what's Snapshot?
Snapshot is an open-source, off-chain voting platform designed for decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), DeFi protocols, and NFT communities in the blockchain ecosystem. It enables gasless voting by storing proposals and votes on IPFS, using cryptographic signatures for verification without on-chain transactions. This approach lowers barriers to participation, allowing scalable governance while maintaining transparency and immutability. The platform supports flexible voting strategies, including ERC20 tokens, NFTs, or custom contracts for power calculation, and various voting types like single-choice, quadratic, or approval voting. Proposals can include validation rules for eligibility, and results are easily verifiable off-chain but hard to contest due to the decentralized storage. Recently, Snapshot introduced Snapshot X, an on-chain extension built on Starknet, providing cheaper transactions (10-50x less than Ethereum L1) with modular design for Turing-complete governance. It abstracts interactions for EVM wallets, ensuring a seamless user experience across ecosystems.
Snapshot hosts StakeDAO's SDGP-66 governance proposal; voting ends 2026-03-31.
Links
x.com/snapshotlabsHosts SDGP-66 governance proposal for StakeDAO's vlSDT updated framework with voting period ending on 2026-03-31.
Integrated ENS and Uniswap for OpenZeppelin Governor support as first live implementations on March 19, 2026.
Hosts governance proposal SGP-18 from Spectra Finance for a one-year manual migration path for APW holders at 1:20 ratio.
Integrated with Ethereum Follow Protocol (EFP) as one of 76 integrations of the social graph protocol.
Reached over 500 voting strategies available on the platform, with over 90% built by the community.
integrated ApeChain support for community voting features
Voting is live on Snapshot for Pear Protocol's proposal to increase token buybacks.
The Aave DAO alignment proposal advanced to Snapshot amid ongoing delegate disagreement.
PSE releases research report examining user feedback on Shielded Voting and analyzing why users don't adopt privacy tools across multiple platforms.
A governance proposal goes live for a $300k December contest to maintain v10 momentum, with voting deadline set for November 30.
Advisory Futarchy feature goes live through collaboration with Futarchy, enabling a governance mechanism where markets advise while governance decides, currently running on Kleros's proposal.
Shutter API adds event-based decryption triggers with new use cases including pay-to-unlock-content, access control, and file/document privacy features for smart accounts.
Permanent Shielded Voting launches as a major upgrade through Shutter collaboration, bringing permanent private voting to all DAOs and millions of voters. The original Shielded Voting feature turned 3 years old last week.
Shielded Voting reaches 881 DAOs protected with 5,730 proposals and 372,914 encrypted votes; major upgrade collaboration with Shutter announced as coming soon.
Integrates .bnb domains via SpaceID Protocol for BNB Chain governance, enabling gasless onchain voting in OpenZeppelin Governor and Governor Bravo spaces through an open sponsor account fundable by anyone, with delegates dashboard, execution builder, and transaction simulation, live March 19, 2026.
Business model confirms focus on direct app monetization rather than chain subsidies, with limited utility in payment/RWA focused chains.
Protocol roadmap reveals July 2025 launch of LP automation, governance, and yield features.
Reaches 50th platform integration milestone with namespace_eth joining ecosystem.
New shielded voting feature launches with 600+ DAOs already adopted, enabling encrypted governance voting.
Positioned as mass-market freemium governance tool, competing with premium solution Agora and mid-tier Tally.