What is Squads?

Squads is the leading multisig and smart-account infrastructure on Solana. It isn't a consumer app you trade on — it's the security layer that teams, DAOs, and protocols use to hold funds and control their code without trusting any single person. A surprising amount of the ecosystem's safety quietly rests on it.

The single-key problem

An ordinary wallet has one private key. That's fine for personal use, but disastrous for an organisation: if one person's key is lost, phished, or that person goes rogue, everything is gone. For a protocol holding a treasury — or, worse, holding the key that can change its own smart-contract code — a single key is an unacceptable single point of failure.

What a multisig is

A multisig ("multi-signature") account requires several approvers to sign before a transaction executes — for example, any 3 of 5 designated signers. No individual can move funds or change code alone; a quorum has to agree. Squads makes this practical on Solana with a polished interface, mobile approvals, policies, and roles — turning a raw cryptographic primitive into something a team can actually operate day to day.

What teams use it for

• Treasury management. DAOs and companies hold funds in a Squads multisig so spending requires multiple approvals, with a clear on-chain audit trail.
• Program upgrade authority. This is the big one. On Solana, programs (smart contracts) can be upgradeable — and whoever holds the upgrade key can change the code, and thus the rules, of the protocol. Putting that authority behind a Squads multisig is a major safeguard: a single compromised developer can't unilaterally push malicious code. Reputable protocols are expected to do exactly this.
• Smart accounts. Beyond classic multisig, Squads provides programmable account features (spending limits, roles, automation) for more sophisticated treasury and operations setups.

Why it matters

When you evaluate whether a Solana protocol is trustworthy, "who controls the upgrade key, and is it behind a multisig?" is one of the sharpest questions you can ask. Infrastructure like Squads is what makes a credible answer possible — it's foundational to the ecosystem's security even though most users never open it.

For the latest Squads news, see the Squads project page.