202511171407 - snapshot-platform
Main Topic
Snapshot is an off-chain voting platform used by DAOs and Web3 communities to run proposals and votes without requiring voters to pay gas. The core idea is that voters sign messages with their wallet (instead of submitting on-chain transactions). Those signed votes, along with proposal metadata, are stored in a content-addressed way (commonly via IPFS).
Snapshot is typically used for:
- governance signaling (measuring community preference before an on-chain action)
- lightweight decisions (grants, parameter preferences, community choices)
- communities that want flexible voting power strategies (ERC20 balance, NFT ownership, delegated tokens, custom contracts)
Snapshot concepts:
- Space: an organization profile and configuration (strategies, validation rules, voting settings).
- Proposal: a structured prompt for voting inside a space.
- Vote: a signed message tied to a proposal and voter address.
The main tradeoff is enforcement: Snapshot itself does not force on-chain execution. If you need guaranteed enforcement, you need an execution mechanism (on-chain Governor execution, a multisig process, or an automation bridge) that consumes Snapshot results.
🌲 Branching Questions
How does Snapshot achieve gasless voting while staying verifiable?
Snapshot votes are not transactions. A voter signs a message that encodes their choice and relevant proposal identifiers. Because the signature can be verified against the voter’s address, anyone can check that a particular address cast a particular vote.
Voting power is usually computed based on a snapshot of on-chain state at a specified block number, using configurable strategies (for example, ERC20 balances, delegated voting power, or combinations). The data needed to reproduce the result is publicly available, and the votes and proposals are persisted as content-addressed objects, which supports auditing and replication.
Practical takeaway: Snapshot removes gas costs and friction for voters, and shifts trust to the correctness of strategies, data sources, and the social process of honoring outcomes.
When should a DAO use Snapshot vs. an on-chain Governor vote?
Snapshot is a good fit when:
- you want maximum participation (no gas required)
- the decision is advisory or low-stakes
- you need flexible voting power logic that would be expensive to run on-chain
- you want fast iteration on governance process
On-chain Governor votes are a good fit when:
- you need automatic enforcement (execution of transactions if a vote passes)
- you are moving treasury funds directly from a contract
- you want stronger guarantees that outcomes cannot be ignored or selectively executed
A common pattern is two-step governance:
- Snapshot for signaling and temperature checks
- on-chain vote (or a multisig execution) for final settlement