A Layered Decentralized Treasury Governance Architecture for Secure and Transparent Community Funding

Abstract

Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) have emerged as a fundamental paradigm for coordinating shared digital resources without centralized authority. Despite their rapid adoption, treasury governance within DAOs remains vulnerable to governance manipulation, immediate execution risks, and insufficient validation mechanisms. This work proposes a layered decentralized treasury governance architecture that integrates token-based voting, timelock enforcement, and multi-stage validation layers to enhance transparency, accountability, and security. The system introduces a structured execution pipeline in which proposals must pass through sequential control stages before execution, reducing the likelihood of unauthorized or malicious fund allocation. The architecture is implemented and evaluated within a blockchain environment, demonstrating improved resistance to governance attacks and enhanced reliability of decentralized financial systems. By combining governance, delay mechanisms, and validation controls into a unified framework, the proposed model provides a defense-in-depth approach to securing DAO treasury operations. This paper contributes a comprehensive architectural and analytical framework for mitigating systemic vulnerabilities in decentralized governance systems and improving the robustness of community-driven financial coordination.