deployed via the GovernanceDeployer.sol contract). These DAOs should source their voting power from the StakingVault.sol contract, to allow for easy distribution of fee revenue to DAO members.

To allow for more granular configuration of the roles, the Admin and Auction Approver are technically operating via two separate governance systems, while getting their voting power from the same source. This enables the DAO to assign longer governance timelines to the Admin role for better security, and shorter governance timelines to the Auction Approver role for rapid response to market conditions.

Each of these governance systems technically has it's own Guardian, however the Reserve App is currently configured to deploy a single address as the same Guardian for both.