Crypto projects are always exploring new ways to disrupt the world around them—everything from art, to finance, to aerospace to food. Most recently, crypto has been disrupting how communities take part in shaping companies. 

In this Learn guide we’re going to be exploring how Snapshot is helping decentralized businesses enable their users to shape which way a project goes next. 

Snapshot is a place where projects can create proposals for people to vote on using cryptocurrency. In the industry, this process is called ‘vote signaling’. Traditionally, to vote using cryptocurrency would normally incur fees to process the movement of currency from one wallet to another. 

But on Snapshot, that doesn’t happen, thanks to the clever use of the decentralized storage network called IPFS. Because Snapshot doesn’t use ‘on-chain’ verification, any votes are essentially fee-less. 

It’s a popular tool for decentralized organizations (DAOs) looking to query what their audiences think using blockchain technology.

For companies looking to use Snapshot, they need to have an existing profile on the Ethereal Naming Service, or ENS. Once they have that, they then add a record on ENS to allow votes to be viewable at that address. 

Users, meanwhile, need a wallet address with the required cryptocurrency in order to take part in a poll. On Decrypt’s Snapshot page, for example, users holding one of our NFTs in a wallet like MetaMask would be eligible to vote. 

Users simply connect their wallet to Snapshot's website and it will allow a vote to be cast on any open proposals on the site.

Cryptocurrency projects traditionally have to create the infrastructure themselves to conduct this sort of polling or use other methods that aren’t decentralized. These methods are both time-consuming and can be taken over by parties who may not have the project’s best interests at heart to skew the votes. 

Where Snapshot differs is that it allows projects to seek out their most committed members who hold their chosen cryptocurrency and ask them to make decisions. It does this by not sending the transactions to a blockchain.