Snapshot (The Portal)

Basics

• Based in:
• Started in / Announced on: 8-2020
• Testnet release:
• Mainnet release:

• Off-chain voting solution.
• Snapshot is a voting tool based on the IPFS decentralized storage system, used by many crypto projects to poll their user bases.
• Snapshot enables token holders to vote on the protocol-level decisions without needing to make actual transactions, just signing with your key is enough.

History

• From Decrypt (4-6-2021):

"Snapshot Labs, the creators of Snapshot, emerged from stealth mode in August 2020. At present, there isn’t a lot of information about who is behind Snapshot, but from various forums, it looks like it emerged from Balancer Labs"

Tech

• Whitepaper can be found [insert here].
• Code can be viewed [insert here].

• From Decrypt (4-6-2021):

"Snapshot is completely open-source, allowing others to contribute to the project or create alternate versions, meaning it could go in any number of directions."

Implementations

• Built on: IPFS & Ethereum, ENS, Colony (4-11-2021).

How it works

• From Decrypt (4-6-2021):

"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.

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.

Gnosis Merger

• From The Defiant (19-3-2021):

"Gnosis has merged its multisig wallet, Gnosis Safe, with the off-chain (and therefore gasless) DAO governance dashboard, Snapshot, to create SafeSnap as an addable module for Gnosis Safe. Gnosis’ newly launched DAO governance tool, SafeSnap, aims to allow users to execute decentralized governance decisions  without incurring expensive gas fees on-chain."

Roadmap

• From Crypto Briefing (6-10-2020):

"Aragon and Balancer Labs are collaborating to launch Snapshot, an off-chain voting platform. Through the implementation of Aragon Agreements and Aragon Court, Snapshot will enable DAOs to take their off-chain voting and record it on the Ethereum blockchain."

Usage

• Leveraged by projects from Yearn Finance to social tokens like COIN (1-10-2020).
• From Decrypt (4-6-2021):

"There are a wide range of companies in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space that have taken advantage of Snapshot’s unique polling system. These include Uniswap, Balancer, Yearn, Bancor, The Graph, Aragon, and others. Decrypt uses Snapshot too."

Team, Funding

Team

• Snapshot Labs
• Fabien Marino

Funding

• From The Defiant (1-10-2020):

"Got a stimulus boost thanks to $200k in funding from Aragon and Balancer yesterday afternoon."

• Got a grant in 2020 from MetaCartel (4-4-2021).