Treasury (Protocol)
The pool of assets a protocol or its governing organization controls, used to fund development, grants, and incentive programs.
A treasury is typically a multisignature wallet or a governance-controlled contract holding a mix of the protocol's own token, stablecoins, and other assets. The composition matters more than the headline figure: a treasury denominated mostly in the protocol's own token rises and falls with the very asset it is supposed to fund, and selling a large position affects that asset's own market. For that reason analysts separate own-token holdings from liquid non-native assets and express the latter as runway against a spending rate. Readers meet treasury figures on governance dashboards, where inclusion rules differ over whether unissued supply and vesting grants count.
In practice
A governance forum post proposing to convert part of a treasury into stablecoins is usually justified by the need to fund salaries and grants that are denominated in currency.
The common misunderstanding
A large treasury figure is usually dominated by the protocol's own token, which is not the same as cash and cannot be spent in full at the quoted value.