Following yesterday’s launch of Snapshot X, we’re excited to announce that Starknet has deployed its governance onto the Snapshot X protocol, via the Starknet Governance Hub, a custom UI designed by Yuki Labs.

Starknet’s first onchain vote via Snapshot X is live now until September 13, 2024, to decide on a potential STRK staking program. If you’re a STRK holder, be sure to cast your vote on this pivotal decision.

We look forward to onboarding more great projects onto Snapshot X soon! Create your governance space here or click the button in the lower right corner of our homepage to ask our support team any questions you may have.

Snapshot Labs is pleased to announce the launch of Snapshot X, our new fully onchain voting protocol integrated seamlessly into the recently launched Snapshot v2 interface.

Snapshot X combines the best of both worlds: the security and verifiability of onchain voting and trustless execution, plus the frictionless ease and modularity that Snapshot is known for. With Snapshot X, DAO communities can continue to enjoy the best governance user experience while adding on the security guarantees that ensure the preservation of Web3’s core principles: resilience, censorship resistance, and immutability.

The journey to Snapshot X

Snapshot began as an offchain solution that cut the friction and cost of participating in DAO governance relative to available options, as well as providing a vast and flexible design space for customizability and new functionality. This philosophy, as well as a strong emphasis on design and user experience, catapulted Snapshot into becoming not only the most popular Web3 governance tool but also one of the most used apps in the entire space. Today, 96% of DAOs and 500,000 monthly active users are on Snapshot.

While Snapshot’s offchain solution has proven to be ideal for many DAO use cases, it does not fully cover the needs of DAOs that require more robust decentralization and trustless execution. At the same time, the Snapshot Labs team has always envisioned Snapshot growing to include an onchain solution, and has noticed pain points in onchain governance that are important to solve.

Onchain voting, before Snapshot X

While onchain voting has been around for a long time, it has left a lot to be desired. Governor— the voting protocol that currently accounts for most of the onchain voting is the most battle-tested option out there, which is attractive from a security perspective. However, it requires a lot of sacrifice in usability, cost, flexibility, modularity, and feature set. It has generally been viewed as the only option, albeit a suboptimal one.

While most DAO governance tokens live on L1, voting on L1 faces scalability issues and can be prohibitively expensive.

Snapshot X fixes this.

How Snapshot X is built different

Storage proofs

A core innovation of Snapshot X lies in using storage proofs to verify balances across different chains, enabled by our integration with Herodotus. Conducting onchain voting on L1 incurs high costs for voters. Since most governance tokens in the Ethereum ecosystem are held on L1, storage proofs come in handy as a way to verify one’s token holdings on L1 and to allow voting with those tokens on L2, where the cost of computation is significantly less. Beyond this, Snapshot X’s storage proofs not only work for tokens, but also for verifying any contract state variable. This means that NFTs, badges, custom shares, or anything else that is onchain can be utilized as voting power. And this is done without ever needing to bridge assets.

Why Starknet?

Snapshot X conducts onchain computation on Starknet to make the cost of voting 10x- 50x cheaper than L1 and cutting the cost of making a proposal or updating a DAO’s settings by 200x. This is all while delivering the same security guarantees as voting on L1 as space settings, proposals, and votes are published and verified onchain on Starknet. Starknet’s unique approach is designed for performance, making it possible to run large computation cheaply.

Since the framework is entirely permissionless, anyone can interact with it onchain without going through the Snapshot client. Also, since Starknet supports native Ethereum cryptographic signatures, users don’t need to change the way they interact with Snapshot; you can keep using your favorite EVM wallet (ie MetaMask, Rabby, etc.).

We have designed Snapshot X such that any interaction with Starknet is abstracted away from the user and into the background. Therefore, regardless of the ecosystem(s) where your DAO members are active, they will have a familiar and native experience when creating proposals and voting on Snapshot X.

Voting strategies

The modular design of Snapshot X enables bringing the familiar customizable Snapshot experience onchain. Snapshot aligns with the philosophy of Turing complete governance; the concept of a governance system with arbitrary programmability. This allows complex and expressive mechanisms of coordination to be seamlessly integrated into governance decisions.

Voting strategies, a key feature of Snapshot’s offchain solution, are also a powerful component of Snapshot X. These are contracts used to determine the voting power of users in a DAO, which can be created permissionlessly. They enable DAOs to determine and define in a contract how voting power should be calculated, based on their own innovative ideas. Voting strategies can be changed, enabling a DAO to modify their governance model if needed without redeploying their governance.

The Snapshot offchain DAO community has already developed over 400 unique Voting strategies that are available for any community to use or iterate upon. We look forward to seeing the proliferation of onchain Voting strategies on Snapshot X.

Voting with diverse tokens

Unlike other onchain voting solutions which can only utilize tokens or NFTs that have an ERC-20 or ERC-721 Votes extension, Snapshot X’s storage proofs and voting strategies enable the use of any contract state variable on Ethereum for use as voting power. This allows DAOs to go far beyond what’s possible when using Governor. This is a major unlock for NFT projects in particular which often does not use the ERC-721 Votes extension.

Gasless onchain voting

One of the most popular features of Snapshot’s offchain solution is voting via signature without incurring any gas costs. On Snapshot X, users can still enjoy this same experience while creating proposals and voting fully onchain by signing a message.

This is made possible by allowing DAOs on Snapshot X to opt into sponsoring gas fees for governance. Thus messages would be sent to Mana, which acts as a meta-transaction relayer, broadcasting votes and proposals onchain on layer 2.

Proposal validation strategies

Staying on the theme of modular strategies, Snapshot X spaces can use Proposal validation strategies to determine who is authorized to create a proposal. In other words, the logic that determines who is allowed to add a proposal can be different from how voting power is calculated for voters. Proposal validation can, for example, be based on requiring users to have a certain threshold of voting power or it can be based on a whitelist. Similar to other strategies, these are modular and any user can write their own.

Execution strategies

Similar to the modularity of Voting strategies, Execution strategies allow DAOs to leverage modular strategies that define the conditions under which a proposal would pass or not, as well as defining how a proposal is to be executed. There is currently 3 execution strategies available, a cross chain execution to execute transaction on L1 when a proposal pass on Starknet, a Timelock execution and an execution using a Safe module (Zodiac). It is also possible to have multiple Execution strategies, such as one for normal votes and one for emergency votes with a higher quorum that can be executed directly.

How Snapshot X changes governance

Snapshot has been utilized in different ways by various DAO communities according to their specific needs. While most DAOs rely on Snapshot as their sole or primary voting solution, some DAOs that require onchain voting have been using Snapshot as a temperature check solution, within a stack of voting tools. This is because DAOs consider Snapshot as the most convenient and easy protocol and interface through which to run a vote.

Now with Snapshot X, the friction of substituting alternative solutions into different parts of the voting and execution flow is no longer necessary. Within the same easy to use interface, DAOs can run both offchain and onchain votes, simplifying the otherwise convoluted governance process.

With the addition of Snapshot X, Snapshot is now an all-in-one solution for voting and execution. Pairing that together with Snapshot v2’s new Discussions integration and Delegation dashboard, it’s now possible to unite DAO governance activities on one popular platform, making life a little easier for DAO citizens.

Snapshot X is available today on Starknet and EVM chains: Ethereum, Optimism, Polygon and Arbitrum. Cross chain voting and execution is only available on Starknet.

Snapshot X security

Snapshot X smart contracts have been audited by OpenZeppelin and ChainSecurity, the results are available here. The Snapshot X contracts, frontend and infrastructure are fully open source.

Getting started with Snapshot X

Snapshot X is now live and available to all DAOs on the Snapshot v2 interface. Get started by creating your own space in a few simple steps here or read our docs here.

Snapshot Labs is excited to announce the beta release of Snapshot v2, a new interface to start the evolutionary journey of a product that the web3 space has gotten to know so well.

Governance is more than voting. As the most used tool in DAO governance, Snapshot is expanding in order to provide more of what DAO communities need, in one place.

The vision for Snapshot v2 is to unite the governance flow on one platform. We want to reduce the friction that DAO participants often have to endure when moving across each step of the flow: discussion, delegation, voting, and execution. Our aim with this product is to weave these activities together into a seamless experience; saving users time and eliminating the disconnect caused by switching between multiple platforms.

With this first release of Snapshot v2, we’re giving you a glimpse into what the future will look like, as we continue working to ship new features and enhancements.

What’s new in Snapshot v2?

Discussions

Clear and open community discussions are not only key to making good decisions, but they also serve as a valuable knowledge base for DAOs. We thought it was important to bring discussions into the Snapshot v2 experience with a Discourse integration:

• Discussions view: Browse the latest discussions happening on your DAO’s forum directly within the app.

• Proposal discussion: See a proposal related discussion within the proposal page directly.

Delegation

Vote delegation is a key mechanism for maximizing participation in DAO governance and giving weight to the most closely involved and informed people. We wanted to make this process more simple and straightforward, as well as making it easy for the most active participants in governance to be recognized by the community:

• Delegate dashboard: Visualize and sort the complete list of DAO delegates based on voting power held or by number of delegators who have granted their votes to each delegate. The delegate dashboard support both ERC20-Votes and delegate registry based delegation systems.

• Delegate statements: Delegates can submit a personal statement, which is viewable by the community.

• Leaderboard: Easily recognize the DAO members who have created the most proposals and casted the most votes.

Voting

Voting in an active DAO can become a burdensome job. We want to make it as easy as possible to be an engaged DAO citizen by providing tools that streamline the process:

• Proposal feed homepage: See all the proposals from the space you’re following directly in the homepage when you log in, making easy to curate proposals.

• Vote from the feed: Cast your vote directly from the feed for proposals using basic voting.

• AI proposal summary: Get a quick overview of what a proposal is about.

• Audio playback: Listen to proposals if you prefer audio or are on the go.

• In-app support: Rather than chasing people down on Discord, contact the Snapshot support team directly in the app via the Intercom widget.

Execution

As with voting, we have aimed to reduce the heavy lift of creating a governance proposal in the following ways:

• Draft system: Manage one or multiple drafts proposals before publishing.

• Read-only execution: Add transactions to a proposal even if the DAO don’t use oSnap or SafeSnap, this is making it easy for voters to review the intended execution. The execution is non-binding but can be easily exported to a Safe for execution.

• Treasury log in with WalletConnect: Log into any web3 app with your DAO’s treasury using WalletConnect and magically populate transaction into a new governance proposal.

• ETH staking with Lido: Insert a Lido staking transaction directly into a proposal with the click of a button, eliminating the manual work, technical barriers, and security concerns that come with adding onchain transactions into governance proposals.

• Better treasury support: Manage a wider range of assets, including NFTs.

• Contact list: Save addresses to use when creating proposals or transactions.

Give it a try!

Snapshot v2 is available now at snapshot.box.

We are using a Box domain, the world’s first top-level domain that is fully manageable onchain. Learn more.

Please share your feedback via our in-app support widget as we work to make improvements and fix any issues. Snapshot v1 is still live by default at snapshot.org and we will merge Snapshot v2 into the Snapshot.org domain after a 2 month testing and optimization phase.

Looking ahead

We will continue to ship new features that enhance the Snapshot experience, so stay tuned. Hint: something exciting is coming very soon!

Boost is a protocol and a new feature in beta on Snapshot, crafted to drive voter participation in specific proposals by offering ERC-20 token rewards. It allows anyone to enhance a proposal with rewards for voters, setting the stage for increased engagement. Traditional airdrops typically offer only temporary spikes in engagement. Boost encourages active participation, a method similar to what big DAOs like Optimism and Uniswap are looking into or using.

By incentivizing active participation, Boost adopts a strategy similar to approaches considered or used by leading DAOs such as.

How does it work?

Through Boost, creators can choose how rewards are distributed and specify eligibility criteria to give voters the right incentives to participate.

Boost a proposal

Anyone can create a Boost directly from a proposal’s page by deciding on three parameters:

1. Reward

The first step in creating a Boost is to decide on the token to be used and the amount to deposit. These tokens are deposited in the Boost smart contract for distribution to eligible voters.

2. Distribution

Second, select the reward distribution method. Using the “Lottery” distribution, you can define a number of voters that will be randomly selected, the voters with more voting power get more chances to win, with an option to cap probabilities for fairness. The “Proportional” distribution the rewards aligns with voting power — the greater your voting power, the larger your share of the rewards, there is also an option to set a cap to ensures no single voter can take too much of the rewards.

Boost is continually evolving to better serve DAOs and their communities with varied distribution strategies. If you envision a new approach or have suggestions for improvements, we welcome collaboration. Feel free to develop and propose your own strategy to enhance how rewards are distributed.

3. Eligibility

Finally, set eligibility criteria: decide to reward all voters to encourage broad participation, or specifically reward those voting for a certain outcome.

Note that the latter option, more commonly known as bribes, can be abused and have a negative impact on governance. This is the reason we only recommend this option for specific use cases, like deciding on how liquidity mining rewards should be distributed. By default this option will be disabled and can only be enabled by a DAO in the space settings.

Collect rewards

Voters can engage with a Boost by performing two key actions:

1. Vote

By voting on a proposal, voters become potentially eligible for its Boost rewards.

2. Claim rewards

After the voting period ends, voters who meet the eligibility criteria can claim their rewards.

Join the beta!

Boost is on its way to becoming available for all spaces on Snapshot. If you're ready to address voter apathy and make governance more engaging in your DAO, we invite you to join us. Complete this form to be part of this exciting journey.

To further validate Boost's effectiveness, we are collaborating with Eliza Oak from Yale University and a16z crypto on research to empirically document how giving token rewards increases DAO participation. If you're interested in participating and want to learn more, you can find additional details in this article.

Imagine a world where the power to shape the cities we live in rests not in the hands of a select few, but in the collective wisdom and participation of its inhabitants. This groundbreaking initiative pioneers decentralised governance, empowering citizens to collaboratively govern and transform their urban landscapes. Step away for a moment, as we delve into a new realm of community-driven decision-making, where CityDAO emerges as a trailblazer, ushering in a future where cities are shaped by the very people who call them home.

CityDAO: Reimagining land ownership on the blockchain

CityDAO is an ambitious decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) aiming to revolutionise the concept of land ownership and urban development through the power of blockchain technology. At its core, CityDAO seeks to create a network of assets on the Ethereum blockchain, starting with a single parcel of land located in Wyoming, USA.

In this innovative ecosystem, each parcel of land is represented as a unique Non-Fungible Token (NFT). These NFTs can be collectively owned by the DAO or by individual participants. By putting land on the blockchain, CityDAO aims to facilitate seamless land transfers, establish programmable digital records, and enable ownership through crowdfunding. CityDAO's vision extends beyond mere land ownership, as the organisation plans to incorporate the placement of buildings and structures on the land, further expanding the possibilities for development within the digital city.

The journey of CityDAO began with the acquisition of 40 acres of land in Wyoming, near Yellowstone National Park, by leveraging the state's groundbreaking 2021 DAO law. This legislation recognises DAO governance of LLC corporations, providing a solid legal framework for CityDAO's operations. With Parcel 0 serving as the first piece of land on the blockchain, interested users can gain access by becoming citizens and joining the CityDAO Discord channel.

How does CityDAO operate?

CityDAO's mechanics spark curiosity and contemplation. By linking physical land to blockchain assets, the project blurs the lines between reality and digital existence. A three-tiered social hierarchy exists within CityDAO, granting various privileges to citizens.

• Citizen: The novice level of the game, offering basic voting rights and access to the Discord channel.

• Founding citizen: The high-class citizenship tier, providing early access to land auctions, allowing bidding privileges before regular citizens.

• First citizen: The unique and exclusive position held by the very first person to purchase a CityDAO certificate. First Citizens gain the right to name a parcel of land and enjoy the benefits of Founding Citizenship.

CityDAO actively welcomes individuals from diverse backgrounds to contribute to the project's success, regardless of their level of expertise. While the team comprises numerous individuals with impressive credentials, such as countless PHDs and top professionals in their respective fields, the community also consists of enthusiastic learners who join with little to no knowledge about city building and gradually acquire substantial insights.

CityDAO embraces everyone, fostering an inclusive environment for all to participate and thrive. Additionally, individuals versed in land use are essential in determining the appropriate usage, governance, and control of the land. The project also acknowledges the importance of meme-making and community sustainability in fostering an engaged and vibrant CityDAO ecosystem.

The governance model of CityDAO: Ready, vote, go!

The governance of the land within CityDAO is driven by the citizens themselves. Through leveraging decentralised voting on Snapshot, citizens collectively decide how the land should be utilised and governed, while also developing the DAO even further. This democratic approach ensures that the community's voice is heard in determining the future of the city. To actively participate in the decision-making process, users can purchase a certificate of citizenship, which takes the form of an NFT.

Also, while the land on the blockchain is intrinsically linked to physical plots of land in Wyoming, it's important to note that citizens do not individually own specific portions of the land. Instead, their ownership lies in the rights to govern and influence policy changes and laws regarding the land.

Once individuals become established citizens of CityDAO, they gain the ability to participate in the submission and voting of various proposals, all while exploring different voting strategies. For instance, when the DAO acquired land in Wyoming, they conducted a "temperature check" by posing a question to their members on Snapshot: "Which monument should be built on parcel 0?”. Members were given the opportunity to rank their preferences for different monument options. These options included statues of prominent figures like George Washington and Shiba Inu, a sculpture of Vitalik Buterin, or the choice of not supporting the proposal at all. Without any surprise, the CityDAO logo emerged as the top-ranked preference, suggesting the possibility of one day seeing the futuristic CityDAO bronze logo gracing the parcel.

As CityDAO pioneers the path of decentralised governance, supported by robust tools and innovative approaches, it sets a compelling example for the potential of DAOs in shaping the cities of tomorrow. With citizen empowerment at its core, CityDAO is forging a path towards a truly collaborative and dynamic urban landscape.

CityDAO: A journey through time - from inception to present

The journey of CityDAO, from inception to its current status, is indeed a fascinating tale. It all started with a tweet in July 2021 by co-founder Scott Fitsimones, expressing his interest in buying land in Wyoming. His tweet quickly caught the attention of many, leading to the official registration of CityDAO as an LLC by October of the same year. The team initiated their fundraising campaign, and in a significant milestone, the first Citizenship NFT was sold. The event generated interest in the crypto community and consequently, the collective successfully purchased a 40-acre parcel in Wyoming.

CityDAO gained even more traction in November 2021 as several influential figures from the crypto sphere, including Vitalik Buterin, Mark Cuban, Anthony Pompliano, and Balaji Srinivasan, acquired Citizenship NFTs. Their participation substantially boosted the credibility of the project. Consequently, the CityDAO treasury soared to an impressive $8.5 million. In December, CityDAO integrated the Chainlink Verifiable Random Function (VRF) to ensure secure on-chain randomness, a crucial step in establishing an operating agreement and charter for the Wyoming DAO LLC.

2022 kicked off with CityDAO taking critical steps toward decentralisation and resilience. By January, the CityDAO Council had finalised the Charter, introducing measures to ensure its long-term success. That same month, however, they were forced to confront a phishing scam that had affected their Discord server.

Scott Fitsimones continued to champion the CityDAO cause, speaking at EthDenver in February, which helped gain further support for the project. This led to substantial progress in establishing the CityDAO Council and launching a podcast. The subsequent month saw the CityDAO Council completing the Charter and developing plans for future parcels and guilds.

The same month, February 2022, CityDAO organised an exciting Super Bowl party, primarily focused on watching the crypto advertisements. The event turned out to be one of the most memorable highlights for the CityDAO community members. The gathering witnessed the enthusiastic participation of numerous citizens, creating a magical atmosphere as like-minded individuals, mainly founders and builders, convened to discuss and showcase their projects aimed at improving people's lives. The experience of meeting these passionate individuals working tirelessly to create a positive impact was truly awe-inspiring for the CityDAO community members, leaving a lasting impression on their journey within the DAO.

Patonchain.eth 👽

@patonchain

I met amazing people from CityDAO irl for the first time, and it seemed like everyone I talked to was working on amazing projects that continue improving the lives of countless people. It seemed like we were all working towards positive changes and I was honored to meet them all.

3

4:30 PM • Mar 10, 2022

By May, CityDAO had conducted the Parcel 0 NFT drop and successfully passed a proposal for a "One-Person One-Vote" system, known as quadratic voting. They also established a mission statement and key metric, and announced a grant program in June. Additionally, a partnership was established with Nemus for conservation efforts in the Amazon Rainforest.

Throughout July, CityDAO introduced new parcel types, Baby Parcel and Big Parcel, and released the Parcel 0 viewer app. They were also featured in a TED Talk. August saw the announcement of the grant program winners, and the approval of The Network City CIP.

The beginning of 2023 was marked by CityDAO's ambitious idea to crowdfund territory worldwide and strive for diplomatic recognition, under the concept of a "Network State." They announced the world's first NFT lease for a piece of land in Blanca, Colorado, with the lease awarded based on citizen voting. Following a major earthquake in Turkey, CityDAO donated $9,000 USDC to relief efforts.

February 2023 saw CityDAO initiate a discussion on transitioning to representative democracy through elections. They participated in EthDenver 2023, where their Harberger NFT marketplace project achieved considerable recognition. In fact, the CityDAO team also got 1st place in the ColoradoJam track that helped the state of Colorado find innovative ways to use the Ethereum blockchain.

By March 2023, the Harberger NFT marketplace project had placed in the top 3 in the "DAOs & Communities category" at EthDenver. CityDAO began to explore the possibility of acquiring a house in Turkey to benefit its citizens and various communities.

By April, CityDAO had committed to a project aimed at acquiring a house in Turkey. With a budget of $3,000 and a two-month timeline, the project aimed to provide a detailed report on potential properties, legal considerations, rental prices, and operational aspects. This initiative was aimed at increasing CityDAO's visibility, expanding its community, and generating passive income through rentals. Moving forward, Phase 1 of the project is focused on these goals. Phase 2 is planned to develop a comprehensive roadmap, marketing plan, timeline, budget, and an estimation of return on investment. It will also involve the evaluation of pros and cons and the formation of a dedicated team.

As CityDAO continues to expand its influence in the blockchain community, it's poised to become a significant player for hackers, blockchain communities, DAOs, citizens, and the NFT sector. Its journey from inception to present day shows the power of a strong vision and community, and it is anticipated that CityDAO will continue to grow and innovate in the future.

By bridging the gap between the digital and physical worlds, CityDAO seeks to create a unique digital representation of physical land. Participants have the opportunity to purchase real-world land in Wyoming, subsequently selling the rights of governance associated with it. While citizens do not possess individual ownership of specific land parcels, their influence through voting allows them to shape the destiny of the city. As CityDAO continues to grow and attract support, the project's values and citizenship certificates are expected to appreciate in value significantly. The cost of citizenship has already increased, making it a potentially valuable investment for the future.

The enthusiasm surrounding CityDAO's vision and the prospect of a blockchain-driven city sets the stage for a thrilling and transformative journey into the realm of decentralised urban living.

Unlock the future, brick by brick: Mint your CityDAO NFT

Show your support for the second edition of Snapshot's "DAO Spotlight" article series. Unleash the urban explorer in you, mint your exclusive NFT now.

subscriber-edition://0x1868909aD8eFAe87FD0Fbc6B0F78975AEc10B7bA?tokenId=4&size=small

If the story of CityDAO has inspired you, explore more DAOs on our Blog. Snapshot provides DAOs with an innovative platform to decentralise governance and make it easy to vote and create proposals. Discover more by joining an existing space or by creating your own.

While well-structured and timed requests are not posing a threat to the stability of the service we have seen some incidents caused by sudden outbursts of incoming requests, caused either by bots spamming the API or poor-quality code falling into endless loops.

We want to make sure that we limit the risk of API downtime and provide a reliable and continuous service. Therefore we decided to implement API Keys to make sure that the requests are coming from genuine users.

Do not worry if you are a current API user!

The API will be still available in the current form until September 12th to enable a smooth transition for everyone. After September 12th you will be able to query it without a key but at a much lower limit.

How can I get a key?

1. If you haven’t already please fill in the following form:

1. We will review your submission and whitelist the address you provided in the form.

2. After 72 hours from the form submission you can continue with the next steps:

3. Go to https://app.mycrypto.com/sign-message and connect your wallet using the account you provided in the submission form above.

4. Sign the message with the keyword generateKey.

1. Copy the signature and run the below curl command. Make sure to use the signature hash from step 5 in the sig param, do not paste the entire response after signing the message.

curl --location 'https://keycard.snapshot.org' \
--header 'accept: application/json' \
--header 'content-type: application/json' \
--data '{
    "jsonrpc": "2.0",
    "method": "generate_key",
    "params": {
        "sig": "<SIGNATURE_HASH>"
    },
    "id": "123456789"
}'

Example:

...
    "method": "generate_key",
    "params": {
        "sig": "0x85bcabdeb3b43131364d21b32f8c74124d155009fc9d6d40901b4b725f23e0ac632808ebb00f3569bf875ded07b61ac5163ebe757b0897278ab276cdc982e3001c"
    },
...

That’s it, you should receive your unique API Key in the response!

Will the limit change?

During the next three months, the limits for keyless access to the API will not change:

🔓 No API Key: 120 requests every 20 seconds.

🔑 With the API Key: 2 million requests per month.

After September 12th, the limits will be updated to:

🔓 No API Key: 100 requests every minute.

🔑 With the API Key: 2 million requests per month.

If you are getting close to 2M requests a month please reach out to our team directly on Discord by creating a new ticket in the #helpdesk-tickets channel.

How to structure the query with my key?

The only change you need to make is to add the apiKey in the headers of your request:

curl 'https://hub.snapshot.org/graphql?' \
  -H 'content-type: application/json' \
  -H 'x-api-key: <YOUR-API-KEY>' \
  --data-raw '{"query":"\n{\n space(id:\"snapshot.dcl.eth\"){\n  id\n  name\n  members\n}\n}","variables":null}' \
  --compressed

Mint to subscribe

Resources

API Keys | snapshot

To obtain higher rate limits on the Hub API use, apply for an API Key.

https://docs.snapshot.box

GitHub - snapshot-labs/keycard

Contribute to snapshot-labs/keycard development by creating an account on GitHub.

https://github.com

This ground-breaking DAO is making a slam dunk in the NBA landscape, aiming to revolutionise the way teams are managed by putting power in the hands of fans. Get ready to dive into the world of fan-governed basketball teams and explore how Krause House is redefining the dynamics of this beloved sport.

Picture this: it's the final game of the NBA championship, the clock is ticking, and as the winning shot soars through the air, the crowd erupts in cheers. But this time, the celebration is more than just the triumph of a team; it's the victory of an entire community of basketball enthusiasts who came together to own, govern, and manage their beloved team.

Welcome to the future of sports franchises, where fans become owners, and the Krause House DAO takes centre court.

Krause House: The future of NBA fandom

In just over a century, basketball has transformed from a simple playground pastime to a $10 billion-per-year global phenomenon. It's the fans who have fuelled this incredible growth, and now, Krause House is here to take fan engagement to a whole new level.

Krause House is a Decentralised Autonomous Organisation (DAO) governed by a community of basketball enthusiasts who aspire to own and manage an NBA team collectively. By leveraging the power of DAOs, Krause House aims to disrupt the traditional ownership model of NBA franchises and transform them into "fanchises", allowing fans to participate in decisions affecting operations, ticketing, merchandising, partnerships, and general management.

What sets Krause House apart is its vision of a more democratic and transparent approach to team management, engaging fans and basketball purists alike. The DAO's goal is to acquire an NBA team, and through decentralised governance, community members will actively participate in the team's decision-making processes, from roster adjustments to branding changes.

Krause House and the NBA dream

At the heart of Krause House lies a passionate community of basketball fans, united by their love for the game and a desire to shape its future. Through the power of DAOs, these ambitious individuals are working together to achieve what would be impossible for one person alone: owning an NBA team. As they collaborate to establish the consensus rules that will bring their fan-governed team to life, Krause House embodies the true spirit of DAOs, representing a slamming success.

Players don’t win championships, DAOs do. Krause House

Just in one year, Krause House has bought a BIG3 team in the Ball Hogs, built the world’s first NFT basketball court at NFT.NYC, and designed novel financial structures to have a DAO sit on a cap table of professional sports teams.

Also, Krause House launched a series of NFTs that were met with overwhelming enthusiasm, quickly selling out and reaching their initial cap of 1000 ETH raised. This successful NFT sale marks a significant milestone for the community, signifying the official launch of the DAO and propelling them one step closer to their ultimate goal.

Thus, Krause House made headlines recently as it nearly became a minority owner of the NBA's Phoenix Suns. The collective's goal is to build the internet's first home team, fostering a global sense of belonging and pride among its fanbase while driving long-term value for the franchise.

Although Krause House faced strong competition from high-profile names such as Jeff Bezos, Larry Ellison, and Bob Iger, they used the opportunity to tell their story and educate the public on the concept of collective ownership. Despite not securing a deal, Krause House's unique approach of combining private equity structures with the power of community is seen as a disruptive force in the world of sports ownership. The organisation believes that any asset with cultural popularity, such as art, music, and sports, will eventually be influenced by this community-driven model, transforming the future of ownership and engagement.

A deep dive into Krause House’s governance model

Krause House's governance model dives deep into the utilisation of Snapshot, enabling members to cast their votes without any cost, based on their $KRAUSE token holdings. This approach not only promotes an inclusive and democratic decision-making process, but also fosters transparency and builds trust within the community.

By harnessing the power of Snapshot, Krause House ensures that both financial and strategic choices are made openly and with the consensus of its members. This empowers the DAO to execute strategic plans while maintaining the integrity of its vision. The success of Krause House's governance model serves as an inspiration for other organisations seeking to adopt a more inclusive and transparent approach to decision-making.

A recent proposal on Snapshot requested $25,000 to retain Hogan Lovells as legal counsel for a prospective NBA ownership acquisition transaction. The funds would be used to pay the firm's retainer, which would be applied strictly to work related to acquiring an NBA ownership position. This would ensure that Krause House has the necessary legal expertise to quickly close a deal. In light of the facts and surrounding circumstances, the members of the DAO chose to endorse and progress with the decision.

This is a testament to how a DAO, through its decentralised governance system, can maintain a high level of agility and adaptability, seizing opportunities even amidst adversity and challenges. It's a demonstration of the strength of decentralised governance, being both resilient and quick to respond to unfolding situations.

In less than two years, Krause House has grown from a single member's vision of winning an NBA championship as a DAO to a thriving community of over 4,500 people on Discord, with even more supporters cheering them on from the sidelines. Inspired by the late Kobe Bryant's wisdom, the Krause House community is dedicated to continuous improvement, striving to be better tomorrow than they were today.

The Krause House DAO is revolutionising the world of basketball fandom, offering an unprecedented opportunity for fans to take ownership of their favourite sport. As the first fan-governed team in the NBA becomes a reality, this groundbreaking initiative promises to redefine what it means to be a supporter, and change the game forever. So, lace up your sneakers and join the revolution – the court awaits.

Score Big: Mint your 'Slam Dunking into the Future' NFT

Show your support for the first edition of Snapshot's "DAO Spotlight" article series.

If the story of Krause House has inspired you, explore more DAOs on our Blog. Snapshot provides DAOs with an innovative platform to decentralise governance simplifying the voting process for proposals. Discover more by joining an existing space or by creating your own.

Ok, so how can you minimize the risk of scam proposals on your space? Read on!

Define your own rules

Each space has the possibility to fully customize its voting process.

Unfortunately, many spaces stop at selecting the Voting Strategies and do not implement any further settings, including proposal validation.

This means anyone is able to create a new proposal.

While casting a vote on Snapshot does not pose any threat to user’s funds we cannot fully control the content of the proposal itself. Hackers have mastered the art of hiding malicious links behind legit-looking URLs, images or even checkboxes, and it’s getting incredibly difficult to block the scam content without blocking the actual valid proposals.

Currently, Snapshot does not allow using short URLs which are an easy way to hide a dangerous link.

Which spaces are targeted?

Most often than not the scammers are taking the easy way and attack spaces which don’t have any validation for proposal creation in place. This way they can create scam proposals without holding any funds in their wallet.

Moreover spaces which have very low requirements for proposal creation, for example a user has to hold $5 worth of a token, are also an easy target as the barrier of entry is very low.

Some of the most effective anti-scam solutions are:

• Roles management - set moderators who can archive or hide proposals, or authors who can always create proposals regardless of other settings.

• Enable Authors only mode - don’t allow anyone else apart from whitelisted addresses to create new proposals.

• Snapshot's Discord Bot - get notified by Discord or other bots to monitor new proposals.

• Validation strategies - use the logic of existing voting strategies to set a higher threshold (~$100 worth of the token) or a more complex requirement for the user like Gitcoin Passport Validation to create a proposal.

Let’s have a look at all of them in more details.

Space members

Before we dive into the Validation Strategies let’s first understand what are the different permissions of the roles defined in the Members tab of the space settings:

• Controller - in full control of the space, the only role able to change the Controller of the space.

• Admin - able to modify the space settings (apart from the list of Admins), manage the space’s proposals and create proposals.

• Moderator - able to manage the space’s proposals and create proposals.

• Author - able to create proposals without having to go through proposal validation.

Moderators

Even though we provide several automated mechanisms to minimise the risk of harmful proposals it is still important to have to ability to review the created proposals by an actual person.

The Moderator role enables just that - without having the access to space settings moderators can hide proposals. It is a great way to have more organisation members involved in keeping the governance safe without requiring Admins to be available at all times.

Discord Bot

A great addition to the Moderators is a notification system which will inform you and your community about newly created proposals. If your organisation uses Discord, you can easily activate our Discord Bot on your server.

To do so, invite the bot with this link.

Then type / to see the commands (require administrator role):

Voilà! Now you and your Moderators can keep an eye on the notifications and react much quicker when a scam proposal has hit your space.

Authors

It is also possible to whitelist accounts which will be allowed to create new proposals regardless of the chosen Validation Strategy (more on the strategies in the next section).

Once added as Authors in the Members tab in the space settings they will surpass the validation process and will be able to create new proposals in the space.

Authors only mode

If you wish to limit proposal creators to Admins, Moderators and Authors only, you can do so by enabling the Authors only setting in the Proposal tab in the space settings. Make sure to give the Author role to the users you trust!

Validation Strategies

In technical terms a Validation Strategy is a JavaScript function that returns a boolean (true or false) for the connected account to define if someone is eligible to create a new proposal.

Each space can use one Proposal Validation for all of its proposals at a time.

Validation strategy can check both for monetary and non-financial assets of the user like POAPs, Gitcoin Passport stamps.

Basic Validation

The Basic Validation Strategy allows you to specify multiple Voting Strategies to determine if a user is eligible to create a proposal.

Voting Strategy is a set of conditions used to calculate user's voting power. Strategies enable Snapshot to calculate the final result of voting on a given proposal.

When setting the Validation Strategy up it’s important to keep in mind that it is meant to make it difficult for users outside of your community to post scam proposals.

Therefore make sure to use a high threshold, for example $100 worth of your organization’s token. A good idea would be to check the holdings of previous proposal creators, both legitimate and scammers, to assess a reasonable value.

In case the threshold you’ve set is too high for some of your community members, don’t forget that you can always add the trusted addresses as Authors, thanks to which they will surpass the Proposal Validation stage.

Below you can see an example of the Basic Proposal Validation using Voting Strategies set for the space:

If you want to set up a more complex validation, you can use custom strategies as shown on the screenshot below:

Gitcoin Passport Validation

While Basic Validation focuses on the monetary assets, this validation allows you to set requirements protecting your space against Sybil attacks by checking the Gitcoin Passport stamps which serve as validation for user’s identity and online reputation.

You can select individual or multiple stamps that matter for your space. You can also decide if they need to meet all of these criteria or only one. The more criteria you select, the more sybil resistant your space is.

Conclusion

To prevent scam proposals from being created, Snapshot spaces should proactively adjust their settings and define how they would like to validate users eligible to create new proposals, and implement additional solutions to manage proposals effectively.

There are several solutions that can be implemented. Spaces can adjust their settings by defining specific roles, such as moderators and authors, and using Validation Strategies. They can also utilise Snapshot's Discord Bot to monitor new proposals and react

If you have any additional feedback or ideas on how to increase the barrier of entry for scammers on Snapshot, do not hesitate to contact us on Discord!

Resources

<https://docs.snapshot.org >

Mint ‘Snap the scams out!’ NFT

Snapshot is an open-source voting platform which enables organizations to vote easily and without gas fees. Its technical implementation guarantees transparency which is crucial for decentralized governance. In the further part of the article we will have a look at each layer of the Snapshot implementation and look into its usage of IPFS which enables easy verification of data stored off-chain.

Do you need to be crypto native to use the platform?

Not at all, the platform is straightforward and easy to use even for the newcomers in the web3 world.

Why is it cool?

It’s easy to use and can be customized to the needs of various projects.

If it wasn’t for Snapshot, each organization would have to come up with their own voting solution built specifically for their use case. Snapshot allows organizations to use a customisable solution and requires little effort from the organizations to set up. If you want to explore the most active spaces, Snapshot’s biggest integrators or proposal and voting details have a look at the Snapshot dashboard on Dune.

It’s free to use.

Thanks to its technical setup, voting on Snapshot can be performed off-chain and without any gas fees. This helps organizations increase governance participation in their communities and reward users for voting through plugins such as POAP.

It’s fully open source.

The codebase is fully open to the public and provides a trustless environment which is essential to the governance process. Anyone can view and audit the logic behind Snapshot’s voting system. Moreover, the data is stored in a decentralized manner off-chain and can be viewed, audited, or replicated by anyone at any given time.

How does it work?

First of all, any action on Snapshot requires users to connect to the platform with their wallet. At the moment Snapshot supports several wallets, including MetaMask, WalletConnect and Coinbase Wallet.

Voting can be conducted thanks to the three main elements of the platform’s structure: spaces, proposals, and votes.

Organizations and projects can create spaces, which you can think of as their profiles on the platform. To do so, they need an ENS name, which is used as a space identifier and allows users to access its page on Snapshot, for example https://snapshot.org/#/balancer.eth.

Space controller and admins, if they are defined, have the ability to define a custom voting setup which includes:

• assignment of different space roles for the space (admins, moderators, authors),

• a selection of voting and validation strategies,

• quorum required for proposals to pass,

• plugins that extend Snapshot’s core functionality,

• and more.

Once the space has been created, the eligible users (as per space settings) can create proposals with one of the available voting systems, i.e. single choice voting, weighted voting or approval voting. You can learn more about the different solutions in Snapshot’s documentation.

Community members who fulfill the criteria (defined by the validation strategies selected for the space) can then cast their votes. The individual voting power is calculated on the basis of the voting strategies that define specific rules, for example checking for the balance of a specific ERC20 token or an ownership of a NFT token.

Why “Snapshot”?

Voting power is calculated at the snapshot of proposal’s creation. It means that if you acquired tokens after the proposal has been created they won’t be taken into account when calculating your voting power. This is where Snapshot’s name is coming for as this is the fundamental feature of the voting process on the platform.

The outcome of the proposal is calculated on the basis of the chosen voting system. Do not mistake it with the voting strategy though! While voting strategy is calculating the individual voting power of a voter, voting system is used to calculate the result of the proposal. Let’s have a look at the example of the weighted voting system.

Each user can spread their voting power across any number of choices, from one to all. Their voting power will be divided between their chosen options according to how much weight they attribute to each option by increasing or decreasing the voting power fraction.

What happens next? If a proposal has passed it is up to the DAO itself to execute it, as Snapshot is not involved in the actions taken by the organization.

Some of the Snapshot spaces are using SafeSnap, a Safe plugin which enables a trustless on-chain execution with the multi-sig account. As this topic deserves a separate article, I’d recommend you to read about it here.

If you are curious about how Snapshot looks like from the technical perspective, read on!

How is it built?

Snapshot is a protocol which combines multiple services in order to provide a seamless experience for its users. All repositories are open-sourced and can be viewed and audited by anyone at https://github.com/snapshot-labs.

The below wireframe gives a top level overview of the platform’s architecture:

Snapshot's infrastructure is designed with three main layers:

• User facing: frontend application accessible at https://snapshot.org

• Logic: backend server orchestrating the work of multiple services

• Data: various storage solutions persisting information off-chain

Snapshot UI

Snapshot’s interface is a Vue.js application built with Typescript. All the actions (i.e. creating a new space, proposal or voting) are possible thanks to the implementation of Snapshot.js client, a JavaScript library available for anyone to use. Whenever a user wants to perform a specific action, for example cast a vote, it triggers a message signature request in user’s wallet.

The message is then sent to the backend service - Snapshot Sequencer.

Logic layer

Sequencer

The core element of the backend infrastructure is an Express.js server - Snapshot Sequencer. It is responsible for receiving, verifying and ingesting the information incoming from Snapshot’s UI or other applications which integrated Snapshot in their infrastructure. It also communicates with the Score API which is calculating voting power of users and lastly, Sequencer orchestrates the process of persisting the data off-chain and sends a response back to the UI. The response includes a receipt, which is a proof that user’s action was approved and registered in the protocol.

What does it mean though?

The receipt is an Ethereum signature issued by the Sequencer which holds a private key. If you are familiar with how asymmetric cryptography works, or in other words how thanks to your private key you are the only person that can trigger transactions from your wallet, you can apply this logic to the receipt. If you are still not sure what private key is, let’s have a look at its definition from Investopedia:

A private key is an alphanumeric code used in cryptography, similar to a password. In cryptocurrency, private keys are used to authorize transactions and prove ownership of a blockchain asset.

source: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/private-key.asp

Now, as Sequencer is using its private key to issue an Ethereum signature, it means that it can be easily proven and any potential censorship attempts can be uncovered. This allows for a trustless process and its transparency along the way.

Last but not least, why “Sequencer”? The service’s name is coming from one of its most important features. Each action approved by it is stored with an auto-incremented ID, which means that anyone can replay the entire history of actions taken on Snapshot in the correct order.

Voting and validation strategies

As I mentioned before the individual voting power depends on the selection of voting strategies used by a specific space. In technical terms a strategy is a JavaScript function that returns a score for a set of addresses. You can find them all here. At the moment or writing this article there are 427 voting strategies available on Snapshot. Some of the most commonly used are:

• erc20-balance-of

• erc721

If none of them is addressing the needs of your organization, it is possible to create a new custom strategy by following this process.

Spaces can also select a validation strategy - a JavaScript function which will evaluate if a user is eligible to perform a specific action: create a proposal or cast a vote. A validation strategy is a JavaScript function that returns a boolean (true or false) for the connected account. What does it check? The possibilities are unlimited. It can use a combination of existing voting strategies, check how many POAPs an account owns or measure the on-chain activity of the account in order to assess if the account is a bot or a real human. All the existing voting validations can be found here and the collection can be enriched by the community by following this process.

Score API

The primary purpose of the Score API is to calculate the voting power of individual addresses at a specific block height. It achieves this by using on-chain data retrieved directly from EVM archive nodes or a subgraph, along with a selection of one or more strategies. In addition, the Score API is also responsible for validating addresses using validation strategies.

The Score API relies on a variety of archive nodes to ensure reliability and accuracy in data retrieval. A full list of supported nodes can be found here. It is compatible with all EVM-based blockchain networks, which allows it to work with popular chains like Ethereum and Arbitrum.

To integrate the Score API into third-party applications, developers should use the Snapshot.js NPM package. This package simplifies the integration process and provides a consistent interface for interacting with the API.

Data layer

One of most important design choices in Snapshot is the data storage solution. Storing information on-chain is very expensive and could be a big bottleneck for users to participate in the voting process - we all try to avoid costs whenever we can, right?

The alternative solution, which guarantees transparency and gasless voting, allowing anyone to view, audit and replicate the data and participate in DAOs governance without any cost, is the content addressing on IPFS. In fact, every space, proposal, vote, and user action confirmed by a signed and verified message can be found on IPFS, has a content identifier (CID) and a receipt proving the action has been validated and stored on the protocol.

Snapshot has developed a microservice called Pineapple and a corresponding JavaScript library pineapple.js to simplify data persistence to IPFS. Combination of the two ensures that the data is pinned successfully and as fast as possible.

pineapple.js exposes a pin method that takes a JSON object (representing a user action, space object, message signature, etc.) and sends it to the Pineapple microservice over HTTP. From there Pineapple uploads the JSON to multiple IPFS pinning services, such as 4everland, infura and pinata, at the same time and returns a response as soon as one of the services responds with a success. You can have a look at the most successful (fastest) providers here. Additionally, the data is also uploaded to AWS S3.

Apart from IPFS, Snapshot is also storing the information in an organized manner in an MySQL database which is exposed on a public API, Snapshot Hub. Anyone can easily query the database through the GraphQL interface.

So what actually happens behind the scenes?

To recap and understand the infrastructure better let’s follow the process of casting a vote:

1. User connects their wallet on Snapshot’s interface at https://snapshot.org.

2. Once connected, the user heads to a proposal’s page, selects their choice(s) and clicks Vote. A modal with the vote summary opens up with the selected choice(s), snapshot of the proposal (a block number) and the user’s voting power calculated by the Score API. If the user confirms the vote, the wallet will open up in with a request to sign a gasless message.

3. The payload of a signed message is sent to Snapshot Sequencer for verification thanks to the Snapshot.js library.

4. A crucial part of the verification step is the voting power check. Sequencer sends a request to the Score API and awaits the response with the voting power and vote validation.

5. After successful verification, Sequencer then triggers Pineapple to pin the message details on IPFS and inserts the details to the MySQL database.

6. Upon successful response from the data persisting services, Sequencer sends back a response to the Snapshot UI with the vote receipt - a confirmation of the vote and its IPFS CID.

7. User can see that the vote has gone through and can now share that they have voted on the proposal on selected social media platforms.

Conclusion

As you can (hopefully) see, Snapshot’s infrastructure is pretty straightforward and is making it easy for the voters to participate in the governance of their organizations at no cost and without any technical understanding.

Moreover, the open-source ideology of the company guarantees transparency at every step of the process and enables the contributors to extend the possible customizations for spaces, by creating new voting and validation strategies, or even the core functionalities of Snapshot by implementing new plugins.

Lastly, Snapshot’s architecture allows the voting process to be censorship resistant thanks to the Sequencer. As the Ethereum signatures are issued with Sequencer’s private key, any attempt to maliciously alter the data can be easily spotted even though the service is not fully decentralized. When it comes to full decentralization - keep a lookout for the next article about infrastructure update.

Decentralizing the Sequencer is the next step for Snapshot to fully decentralize its voting platform, which would further enhance its censorship resistance. By doing so, Snapshot will eliminate a single point of failure and allow for more decentralized decision-making. This would also increase the platform's security and resilience against attacks or attempts at censorship.

If you have any questions about the Snapshot’s technical architecture, make sure to drop a message on the Discord server or connect with Snapshot on Twitter!

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Resources

https://snapshot.org/#/

Welcome to Snapshot docs | snapshot

Snapshot is a voting platform that allows DAOs, DeFi protocols, or NFT communities to vote easily and without gas fees.The tool allows high customization of the voting process to cater to the diverse needs of the users and organizations.

https://docs.snapshot.box

https://dune.com/snapshotlabs/dashboard

Snapshot Labs

Where decisions get made. Snapshot Labs has 62 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

https://github.com

What?

Communities that enable voting validation will be able to set specific criteria their members need to meet in order to be able to vote. We are lucky to be releasing voting validation alongside the Gitcoin Passport team, so DAOs will be able to gate voting behind any of the criteria that Passport has defined such as: linking to Twitter, owning an ENS or a POAP, connecting your GitHub account, and many more.

Why?

By adding a voting validation strategy such as Gitcoin Passport, you’re able to require your users to verify some non-identifiable information about them that shows they’re likely to be human. This unlocks many possibilities for your DAO, most importantly to become more democratic. Being democratic in blockchain governance is always complicated, as you need to account for sybil attacks. Any person can create a lot of bots to abuse a democratic voting system in a DAO. By gating the voting process with Gitcoin Passport, you can be more confident that votes are coming from real humans.

This also unlocks one of the most interesting voting systems on Snapshot, quadratic voting. Quadratic voting reduces the voting power of whales to give the large majority of smaller users a bigger say in governance. For more information about quadratic voting, head to this page.

How?

To enable voting validation, head to your space settings to enable it under “validation”. Then, select the stamps, which are the conditions that matter for your space. You can also decide if they need to meet all of these criteria or only one. The more criteria you select, the more sybil resistant you can make your voting process.

When?

Voting validation is live today! For now, Gitcoin Passport is our only validation strategy, but that might change very quickly. If you’re interested in building a validation strategy, please reach out to us on our Discord!

Thanks for reading, and we hope you’ll love voting validation. If you have any questions or difficulties setting it up, let us know!

What is this?

Shielded voting is a voting system in which the voters choices are private during the voting period and get revealed when the proposal closes. This prevents the voting process itself from influencing the vote results.

At its core, this voting system use a threshold encryption system designed by Shutter in its efforts to prevent front running. For more information on the implementation please read this technical overview on Shutter Network blog.

Want to try? Here is how

To enable shielded voting you need to be an admin or controller of a space and go to the settings page, in the “Voting” section, choose Shutter as a privacy option and click “Save”. Once you’ve done this change, all proposals from then on will use shielded voting. You can disable it anytime.

Here is an example of proposal where you can vote using shielded voting: https://snapshot.org/#/pistachiodao.eth/proposal/0xa5077ef17097b1d59304b110337bd1c7ce98d95d3ff81d138c3886a80074b4d9

Want to learn more about the benefits of using Shielded voting? Read this article on Shutter Network blog.

Important notes

In this initial deployment the entities collaborating to perform the threshold encryption mechanism (the keypers) are not fully decentralized, if you are interested to run a keyper please contact us or Shutter Network. This is a beta release, the integration and the underlying threshold encryption is new and may contain unknown bugs.

Deprecation of the personal sign client

Snapshot hub currently accepts signed messages (like votes or proposals) in 2 different formats: ”Personal sign” EIP-191 and ”Typed data” EIP-712. On 10 October we will remove support for Personal sign format. Personal sign is the format that was initially used on Snapshot. If you've done an integration within the past six months, you're most likely already using the Typed data EIP-712 client.

Moving to Typed data has two main advantages: it makes it possible to verify any part of the signed message on-chain, and the structure also make it easy for wallets to display the message to sign in a more readable way. Here is an example with MetaMask with Personal sign on the left and Typed data on the right:

Here is some documentation on how to use EIP-712 client with Snapshot.js: https://docs.snapshot.org/snapshot.js#init-client

Future snapshot block number no longer supported

As of now, it's no longer possible to create a proposal with a snapshot in the future. This ability was removed because it was not often used and hard to do on proposals with a large number of votes. With a snapshot in the future, the voting powers can change on any new block. This forces recalculations of voting powers every new block, which works for a few thousand votes but can get slow and does not scale far beyond that.

Change on Snapshot delegation

We will be making a change to Snapshot delegation in late October to make it a core feature. Currently, to use Snapshot delegation, you need to add a voting strategy called "delegation" to your space. This voting strategy requires a lot of parameters and is not really friendly to set up. With this incoming change, we will make it possible to enable or disable delegation with a simple toggle from the space settings.

Along with this update, we will slightly change how delegation works. Currently, with Snapshot delegation, if you delegate to someone, you still can vote on a proposal and get back your delegation as voting power. After the delegation update, this won’t be possible. The issue with this ability is that to calculate someone's voting power on a proposal, we need to know the whole list of voters. This forces us to calculate voting power for all the voters on a proposal at once and doesn’t scale well. We will give more information about this change in the next update.

Edit: We’ve realized with the community feedback that many spaces heavily rely on this specific feature and for this reason we’ve decided to cancel this update.

Reset demo and move to Goerli

We are moving the demo instance at https://demo.snapshot.org from Rinkeby to Goerli testnet on 15 September. Along with this change, we will reset the data on Snapshot testnet hub. If you have a space on demo, you will need to recreate it with an ENS domain from Goerli. A dump of the data will be available to download if anyone wants to recover information from it.

New features

New app param for vote and proposals

We introduced a new parameter for votes and proposals called “app”, this parameter allows integrators to set their app id and make it possible to track activity from different integrations. We recommend integrators to make this change, we will use these metrics in the future to build partnerships with integrators and display a ranking of integrations within https://snapshot.org. The app id is simply your application name in lowercase e.g. “snapshot” for Snapshot.org. Here is how to cast a vote with the app parameter: https://docs.snapshot.org/snapshot.js#cast-a-vote.

We also recommend filling this form: https://tally.so/r/mJ9W8X to register your project as integration partner.

Add comment on vote

It’s now possible to add a comment when you cast a vote using the new param “reason”, here is an example on how to use it with Snapshot.js: https://docs.snapshot.org/snapshot.js#cast-a-vote.

Get voting power from the hub API

We added a new operation “vp” on the Snapshot hub GraphQL API to make it easy to calculate someone’s voting power on a space or specific proposal. Here is how to use it: https://docs.snapshot.org/graphql-api#get-voting-power. You can only use this operation for a single user for a space or a specific proposal. This is ideal to know someone’s voting power before he cast a vote and it’s much simpler than using the Score API with “getScores” function as you don’t need to know about the proposal strategies, snapshot or other details to query voting power.

Search for proposal

There is a new parameter “title_contains” for proposals on the GraphQL API, this is useful to search for a specific proposal with keywords. Here is an example of a query.

Getting help

If you believe you're experiencing a bug or want to report incorrect documentation, open an issue on our issue tracker. For a more real-time avenue of communication, check out Snapshot official Discord server. There you'll find contributors and community members who can help answer questions about the Snapshot, the API, libraries and other development questions.

Documentation Discord Telegram Twitter

What is Checkpoint

Checkpoint is a library for indexing data from StarkNet events and making it accessible through GraphQL. It provides similar functionality to The Graph but for StarkNet. Checkpoint performs two main functionalities:

1. Indexing contract data based on StarkNet events

2. Exposes a GraphQL API to query this data.

How it works

Checkpoint learns what and how to index StarkNet data based on configuration parameters and user-defined JavaScript functions called Data Writers.

The configuration parameters define the smart contract addresses of interest and the relevant events Checkpoint should be tracking. The Data Writers describe the logic that maps events to data that Checkpoint will store in its database. Checkpoint then exposes the stored data to the public through a GraphQL API.

This diagram shows the flow of data once a Checkpoint instance has started processing StarkNet transactions:

As highlighted in the flow diagram above:

1. A decentralized application adds data to StarkNet through a transaction on a smart contract.

2. The smart contract emits one or more events while processing the transaction. Checkpoint continually scans StarkNet for new blocks and checks if transactions contain events for your configured contracts.

3. Checkpoint then calls the data writer function for the respective event. Writers are responsible for writing entity objects to the database.

4. The dApp queries the Checkpoint GraphQL API. Checkpoint translates the GraphQL queries into SQL queries to fetch this entity data from the database. The decentralized application displays this data in a rich UI for end-users, which they can also use to issue new transactions on StarkNet, and the cycle repeats.

How to get started

Checkpoint is currently out in beta. You can visit Checkpoint’s website at checkpoint.fyi to get started. We have a quick start guide for you to get up and running in no time.

Please join Snapshot’s Discord server here to give the team feedback; this will help us significantly improve the product to cater for your specific needs.

Website: checkpoint.fyi

Docs: docs.checkpoint.fyi

Telegram: t.me/+dk7Q7FAVJ1oyMDFl

Discord: discord.gg/snapshot

What is Snapshot X?

Snapshot X is a voting framework built on StarkNet, the layer 2 ZK-Rollup. It will allow any DAO to run their governance on-chain on layer 2 and execute transactions on Ethereum.

This will provide similar security guarantees to what you get with a voting framework on layer 1, for just a fraction of the cost. We estimate the cost for a vote on Snapshot X around 1,000 gas or about 50x to 100x times cheaper than on Ethereum.

The core innovation of Snapshot X lies in using storage proofs to verify balances. This approach was previously unfeasible due to the high cost of computation on Ethereum. However recently with the advent of L2 technologies like StarkNet, the cost of on-chain computation can be reduced significantly. This allows the storage proof approach to become economically viable whilst maintaining all of the security and decentralization of Ethereum. Here are some of the benefits of Snapshot X:

Trustless execution

Snapshot X will allow your DAO to execute transactions on-chain in a fully trustless way without relying on any human or oracle input. All calculations related to votes will be done on StarkNet which then will control the execution on Ethereum.

Permissionless and censorship resistant

The settings of a space, the proposals, and the votes will be published and verified on-chain on StarkNet. The framework will be entirely permissionless, anyone would be able to interact with it on-chain without going through Snapshot client if they wish to.

No need for expensive checkpoints

Currently, most token contracts using on-chain governance need to implement additional functions to store what we call checkpoints that incur additional gas costs when transferring the token. For more information on this point, read this interesting thread. Snapshot X removes the need for such checkpoints by using storage proofs.

Support native Ethereum signatures

As StarkNet supports native Ethereum cryptographic signatures, users won’t need to change the way they interact with Snapshot, they can keep using their favorite wallet.

Gas-less experience as usual

Users can vote and create proposals by signing messages, without paying gas cost, the same way they do today if you use Snapshot. These messages will be sent to Snapshot hub which will act as a meta-transaction relayer, sending votes and proposals on-chain on layer 2. The cost will be sponsored by the DAO using Snapshot X.

Fully integrated on the Snapshot client

Snapshot X will be available as a plugin within Snapshot, once enabled on your space you’ll be able to add transactions to be executed in a proposal using the transaction builder, similar to how you would do with SafeSnap currently.

When Snapshot X?

This is still a work in progress, we plan to release Snapshot X in Q2 of 2022. We will onboard a few DAOs to the project and open it for any DAO later in Q3 2022. Initially, the Snapshot X framework will support only ERC-20 and delegation voting strategies, it will be followed closely by ERC-721 then multichain support. Over time we plan to expand the range of strategies possible along with different voting systems.

Get in touch

If you wish to be amongst the first to test Snapshot X please reach out using this form. If you have any questions about the solution, join Snapshot Discord, we’ll be happy to discuss it with you! In the coming weeks, the Snapshot and StarkWare teams will publish other articles to explain the architecture design of the Snapshot X framework.