Encoding your org chart in policy with nested key quorums
How Privy’s programmable wallet governance mirrors how real organizations operate
Debbie Soon
|Feb 27, 2026
Most businesses don’t run on flat approval structures. As Privy increasingly powers treasury and governed wallet use cases, our infrastructure must align with how organizations actually operate. With the introduction of nested key quorums, Privy’s policy engine expands in expressive power, enabling governance structures that map directly to real-world operating models.
Treasury decisions are rarely as simple as “2-of-3 signers.” In practice, approvals are shaped by teams, roles, and risk. Finance may oversee capital movement while Operations manages execution. High-impact actions often require executive sign-off, and in some cases two distinct roles must approve together. Authority is structured, layered, and intentional.
Until now, wallet infrastructure compressed that nuance into a flat quorum model: m-of-n signers, all treated equally. While powerful and effective, it did not fully capture how modern organizations function.
Nested key quorums change that.
From flat signers to structured governance
With nested key quorums, a quorum can include another quorum as a member. When the nested group meets its own threshold, it counts as a single approval toward the parent threshold.
The signing flow remains unchanged, but the policy layer becomes significantly more expressive.
Instead of relying on a single undifferentiated signer set, teams can define layered approval structures that reflect how authority is actually distributed. AND and OR relationships across roles and teams become native to the wallet layer, rather than something enforced off-chain or through workaround logic.
Real-world treasury structures
Programmable wallet governance maps directly to how enterprise teams operate.
Consider a fintech platform that supports both routine and high-risk flows. Routine actions may be approved through a passkey for speed and usability, while higher-risk operations require joint approval from a user and a platform authorization key. The structure aligns control with risk without fragmenting the system.
Or take a corporate treasury team managing global liquidity. Large transfers may require separate quorum approval from Finance and from executive leadership, each composed of multiple authorized signers meeting their own internal thresholds, while an Operations quorum handles day-to-day capital movement. The resulting structure mirrors how authority is actually distributed across the organization.
In product-driven organizations, contract upgrades might require joint sign-off from a product lead and an engineering lead, while a separate quorum retains emergency authority if intervention is needed.
These use cases are common across regulated fintechs, global enterprises, and crypto-native teams alike. Flat quorums often force compromises or push approval logic into backend systems where it is harder to reason about and audit. Nested key quorums allow that structure to live directly in wallet policy, exactly as it was designed.
Governance that scales with your organization
For enterprise infrastructure buyers, two outcomes matter most: governance and control.
Governance must be legible. Internal stakeholders, auditors, and compliance teams should be able to clearly see how authority is structured and enforced. When wallet policy aligns with your operating model, approvals become easier to reason about, risks are easier to assess, and accountability is embedded directly into the system.
Control must also be modular. As your organization evolves, so should your signing structure. New teams form, responsibilities shift, and certain flows require tighter oversight. The ability to add roles, separate duties, and strengthen controls without re-architecting your system is what allows treasury infrastructure to scale alongside the business.
Nested key quorums extend the capabilities of Privy’s policy engine beyond flat thresholds. Instead of treating governance as a simple numeric rule, teams can encode structured authority directly into wallet policy.
Effective treasury infrastructure does more than store assets securely. It encodes intent by defining who can act, in what combination, and under what structure.
Nested key quorums move wallet governance closer to how real organizations actually run. Explore the details in our docs and begin configuring them in your dashboard today.
