Treasury Management: Economic Coordination for Autonomous Agents

Agent swarms need money. They pay for API calls, blockchain transactions, external services. But without controls, a single agent can drain the entire treasury in minutes.

Switchboard provides swarm-level treasury management with budgets, limits, and audit trails—economic coordination for autonomous systems.

The Problem

Without treasury controls:

• Agents overspend budgets with no visibility
• No tracking of who spent what
• Single agent can drain treasury
• No spending limits or approval flows
• No audit trail for financial decisions

This breaks down quickly in production. An agent with a bug spends 100 USDC in seconds. A misconfigured agent makes thousands of expensive API calls. There's no way to prevent it or understand what happened.

How Treasury Management Works

Switchboard provides a shared treasury for each swarm with fine-grained controls:

• USDC on Base: Native stablecoin treasury
• Per-agent budgets: Control spending at agent level
• Daily/monthly limits: Prevent runaway spending
• Per-transaction caps: No single large spends
• Operator controls: Multi-sig for large withdrawals
• Audit trail: Every spend tracked with reason
• x402 integration: Treasury pays for API services automatically

Basic Usage

Deposit to Treasury

typescript
await switchboard.treasury.deposit({
  swarmId: 'my-swarm',
  amount: '10.00',  // USDC
});

Allocate Budget to Agent

typescript
await switchboard.treasury.allocateBudget({
  swarmId: 'my-swarm',
  agentId: 'agent-001',
  amount: '1.00',
  period: 'daily',  // or 'monthly'
});

Agent Requests Spend

typescript
const approval = await switchboard.treasury.requestSpend({
  swarmId: 'my-swarm',
  agentId: 'agent-001',
  amount: '0.05',
  reason: 'BlockWire query',
});

if (approval.approved) {
  // Spend is pre-authorized
  await performBlockWireQuery();
} else {
  // Over budget or limit exceeded
  console.log('Spend denied:', approval.reason);
}

Query Audit Trail

typescript
const history = await switchboard.treasury.getHistory({
  swarmId: 'my-swarm',
  agentId: 'agent-001',  // Optional filter
});

// Returns:
// [
//   {
//     agentId: 'agent-001',
//     amount: '0.05',
//     reason: 'BlockWire query',
//     timestamp: 1701500000,
//     status: 'approved'
//   },
//   ...
// ]

Budget Limits

Budgets can be configured with multiple limits:

• Daily limit: Maximum spend per day
• Monthly limit: Maximum spend per month
• Per-transaction cap: Maximum single transaction size
• Total budget: Maximum total allocation

When any limit is exceeded, spend requests are automatically denied.

x402 Integration

Switchboard treasuries integrate with the x402 payment protocol. When an agent makes an API call that requires payment:

1. Agent requests spend from treasury
2. Treasury approves (if within budget)
3. Payment is authorized via x402
4. API call proceeds
5. Spend is recorded in audit trail

This enables seamless payment for BlockWire queries, CronSynth triggers, and other x402-enabled services without agents managing payment directly.

Operator Controls

For large withdrawals or treasury management, operators can configure multi-sig controls:

typescript
await switchboard.treasury.configureOperators({
  swarmId: 'my-swarm',
  operators: [
    '0x123...',  // Operator 1
    '0x456...',  // Operator 2
    '0x789...',  // Operator 3
  ],
  requiredSignatures: 2,  // 2-of-3 multi-sig
  withdrawalThreshold: '100.00',  // Require multi-sig above this amount
});

This ensures large treasury operations require multiple approvals, preventing single points of failure.

Why This Matters

Treasury management enables:

• Economic coordination: Swarms can share costs efficiently
• Spending controls: Prevent runaway costs from bugs or misconfigurations
• Audit trails: Full visibility into financial decisions
• Budget allocation: Control spending at agent level
• Automated payments: Seamless integration with x402 services

Without treasury management, agent swarms can't coordinate economically. With it, they can operate autonomously with financial safety.

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Part of the EchoRift infrastructure series. Learn more about Switchboard.