What can a parachain sovereignAccount be used for and why does it differ the Treasury Account?

Question

The question comes in three parts:

1. Each parachain has its own sovereignAccount which can be calculated as described in the answer to this question, but how is that account used since it can receive funds?

2. Given that, how can funds be spent from the sovereignAccount?

Related to this if a parachain also implements the Treasury Pallet, then another account can exist which will have its own address that can be uniquely configured by changing the PalletId in the runtime.

3. It is more obvious how this Treasury address can be used and spent, but would it be a bad idea to configure the treasury account identical to the sovereignAccount?

Answer 1

I think you're missing a very important thing, SovereignAccount is on other chains, not on your chain. But treasury is on your chain.

Sovereign Account: An account controlled by a particular Consensus System, within some other Consensus System.

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For q1: "how is that account used since it can receive funds?"

For example: ParaA has a sovereignAccount on ParaB, when ParaB reserveTransfer its native token to ParaA via XCM, the sovereignAccount of ParaA on ParaB(SoverA_onB) will receive the native tokens(tokenB), and then generate derivative assets(tokenBD) on ParaA. You can refer to the related code.

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For q2: "how can funds be spent from the sovereignAccount?" Following the above example, when ParaA reserveTransfer tokenBD to ParaB, the corresponding amount tokenBD will be destroyed and the tokenB in SoverA_onB account will be spent and transfered to the beneficiary account. You can refert to the related code.

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For q3: "it be a bad idea to configure the treasury account identical to the sovereignAccount?"

As I said at the beginning, the sovereign account is not on your own chain, it is a concept introduced in XCM. Moreover, the sovereign accounts of the same chain on different chains are different due to the relative location.