Installation

This guide will take you through adding Venn’s Guard to your Safe in 4 simple steps.

Overview

To protect your Gnosis Safe with Venn, you will need to:

  1. Download Venn's smart contracts and install their dependencies

  2. Deploy a new instance of the Venn Safe Guard smart contract

  3. Add Venn Safe Guard to your Gnosis Safe

  4. Use your Safe with the Venn Guard available interfaces (API or UI)

Note: During this installation process, you will need to sign and execute the setGuard() method on your Gnosis Safe. Depending on your Gnosis Safe's signing threshold, additional signers may be required to sign the transaction before you can execute it to complete the installation.

Step 1 - Download Venn's smart contracts

Clone the Venn's Smart Contracts GitHub repo

Start by cloning our smart contracts, which will allow you to build and deploy a new instance of the Venn Safe Guard.

git clone https://github.com/ironblocks/onchain-firewall-v2

This command clone Venn's Smart Contracts to the a new folder named `onchain-firewall-v2`

Install dependencies

Run the following command to install the project's dependencies:

cd onchain-firewall-v2
npm install

This command will install all the required to complete this installation guide

Step 2 - Deploy a new instance of the Venn Safe Guard

Create a configuration file

First, you'll need to create a .env file based on the existing .env.example, and modify it's configuration to fit your setup.

cp .env.example .env

This command creates a new copy of the configuration file at `.env`. In the steps below we'll update some of the configurations to your needs.

Configuring the guard

Open the newly created .env file, and find the Venn Safe Guard section which looks like this:

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# Venn Safe Guard                                                               #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

# Bypass Transactions Timelock (in seconds)
#
BYPASS_GUARD_WAIT_TIME = 

# Safe Address
# The Safe address that the Guard is protecting
#
SAFE_ADDRESS =

  • Paste the address of your Gnosis Safe in the SAFE_ADDRESS field

  • Set the desired timelock period for Bypass Transactions in the BYPASS_GUARD_WAIT_TIME field

For Production deployments, the recommended timelock duration is one day, which is 86400 seconds

For security reasons, these configuration cannot be changed once the Venn Safe Guard is deployed. Any needed changes will require a new deployment of the Venn Safe Guard.

These configurations create a one-to-one relationship between the Venn Safe Guard and your Gnosis Safe - so that the guard cannot be used by any other Gnosis Safe.

Configuring your Private Key

Open the newly created .env file, and find the General Configs section which looks like this:

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# General Configs                                                               #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

# Private Key (i.e. deployer)
#
# Anvil Test Account 1 = ac0974bec39a17e36ba4a6b4d238ff944bacb478cbed5efcae784d7bf4f2ff80
#
PRIVATE_KEY =

  • Paste your private key onto the PRIVATE_KEY field

This Private Key will be used by Hardhat to deploy a new instance of the Venn Safe Guard, and will be given the ADMIN_ROLE on the newly deployed Venn Safe Guard contract.

Configuring EtherScan

Note: This step is optional

We use hardhat-verify under the hood to verify newly deployed smart contracts, which uses Etherscan's API. To enable verification, add your Etherscan API as shown below:

# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #
# General Configs                                                               #
# # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # # #

...

# Etherscan API Key
# Used by Hardhat for verifying contracts
#
ETHERSCAN_KEY =

  • Paste your Etherscan API key into the ETHERSCAN_KEY field

Deploy the Venn Safe Guard

Run the following command to deploy a new instance of the Venn Safe Guard smart contract:

Note: If you want to skip contract verification or if you have not configured an ETHERSCAN_KEY above, omit the --verify flag

npx hardhat migrate --namespace "venn/Guard" --network holesky --verify --only 1

Once completed, you should see the address of the newly deployed Venn Safe Guard shown as follows:

Note: You can update the --network flag to other networks. See the file hardhat.config.ts for more info.

This command deploys a new instance of the Venn Safe Guard.

Step 3 - Add Venn Safe Guard to your Gnosis Safe

Call the setGuard() method

To add the newly deployed guard to your Gnosis Safe, you'll need to call the setGuard() method, passing in the address of the Venn Safe Guard from the previous step.

Note: As the Gnosis Safe{Wallet} UI may update from time to time, refer to the official Safe documentation here on using the UI to add a Guard to your Safe:

https://help.safe.global/en/articles/40804-add-a-transaction-guard

Note: The to address of this transaction should be the address of your Gnosis Safe, as this transactions calls its setGuard() method to add the Venn Safe Guard to it

Step 4 - Use your Safe with the Venn Guard available interfaces (API or UI).

With Venn Safe Guard now deployed, you can continue to build, sign, and execute Safe transactions exactly as before - now every Safe transaction will pass through Venn’s Guard security validation.

Choose the interface that fits your Safe workflow:

A. Venn Safe API (for local/programmatic Safe interactions)

The Venn Guard Transaction Validation API enables automatic transaction validation through Venn’s decentralized security network. It accepts standard transactions and returns a JSON response that includes Venn's security validation signature, which is ready to be uploaded to any Safe UI or used in local flows.

Start using the Venn Guard API using this API Reference

B. Venn Safe Guard UI

The Venn Guard web interface enables you to build, validate, upload, download, sign, and submit your Safe transactions with the familiar Safe UI experience, closely mirroring the native Gnosis Safe platform. Additionally, you can perform administrative operations such as adding, removing, or editing signers, adjusting thresholds, and more.

Load your Safe account and start using the Venn Guard platform

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