Smart Accounts & Multisig evaluated across audit depth of the deployed version and its real exploit history, upgrade control and key holders, recovery paths and their documented failure modes, and published cost and chains you can actually reach.
Ranked here: smart accounts and multisig, accounts that hold a treasury behind signing rules rather than one private key. Not ranked here: account abstraction infrastructure other than Candide, ranked on both pages, MPC wallets, institutional custody and key recovery, each ranked elsewhere, modules for ranked accounts, and dead products.
SQ
#1 of 7 · published ranking
Squads Protocol
80ChainChoice Score
4199
Why it leads
Squads Protocol scores higher than everything else in this ranking on its contract security record and its upgrade control.
Show the arithmetic
Best in this ranking on contract security record and upgrade control
Cost
$0.00 your cost/yr · Transactions per year: 1k
ReviewedNext review by Published Methodology v2026.11.1
How this page is reviewed
Reviewed means every product ranked on this page was read against its sources on or after that date; every ranked category is re-read at least every 45 days. Models research, extract and parse. A deterministic engine ranks. Every quote passes an adversarial refute pass.
No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links carry a referral code, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking v2026.11.1 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order
How we review · 7 ranked of 15 assessed · 4 criteria · 0 sponsor weight
How we review
7ranked
15assessed
4criteria
0sponsor weight
Recommendation first, comparison only if needed.
Reviewed and rechecked on the current cycle.
Commercial relationships disclosed before clickout.
Personal comparison
What smart accounts & multisig cost you
Your inputs update the cost column. The independent ranking stays fixed.
The cheapest published tier that covers your usage. List price before any discount; add-ons priced separately are excluded.
RankProviderBest fitScoreYour cost
1
SQSquads ProtocolSolana multisig program with burned upg...Top ranked
Upgrade control and key holders — 10/10Trade-off: Squads Labs has moved on. squads.xyz now leads with Altitude (business account), Fuse...
80score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country
Squads Protocol · squads.xyz. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Published cost and chains you can actually reach — 8/10Trade-off: "Safe is free" survives only until you transact inside it: an in-app swap of $40k cos...
76score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country
Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) · safe.global. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
3
CandideERC-4337 infrastructure plus the guardi...
Recovery paths and their documented failure modes — 8/10Trade-off: Chain coverage is a pricing lever here, not a capability: Launch ($399/mo) covers 7 m...
71score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country
Candide · candide.dev. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
4
Alchemy Smart Wallets (Account Kit)ERC-4337 and ERC-6900 account contracts...
Audit depth of the deployed version + real exploit history — 7/10Trade-off: This is developer infrastructure for consumer wallets, not a treasury multisig — ther...
66score
your cost/yr
Check availability for your country
Alchemy Smart Wallets (Account Kit) · alchemy.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
5
BIBiconomy (Nexus / MEE)ERC-7579 modular account and cross-chai...
Audit depth of the deployed version + real exploit history — 7/10Trade-off: Biconomy has repositioned as a cross-chain execution and agent-transaction company —...
62score
-Not published
Check availability for your country
Biconomy (Nexus / MEE) · docs.biconomy.io. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
Same score, not joint · ordered by weighted total (38.30 against 38.00)
6
DenAlternative Safe frontend for teams; ad...
Audit depth of the deployed version + real exploit history — 6/10Trade-off: Den is not, as is widely repeated, the renamed Multis. Multis was a separate Sequoia-...
62score
-Not published
Check availability for your country
Den · onchainden.com. Provider links appear once we know which country you are browsing from: ChainChoice links to providers only where it serves in full.
Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure
Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.
1 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.
Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 35/25/20/20, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20 (constant here), evidence depth 18 (constant here), ease of use 10 (constant here), institutional trust 8 (constant here). Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.
How you can lose money here, and what the ranking scores
Contract failure: the code holding the funds is exploited.
Scored by Audit depth of the deployed version + real exploit history · 35% (Squads Protocol 9/10, Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) 6/10, Candide 5/10)
Control failure: a key or vote changes the rules, freezes or mints.
Scored by Upgrade control and key holders · 25% (Squads Protocol 10/10, Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) 5/10, Candide 4/10)
Key failure: your own keys are made, shown or recovered unsafely.
Scored by Recovery paths and their documented failure modes · 20% (Squads Protocol 3/10, Safe (formerly Gnosis Safe) 7/10, Candide 8/10)
Also scored, as cost, quality or a summary of several families: Published cost and chains you can actually reach (20%).
Audit
Infrastructure
Methodology
2026.11.1
published 10 November 2026
Providers tracked
860+
across 121 categories
Last verified
3 November 2026
newest dated pricing or sentiment read
Named on the roster
2 people
managing directors · 6 automated processes
Decision guide
What matters most before choosing in this category
Weighted on audit depth of the deployed version and its real exploit history (35), upgrade control and key holders (25), recovery paths and their documented failure modes (20), and published cost and chains you can actually reach (20). The heaviest is audit depth of the deployed version and its real exploit history: Named third-party audits of the contract version actually deployed onchain (not a prior version), plus every incident where funds left an account built on this stack — including incidents…
How many signers do you have, and how many must approve before funds move?
Can your signers actually READ what they are approving, or are they trusting an interface?
Do you need broad multichain support or one ecosystem-first smart account?
Strong starting point
The #1 overall and the scoring weights
SQ
Squads ProtocolData checked Nov 2026
Solana multisig program with burned upgrade authority since November 2024
Solana multisig program with burned upgrade authority since November 2024. Strongest on upgrade control and key holders (10/10): Squads Protocol v4 is immutable: the program's upgrade authority on Solana is null, so neither Squads Labs nor any third party can change the deployed code that holds funds. Weakest on recovery paths and their documented failure modes (3/10): Squads offers an optional time lock on approved transactions and member or threshold changes by the multisig itself, but documents no guardian or lost-signer recovery path and states no recovery failure mode. Published price: Basic: "$0 / month" plus a one-time deployment fee, which Squads states two ways: ".05 SOL" on squads.xyz/multisig but "0.1 SOL" on the Squads docs pricing and costs pages (all fetched 3 November 2026).
Best forUpgrade control and key holders — 10/10
Main tradeoffSquads Labs has moved on. squads.xyz now leads with Altitude (business account), Fuse (consumer app) and Grid (stablecoin API); Multisig is one of four products and no longer the company's centre of gravity. Combine that with an immutable program nobody can patch and you are betting on code that cannot change, maintained by a company that already has.
Verify before signupBasic: "$0 / month" plus a one-time deployment fee, which Squads states two ways: ".05 SOL" on squads.xyz/multisig but "0.1 SOL" on the Squads docs pricing and costs pages (all fetched 3 November 2026). Pro: "$49 / month" ("Try free for 30 days"); the docs pricing page says that on subscribing a spending limit "worth $49 in USDC is created, enabling us to pull this amount from your Squads vault at the start of each month". Enterprise: "Custom". The docs costs page: Squads charges no fees on transactions except "Limit Orders - 0.25%"; network fees go to Solana.
Weighted criteria
Audit depth of the deployed version + real exploit history35%
Upgrade control and key holders25%
Recovery paths and their documented failure modes20%
Published cost and chains you can actually reach20%
Methodology
How this category is reviewed
Reviewed on audit depth of the deployed version and its real exploit history, upgrade control and key holders, recovery paths and their documented failure modes, and published cost and chains you can actually reach.
The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.
Frequently asked
Questions people ask before choosing smart accounts
What is the safest type of crypto smart account?
Safety here is a property of the deployed contract, not of the device you open it on. A smart account is code holding your assets, so what matters is the audit depth of the version actually deployed and its real exploit history, who can push an upgrade to it and under what delay, and what the documented recovery paths are — including how each one fails. A recovery mechanism nobody has described a failure mode for has not been thought about hard enough. Convenience features are worth having only once those three answers are ones you can live with.
Do beginners need a smart account before buying crypto?
No, and it is worth understanding what a smart account adds before adopting one. These are contract accounts that can offer recovery without a seed phrase, spending limits, session permissions and gas paid in tokens rather than the chain's native asset. That is genuinely useful once you are transacting regularly. It also means your funds sit behind code that someone can upgrade, so the audit and upgrade-control questions on this page matter more than any convenience feature.
Is an unexploited contract a safe contract?
Not on its own. The leading product's contracts have never been exploited, and accounts built on them still lost $1.4B at Bybit in February 2025 — through a compromised frontend, not a contract flaw. What is scored is what happened to ACCOUNTS, because that is what holds the money.
Reviewed3 November 2026Method4 criteriaCategorysmart_accounts
Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research
