You can think of a space as an organization's account on Snapshot which can be viewed by anyone visiting the platform. It serves as a hub for all proposals related to the organization and a source of information for the users.

Moreover space allows its organization to manage the roles of organization members and customize the proposal and voting settings.

How to access a space?

Spaces are listed upon arrival on https://snapshot.org and first and foremost can be filtered by the organization or the ENS name used to create the space. They can be also filtered by other parameters listed next to the search field. You can access the space from there or directly through a link which includes the ENS name (i.e. https://snapshot.org/#/pistachiodao.eth). It is also possible to define a custom domain name for your space.

Proposal search & filtering

You can browse through all of Space's proposals and apply specific filters to them, including active, pending, and closed proposals, as well as those created by core members, and flagged proposals.

Joining a space

If you want to have a quick access to a chosen space you can join it from the directory of all spaces or through the space's individual page by clicking the Join button. It will create a shortcut for the space on the left sidebar and keep you updated with the number of new proposals displayed on top of the space's avatar.

Space page

The content of the space overview will depend on the role of the connected account and the space settings. Below you can see the example of our dummy space and what anyone, even when not connected, can see.

1. Set or get an ENS domain for your space

Tap the plus + button in the left sidebar to create a new space.

If you already own an ENS domain, make sure you are connected to snapshot.org with the Ethereum address that is set as controller of your ENS name (if you are confused about the difference between ENS Registrant and Controller, have a read here).

If the above condition is met, your ENS name will appear. To confirm it's correct, click on it.

3. Create your profile

To complete the profile of your space you have to enter a name for your DAO (mandatory) and can add further optional information like a description, avatar, categories describing the field that your DAO is operating in and more.

You can add or update this information after you have finished creating the space.

4. Set your very first strategy

Your space can combine up to 8 voting strategies which will be responsible for calculating the users' voting power. The setting affects all proposals that will be created for that space.

For the initial setup you have to choose one of the three following strategy types to then specify the strategy details:

Voting strategies types

Let's have a look at each of the possible options and see how you can specify the strategy details.

Token weighted voting

Voting power is weighted by the amount of the token held by the user. The token can be an ERC-20, ERC-721 or ERC-1155 token standard.

1. Select your token network

2. Select your token standard

3. Enter your token contract address

One person, one vote

This option can be used in two different ways:

• Whitelist voting lets you specify a list of addresses that will be able to vote

• Ticket voting will let any wallet vote (option used mostly for testing purposes)

Custom setup

If you feel ready to dive deeper into the custom setup here are a few hints that you may find useful:

• You can select up to 8 different strategies. Voting power is cumulative.

• Network can be selected individually for each strategy. This way you can leverage multi-chain voting power calculation.

• It is possible to set a different symbol for each strategy. They will be displayed on the proposal page.

• You can write a custom voting strategy if the existing ones are the sufficient for your needs. Have a look at Create a voting strategy to learn more.

At the time of writing this article there are around 415 Snapshot voting strategies and this number keeps growing. Learn more about the strategies.

Moderation

Admins will be able to edit the space settings and moderate proposals.

Authors will be able to create proposals without any constraints like proposal validation. Make sure that members specified in authors field are allowed to submit a proposal.

Your space is live !

What else can I customize?

If you do not want to have the wallet control your settings, you can follow the steps below to create a space on Snapshot.

Drawbacks

• You will not be able to change settings from the UI

• Every time you want to change the settings, you will need to broadcast a new transaction

How to Create Space

• Create a JSON file for your settings on Snapshot. The format of the JSON file could be as follows: https://github.com/snapshot-labs/snapshot.js/blob/master/test/examples/space.json

• Store the JSON file on IPFS

• Use the IPFS link on the ENS text record. This will make the ENS owner the only controller of the settings.

• You can check if your space is valid from the GitHub link below https://github.com/snapshot-labs/snapshot.js/blob/a0adc547aa0922aa6abd35708a4a292048bca6a2/test/schema.ts#L4

• Once the above transaction is successful, go to the below link to update the space in Snapshot:

  https://hub.snapshot.org/api/spaces/<ENS DOMAIN>/poke

Creating an ENS Domain

1a. Search for the availability of your name on Snapshot's Create a space page

2. If the name is available you will be able to see the 3 steps and the registration fee. Please note that the names with 3 or 4 characters cost considerably more than the names with 5+ characters.

3. Connect your wallet by tapping on the Connect button on the top left corner of your screen. Make sure your wallet has enough balance to make the transaction successful and that you selected the Ethereum Mainnet (or Goerli Testnet for the demo page).

4. Confirm all transactions for the three steps from your chosen wallet provider.

5. You have now successfully registered on ENS! Additionally, you can also make your Ethereum address point to an ENS name by clicking on ‘Set Reverse Record’ or by going to 'My Account' and then selecting 'Reverse record' and completing the transaction.

Congratulations! You have created your domain on ENS. You are now ready to create your space on Snapshot.

Verification for legitimacy

Space verification is a process of checking if the space is real and can be trusted.

Verified spaces have a special badge next to their name, as presented on the screenshot below.

How to get your space verified?

Make sure to follow all steps from the below checklist:

• Space has an avatar image uploaded

• Space has a minimum threshold for proposal validation (or limited to authors)

• There are at least 5 closed proposals

• A link from the official website, the GitHub organization or a tweet to confirm the ownership of the Snapshot space

• Space is not using a testnet or network that has no recognition

• Ask to get verified by contacting our support on Help Center

Verification process can last up to 72 hours.

By adding a custom domain to your space, you can whitelabel the Snapshot website and present your community with a fully branded governance experience. This feature allows you to display only your specific space at your custom URL and even customize colors to match your brand identity.

Examples

More than 400 DAOs already use custom domains for their governance, such as:

vote.balancer.fi vote.morpho.org vote.sushi.com

Requirements

To enable this whitelabel experience, you must subscribe to our Turbo plan. Once your subscription is active, follow the setup process below.

Setup steps

1. Add a CNAME record

Go to your DNS provider or registrar and create a new CNAME record.

• Host: your custom domain (for example, vote.myprotocol.xyz)

• Points to: cname.snapshot.box

2. Contact us

After you have created the CNAME record, let us know you’d like to enable whitelabel. Reach out to us through our Help center, Discord, or Telegram.

Space Hibernation is placing inactive or incorrectly configured spaces into hibernation mode. This process aims to enhance the user experience.

Space Controller and admins will see this warning message if space has gone into hibernation mode:

When does a Space hibernate?

A space will automatically enter hibernation mode if it meets any of the following conditions:

• Inactivity for the past 12 months.

Implications of Hibernation

Once a space is in hibernation mode it is impossible to create new proposals.

Reactivating a Space

Navigate to the space settings and click "Reactivate space" at the top of the page.

What is 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. Customization includes different aspects like calculation of the users' voting power, selection of the voting mechanism, proposal and vote validation, and many more.In short, Snapshot is an off-chain gasless multi-governance client which results are easy to verify and hard to contest.

Key features

• Gasless: Create proposals and cast your votes without any gas fees.

• Flexible voting strategies: Customize how the voting power is calculated through single or combined strategies that enable voting with ERC20s, NFTs, other contracts, and more.

• Proposal and voting validation: Use custom logic to define who can create a proposal or cast a vote.

• Multiple voting systems: Single choice, approval voting, quadratic voting, and more.

• Signed messages: Votes are cast through signed messages easily verifiable.

• Custom branding - spaces can use their own branding, color schemes and domain name.

• Fully open-source: Snapshot is fully open source with MIT license, the code is available on GitHub at https://github.com/snapshot-labs.​

How does it work?

Snapshot’s protocol involves three core elements: spaces, proposals, and votes. A space functions like an organization’s profile, and every proposal and vote is tied to that space. To create a space, the only requirement is to have an ENS domain. Once a space is set up, users can submit proposals and cast their votes on the space’s page. Administrators of the space can tailor the rules for creating proposals and voting by configuring various voting and validation strategies. For instance, a space might require users to hold a minimum of 500 tokens to create a proposal, or it might assign voting power proportionally to the token balance in a user’s wallet.

What are you looking for?

Access your settings

Navigate to your space settings from the space menu by clicking on Settings.

Edit the controller of your space

Space controller is the main account that is able to manage the space settings and assign other addresses as admins of the space. By default it's set as the ENS Controller address however you can change it to another address.

To replace the current space controller by a new controller click the Edit controller button.

Edit your profile information

To complete your profile, you can upload an avatar/logo, enter a name for your DAO, a description, select up to 2 categories and other details. These settings can be changed at any time.

Social accounts

You can link your social media accounts to the space on Snapshot by typing in your account handle, i.e. @SnapshotLabs

Sub-spaces

In order to connect the space with sub-spaces you need to set them up for both main- and the sub-space.

1. First create the sub-space as you would create a normal space. Once the sub-space is set up, type it's linked ENS domain name in the Sub-spaces input field. If everything went well, you will be able to click the + on the right.

2. Head to the sub-space settings and type in the linked ENS domain name of the voting in the correct input field.

Voting strategies

Specify how the voting power should be calculated by adding one or up to 8 strategies.

To learn more about what they are and how they work head to Voting strategies.

Admins and authors

In order to specify who can manage the space or create proposals, fill in the apropriate field with addresses for:

• Admins - able to edit the space settings and moderate proposals.

• Authors - able to create proposals without any constraints Make sure that members specified in authors field are allowed to submit a proposal.

Head to Space roles to learn more about each role.

Proposals

You can provide guidelines and a template which will be displayed during the proposal creation:

Proposal validation

To validate if someone can post a proposal or not you can use the basic validation by default which takes your voting power with space strategies and checks if you pass a defined threshold.

To learn what a validation is head to Validation strategies.

Voting

The voting delay is a value in time between the time of proposal creation and the moment when users are allowed to vote. The voting period is the duration that the proposal is active and votes can be cast. It is counted from the moment

Quorum is the amount of voting power collectively achieved by voters which is required for a proposal to pass.

Shielded Voting

You can enable Shielded Voting within your space if you want to enable partial privacy and reduce voter apathy. Shielded Voting designed by Shutter is enabling that by using threshold encryption. You can learn more about it in the technical overview.

In short, Shielded Voting is a voting setting in which the voters choices are private during the voting period and get revealed when the proposal closes.

To enable it head to Voting tab and select Shutter within the Privacy setting.

Delegation

In the Delegation tab you can set a custom delegation contract to enable delegate discovery for your space:

Custom domain and skin

You can add a custom domain to your space by following the Add a custom domain guide.

If you want to apply a different design (skin) to your space, you have to set a custom domain first. Head to Add a skin to learn how to add a custom skin for your custom domain.

Treasuries

In order to link your organization's treasury to Snapshot you have to:

1. Choose the treasury network

2. Enter its Ethereum address

3. Fill in the name of that treasury.

It is possible to add multiple treasuries to one space.

Plugins

You can customize your space even further with various plugins which provide extra features. To learn more about the plugins head to Plugins section.

Save your settings

Make sure to click the Save button on top of the settings page to apply the changes to your space. Once you sign a message (gasless) in your wallet, changes will be applied!

Organizations can create multiple spaces and link them together. This is useful for enforcing different space settings for proposal creation, voting, and execution. For example, instead of having to change the space settings each time you create a proposal, you could create additional spaces with some of your most frequently used settings.

Setup

You can define a main space, or multiple subspaces, in the Sub-spaces section of the space settings.

Do this for both your main space and all subspaces to link them to each other. If you have setup everything correctly they will be displayed on the space page.

Limits

• A space can add upto 16 sub-spaces

What is a skin?

A skin is a custom color scheme which you can use for your space if it has a custom domain set up. The customization will be visible only on the custom domain and will not affect the color scheme of your space on https://snapshot.org.

Add a skin to your space

Head to your space settings on Snapshot and find the Custom domain section.

Select a skin by scrolling through the list of available choices or by typing the name you are looking for. If none of them work for you, you can create a custom skin following the section below: Create a custom skin

Don't forget that the skin will only be applied to the custom domain URL!

Create a custom skin

1. Fork the snapshot-spaces repository

Create a fork of the snapshot-spaces repository:

2. Add the styling for your space

Create a new file in the skins directory following the my-space.scss naming convention:

└── skins
    └── my-space.scss

Add your custom scss to the newly created file. The class name .my-space should match the filename you created. Make sure that you edit only the values (i.e. #384aff on the right-hand side and do not change the properties (i.e. --primary-color).

.my-space {
  --primary-color: #384aff;
  --bg-color: white;
  --text-color: #586069;
  --link-color: #111111;
  --heading-color: #111111;
  --border-color: #d1d5da;
  --header-bg: white;
  --block-bg: transparent;
}

You can have a look at a custom skin example by following this link.

3. Import the scss file

Add the import of your newly created scss file to the skins/index.js file in the following format:

import my-space from "./my-space.scss";

4. Create a pull request

Create a Pull Request with the above changes on the original snapshot-spaces repo.

After the PR has been merged, you will need to wait for the release of a new version of Snapshot which can take a couple of days. Once it's deployed you can move on to the next step.

5. Update your space settings

Follow the steps from Add a skin to your space to use your own custom skin.

At Snapshot Labs, we want to help our users safely browse and discover spaces and make informed decisions about them. That’s why we’ve introduced verification and warning badges.

The goal is to provide users a simple way to navigate voting in web3. To facillitate that Snapshot displays a verification badge or warning label next to the space name and in each proposal belonging to that space.

The verification badge signifies that the space has been verified as the authentic version of the protocol it claims to be. Please note that the verified badge does not represent an endorsement of the protocol by Snapshot Labs. A verified badge also says nothing about its merits as an investment. A space may carry a verified badge but might still be a bad investment idea. Think of the verified badge only as a tool to help you find the correct version of the space you’re searching for.

The warning badge means that we either identified that space as impersonating a project, IP infringement or potential scam.

Turbo is Snapshot's pro plan, designed specifically for spaces seeking advanced governance tools. By upgrading to Turbo, you gain access to a powerful set of features that streamline proposal creation, voting, and oversight, letting you focus on what really matters: effective, transparent governance.

Key benefits

Expanded proposal content limit

Increase your proposal character limit from 10,000 to 40,000 characters, enabling more comprehensive and detailed proposals.

Greater proposal choices

Offer up to 1,000 voting choices per proposal (previously limited to 20), giving your community a broader range of input.

Higher proposal submission limit

Post up to 40 proposals per day and 200 per month, doubling the standard allowance to give you more flexibility.

Customizable whitelabel interface

Personalize Snapshot with your own branding, including a custom domain, colors, and logo, for a fully branded governance experience. Learn more.

Extended voting strategies

Implement up to 10 voting strategies (increased from 8) to accommodate a wide range of governance models.

Enhanced visibility

Improve your space's ranking on the Snapshot homepage and in search results, ensuring your proposals reach the right audience.

Enhanced monitoring service

Get peace of mind with our dedicated spam and scam detection, where flagged proposals are reported within 2 hours.

Promote your first proposal

Boost community engagement: we’ll feature your first proposal on our social channels to maximize visibility.

Dedicated Telegram support

Enjoy a private Telegram support group with a maximum 4-hour response time, ensuring fast and personalized assistance.

Support non-premium network

Your space can use premium or non-premium network as base network or as voting strategy.

Pricing

The Turbo plan is priced at $6,000 per year.

Payment

We support payment with crypto using ETH, USDC, USDT, DAI or GHO on Ethereum or Base at this address: 0x6A870312a810409Ff4f1e8Ff2A2724ad8820Fd70 Please reach out to confirm a payment in our Help center, Discord or Telegram.

Upgrade to Turbo today and unlock the full potential of your Snapshot space with robust features, enhanced visibility, and dedicated support.

Before we jump into specific use cases, let's have a look at the most common configurations that the majority of spaces use on Snapshot.

Voting strategy + Proposal validation strategy

The minimum setup required to run your governance on Snapshot consists of:

• Selecting at least one Voting strategy

• Choosing a Validation strategy for proposal creation

Most common Voting strategies

Token based

erc20-balance-of

This strategy returns the balance for a specific ERC20 token that user holds in their wallet.

Strategy setup:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

eth-balance

This strategy returns the balance of the user's ETH holdings as their Voting power.

Strategy setup:

You only need to provide the ETH symbol:

{
  "symbol": "ETH"
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc721

This strategy returns the balance for a specific ERC721 NFT as the user's Voting Power.

Strategy setup:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

eth-with-balance

eth-with-balance in its simplest way to assign 1 vote to wallets holding any balance of ETH. Regardless of how big the balance is, the VP is always the same and equal to 1 VP. If the wallet doesn't hold any ETH, the VP is 0.

You can also use this strategy to set a voting threshold by adding an optional parameter minBalance and defining the minimum required balance which will give the user the eligibility to vote and 1 Voting Power. The parameter value is set to 0 by default.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "ETH",
  "minBalance": 0.5
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

Other

whitelist

Another very popular strategy that gives you control over who can cast the votes. All you need to do is to provide the addresses which should be eligible to vote, and each will have 1 Voting Power.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "POINT",
  "addresses": [
    "0xa478c2975ab1ea89e8196811f51a7b7ade33eb11",
    "0xeF8305E140ac520225DAf050e2f71d5fBcC543e7"
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

Validation strategies

You can also configure a Validation strategy for voting. The combination of Voting Strategies and Voting validation allows you to achieve high customization of your governance process. How? Let's go through a couple of possible scenarios:

• You are using several Voting strategies for the Voting Power calculation, and at the same time, you want to require each user to have at least 10 VP to be able to cast a vote. You can then use Basic Validation with a minimum score of 10.

• Only specific users should be able to vote, and their Voting Power should depend on their holdings. You can use whitelist strategy in the custom Basic Validation setup, and any combination of Voting Strategies for the calculation of the individual Voting power.

• Your space is attacked by bots and you want only genuine humans to cast votes. You can use the Gitcoin Validation for Sybil resistance, and select a combination of Voting Strategies for VP calculation.

Let's have a look at the currently available strategies:

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 in 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 the 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.

What is a whale?

A cryptocurrency whale, more commonly known as a "crypto whale" or just a "whale," is a cryptocurrency community term that refers to individuals or entities that hold large amounts of cryptocurrency. Whales own enough cryptocurrency to influence currency markets. https://www.investopedia.com/terms/b/bitcoin-whale.asp

Whales can influence not only currency markets but also the governance process of web3 communities. With the large holdings, their sheer Voting Power can oftentimes swing a proposal for their advantage. This leads to outcomes that are not welcomed by the community, poses a threat to taking the Treasury over, and also to lowering community participation in the vote as its members don't see the point in voting knowing that one wallet can decide on its outcome.

Let's have a look at different setups that will allow your space to minimize the power of whales.

Voting types

You can predefine the Voting type that all proposals in your space will use. In the case of the anti-whale approach, the best solution is the Quadratic Voting type.

1. Quadratic voting

Snapshot's Quadratic Voting (QV) type goes beyond the conventional approach of simply calculating the square root of each voter's voting power. It presents a more nuanced and democratic framework for decision-making.

One of the main features of our QV type is its emphasis on the number of individual voters rather than the size of their voting power. By doing so, it ensures that every voice counts, thereby enhancing collective decision-making and preventing power concentration.

Additionally, Snapshot's QV type provides voters with the flexibility to distribute their voting power across multiple choices. This feature allows for a more precise representation of a voter's diverse opinions, all without any additional cost.

Drawing key principles from the Quadratic Funding model, our QV type fosters greater participation and effectively balances influence. It represents a significant advancement over simpler voting mechanisms that rely on basic square root calculations of voting power.

You can set it up for all proposals in your Space by heading to the Voting tab in the Space settings and selecting the desired Voting System in the Type field:

Let's have a look at an example:

Let's consider there are 3 voters and two choices, A and B:

• Alice with 9 tokens

• Bob with 4 tokens

• Maria with 1 token

• John with 1 token

Here's how they allocate their tokens:

• Alice allocates all her 9 tokens to A

• Bob allocates all his 4 tokens to B

• Maria allocates her 1 token to B

• John allocates his 1 token to B

This results in:

• A having 9 tokens

• B having 6 tokens

Now, let's calculate the individual square root contributions for each choice:

• A: the square root of Alice's 9 tokens is √9 = 3.

• B: the square root of Bob's 4 tokens is √4 = 2, the square root of Maria's 1 token is √1 = 1, and the square root of John's 1 token is √1 = 1.

Next, we add up the square root contributions for each choice and square the result:

• A: we square the 3, so A gets 3^2 = 9.

• B: we add 2, 1, and 1, giving us 4, and square it, so B gets 4^2 = 16.

The total amount of tokens is 9 + 16 = 25.

So the percentages for each choice are:

• A: 9 / 25 = 36%

• B: 16 / 25 = 64%

As a last step, we match these percentages with the total voting power of 14 tokens:

• A: 36% of 15 = 5.4 tokens

• B: 64% of 15 = 9.6 tokens

Voting strategies

1. balance-of-with-thresholds

You can think of it as creating multiple buckets which will determine the Voting Power of an individual address. To put it in the simplest way, imagine that:

• users who hold less than 5 tokens will have 0 Voting Power

• users who hold from 5 to 10 tokens will have 1 Voting Power

• users who hold from 10 to 20 tokens will have 2 Voting Power

• users who hold more than 20 tokens will have 5 Voting Power

As you can see, you are able to set various thresholds which will fix user's Voting Power at a specific level. This way whales who may have large holdings, for example 1000 tokens, will not get more than 5 Voting Power.

This way the voting can be more reflective of the public opinion.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0xf87e31492faf9a91b02ee0deaad50d51d56d5d4d",
  "symbol": "LAND",
  "decimals": 0,
  "thresholds": [
    { "threshold": 5, "votes": 1 },
    { "threshold": 10, "votes": 2 },
    { "threshold": 20, "votes": 5 }
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

2. anti-whale

This strategy executes a chosen Voting Strategy and applies algorithms to its result to reduce the impact of big wallets on the vote.

In practice, the strategy sets a soft restriction on the voting threshold by giving limited incentive to the voter below threshold by moderately increasing the voting power of voters and reducing the impact of whales as token amount increases, keeping the gap in voting power within a relatively moderate range.

As an example, assuming our threshold is 5:

• if user's Voting Power is below or equal to 5, their final Voting Power will be moderately increased

• if user's Voting Power is above 5, their final Voting Power will be reduced (the higher the Voting Power, the more increased it will be)

The following algorithm is applied to the result of the configured Voting Strategy:

If result > antiWhale.threshold
  result = antiWhale.inflectionPoint * ( result / antiWhale.inflectionPoint ) ^ antiWhale.exponent

If result <= antiWhale.threshold {
  thresholdMultiplier = ( antiWhale.inflectionPoint * ( antiWhale.threshold / antiWhale.inflectionPoint )^ antiWhale.exponent ) / antiWhale.threshold

  result = result * thresholdMultiplier
}

Parameters

antiWhale.threshold - point at which the antiWhale takes effect.

• Default: 1625

• Lower limit: > 0 - set to default if ≤ 0

thresholdMultiplier - the multiplier at which all results below antiWhale.threshold are multiplied.

antiWhale.inflectionPoint - point at which the output matches the result.

-> Results less than this will increase output.

-> Results greater than the inflection point will decrease output.

• Default: 6500

• Lower limit: > 0 - set to default if ≤ 0

• Must be bigger or equal to antiWhale.threshold. Otherwise will be same as antiWhale.threshold

antiWhale.exponent - the exponent is responsible for the antiWhale effect.

-> Must be ≤ 1, or else it will have a pro-whale effect.

-> Must be ＞0, or else it will cause total voting power to trend to 0. Look at the example below to understand its effect.

• Default: 0.5.

• Upper limit: 1.

• Lower limit: > 0 - set to default if ≤ 0.

log: Boolean flag to enable or disable logging to the console (used for debugging purposes during development)

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "ANTI",
  "strategy": {
    "name": "erc20-balance-of",
    "params": {
      "address": "0x579cea1889991f68acc35ff5c3dd0621ff29b0c9",
      "symbol": "IQ",
      "decimals": 18
    }
  },
  "antiWhale": {
    "inflectionPoint": 1000,
    "threshold": 250,
    "exponent": 0.5
  },
  "log": true
}

A Sybil attack is a type of attack on a computer network service in which an attacker subverts the service's reputation system by creating a large number of pseudonymous identities and uses them to gain a disproportionately large influence.\

source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sybil_attack

In the crypto world, attacks, hacks, and scams are unfortunately all too common. Phishing links can be found everywhere - on Twitter, in seemingly harmless blog posts, and in personal emails. We’ve not been immune to them either! As a popular tool for decentralized decision-making, Snapshot.org is an attractive target for scammers looking to manipulate governance proposals for their own gain.

How to make your Space more Sybil resistant?

There are multiple ways which can help you minimize the risk of scams, bots and spam behaviors within your space. We will look into:

• Space roles

• Validation Strategies (use for Proposal Creation and Voting)

• Voting Strategies (use for Voting Validation)

1. Space roles

Let’s first recap 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 organization 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 organization 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!

2. 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 or cast a vote.

Each space can use one Proposal and one Voting 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.

3. Voting Strategies

membership

Useful when combined with Quadratic Voting, which provides a certain level of Sybil resistance.

The strategy combines any arbitrary Voting Strategy defining a membership with any Voting Strategy calculating the Voting Power of a user. In the idea one can only vote if he passes the membership strategy, the membership here can be an identity symbol like possessing a UID or a PUNK (with an erc721 strategy) or any other custom verification strategy based on on-chain behavior.

The membership portion is binary. If the membership strategy returns any number > 0 for an address, then user is considered a member and their Voting Power will be the result of the votingPowerStrategy.

Otherwise voting power for that address will be 0.

Strategy setup:

{
    "membershipStrategy": {
      "name": "erc721",
        "params": {
          "address": "0xb47e3cd837ddf8e4c57f05d70ab865de6e193bbb"
        }
    },
    "votingPowerStrategy": {
      "name": "erc20-balance-of",
        "params": {
          "address": "0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f",
          "symbol": "DAI",
          "decimals": 18,
        }
    },
    "symbol": "DAI"
  }

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

whitelist

Assuming the wallet address has been verified to prove its identity by the Space admins the simplest way to implement is to use whitelist strategy which only allows addresses passed into the param to vote on proposals, which is 1 vote 1 address.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "POINT",
  "addresses": [
    "0xa478c2975ab1ea89e8196811f51a7b7ade33eb11",
    "0xeF8305E140ac520225DAf050e2f71d5fBcC543e7"
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

This section will help you combine Voting types, Validation, and Voting strategies based on your organization's needs. We will look into:

At the moment, Snapshot already supports calculating the Voting Power of the underlying token in the LP/staking contract from the most popular AMMs like Uniswap v2 and v3, Balancer, or SushiSwap.

This page only goes through popular strategies as projects may have a different method to call deposited balance in their contracts, which is often customized for a specific use case.

By enabling such a strategy in your space, you can allow the proposal to capture more users interested in your governance.

Some spaces allow only users holding tokens in liquidity/staking pools to have Voting Power.

The strategy fetches the balance of the input token address in all Uniswap-v2 liquidity pools.

This allows uni-v2 LP token holders to vote based on the underlying token cumulated in each pool.

Strategy setup:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

Many platforms offer decent yields on one's Uniswap LP tokens.

By staking in their farms, users transfer their LP tokens to the contract they are interacting with (staking contract) and then can earn rewards from the farm they have joined.

The specific type of LP that can be farmed depends on the individual platforms.

The staked-uniswap strategy allows you to get token balance of an LP in a staking contract.

Strategy setup:

• tokenAddress: the underlying token you want to use to calculate Voting Power

• uniswapAddress: the Uniswap LP address where users can deposit their token

• stakingAddress: the staking contract address where users stake their LP token

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

In this context, the USDC / ETH LPs with 0.3% and 0.05% fees represent different contract addresses (poolAddress) respectively.

The demo illustrates how to get USDC balance in the USDC / ETH 0.3% liquidity pool. If you want to calculate the other token in the pool, you can change the paramtokenReserve to 1.

Strategy setup:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

LP tokens provided in SushiSwap are called SLP tokens, and the SLP tokens can be staked into the farm (MasterChef LP Staking Pool) to earn rewards.

This strategy can return the balance of the underlying token in SushiSwap's LP pools and farms as well.

Strategy setup:

• address - the underlying token address

• useStakedBalances - if true it will also return the token balances from the MasterChef LP Staking Pool

• masterchefVersion - if v2 it will return the token balances from the MasterChef V2 staking contract instead of MasterChef V1.

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

The strategy is more generic and it gets the balance of the LP token or the underlying base token in the LP from a MasterChef staking pool.

Strategy setup:

• chefAddress: Masterchef contract address

• pid: masterchef pool id (starting with zero)

• uniPairAddress: address of a Uniswap pair (or a sushi pair or any other with the same interface)

  • if uniPairAddress is null, returns staked LP token balance as is

  • if the uniPairAddress option is provided, converts staked LP token balance to base token balance (based on the pair total supply and base token reserve)

• tokenIndex: index of a token in LP pair, by default 0, can switch to 1 for another base token

• weight: integer multiplier of the result (for combining strategies with different weights | optional)

• weightDecimals: integer divisor of the result (1 gives a decimal before the result | optional)

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

A lot of use cases are beyond regular LP/staking scope, for example calculating the balance of staked NFT or from a custom contract.

The good news is, if there's a method in your contract that reads the balance of the staked token with a single call (interaction with the Smart Contract), you don't need to create a new strategy.

Instead, use contract-call strategy, which allows any contract method to be used to calculate voter scores.

Strategy setup:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

What is a role?

Role is a set of permissions related to managing your space and its proposals which an account (wallet address) can be granted.

Role permissions

Controller

Controller of space has a full control over the space settings including managing the list of admins.

Admin

Admin can edit space settings with the exception of the list of admin users and archive proposals.

Moderator

Moderator can manage proposals within the Space and create new ones.

Author

Author can create proposals regardless of their voting power and the proposal validation strategy.

Assign a role to the user

Controller

There can be only one controller per space and can be updated only by the current controller.

To update the controller role head to the space settings on Snapshot and the Advanced tab. At the bottom of the page you'll find the Danger zone where you can change the controller:

Paste the address of the account you want to set as space controller in the pop-up window and click Set. It will trigger your wallet browser extension and ask you to sign a transaction with a gas fee.

Admins, moderators, and authors

To update the admins and authors lists head to the space settings on Snapshot and the Members tab.

You can add addresses one by one and choose their applicable role:

NFTs are a type of token that represents something unique or indivisible.

Unlike ERC-20 tokens, NFTs are non-interchangeable, meaning each token has its own distinct value and properties. NFTs are designed to represent ownership or proof of authenticity for a specific digital or physical asset. These assets can include digital art, collectibles, virtual real estate, in-game items, and more.

So, can you give someone Voting Power if they hold an NFT from your collection?

Sure thing, read on!

Suppose you want to restrict the ability to vote within your community for example to prevent bots from affecting the results or to prioritize members with higher stakes in your organization. In that case, you can do so by setting up Voting Strategies or a combination of Voting and Validation Strategies for your space.

To recap what Voting and Validation Strategies are:

Validation Strategies are a way to define who is allowed to vote on a proposal or create a new one.

Voting Strategies calculate how much Voting Power each user has.

Voting Validation

This solution is a combination of any Voting Strategy/-ies and Voting Validation.

Defining the required threshold of the user's Voting Power can be set up simply and leverage the Voting Strategies used in the Space.

Go to Space Settings and open the Voting tab. At the bottom you can find the Validation section:

Basic Voting Validation

Select the Basic Voting Validation.

This way you can easily define how much Voting Power is required for the users to cast votes on Proposals in your Space. Voting Power is calculated on the basis of the Voting Strategies set for your Space.

For example, if your Voting Strategy is erc20-balance-of and a user holds 20 tokens, their Voting Power will be 20 and they will be eligible to vote with the Basic Validation set at 10.

If they hold 5 tokens, they won't be able to cast a vote as it's < 10 VP.

Gitcoin Passport Validation

Select the Gitcoin Passport Validation.

This Validation allows you to set requirements by checking the Gitcoin Passport stamps which serve as validation for the 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.

Voting Strategies

It is also possible to set a required threshold directly through a Voting Strategy.

balance-of-with-min

The strategy specifies the minimum balance required for a single token held in the user's wallet.

Let's have a look at an example below. In order to be eligible to vote users are required to hold at least 20 DAI at the snapshot of proposal creation.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0x6b175474e89094c44da98b954eedeac495271d0f",
  "symbol": "DAI",
  "decimals": 18,
  "minBalance": 20
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

balance-of-with-thresholds

This strategy allows you to define multiple thresholds and allocate Voting Power at each level.

In the example below, whoever holds less than 1 unit of the token will have 0 Voting Power.

Users holding more than 1 but less than 4 units of the token will have 1 Voting Power.

The maximum Voting Power per user will be fixed at 4 no matter how much of the token they own.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0xf87e31492faf9a91b02ee0deaad50d51d56d5d4d",
  "symbol": "LAND",
  "decimals": 0,
  "thresholds": [
    { "threshold": 1, "votes": 1 },
    { "threshold": 4, "votes": 2 },
    { "threshold": 11, "votes": 3 },
    { "threshold": 25, "votes": 4 }
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc20-with-balance

erc20-with-balance in its simplest form assigns 1 vote to wallets holding any balance of the token. Regardless of how big the balance is, the VP is always the same and is at 1 VP. If the wallet doesn't hold any token, the VP is 0.

Now, to use this strategy to set a voting threshold you can add an optional parameter minBalance and define the minimum required balance which will give the user the eligibility to vote and 1 Voting Power. The parameter value is set to 0 by default.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0x84cA8bc7997272c7CfB4D0Cd3D55cd942B3c9419",
  "symbol": "Rome",
  "decimals": 18,
  "minBalance": 10
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

math & multichain

Math strategy is powerful in its composability. It allows you to apply common mathematical operations to the outputs of Voting Strategies.

As an example, you can take a square root of the Voting Power calculated by erc20-balance-of, or the lower (min) value out of two different Voting Strategies. You can see all possibilities on the strategy page.

How to set it up for a multichain scenario?

If the Voting Power calculated for your space is based on tokens on different chains and you want to set a minimum threshold defining if a user is eligible to vote, you can use the a-if-lt-b operand. Don't worry if it sounds cryptic, we will go through it step by step.

Let's look at the formula first: (x, a, b) = x < b ? a : x, where:

• x - sum of Voting Power calculated by the two Voting Strategies on chains 137 and 1 (as per the example below)

• a - first constant, in our case it's 0

• b - first constant, in our case it's 100

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "GHST",
  "operands": [
    {
      "type": "strategy",
      "strategy": {
        "name": "multichain",
        "params": {
          "strategies": [
            {
              "name": "erc20-balance-of",
              "network": "137",
              "params": {
                "address": "0x385eeac5cb85a38a9a07a70c73e0a3271cfb54a7",
                "decimals": 18
              }
            },
            {
              "name": "erc20-balance-of",
              "network": "1",
              "params": {
                "address": "0x3f382dbd960e3a9bbceae22651e88158d2791550",
                "decimals": 18
              }
            }
          ]
        }
      }
    },
    {
      "type": "constant",
      "value": 0
    },
    {
      "type": "constant",
      "value": 1
    }
  ],
  "operation": "a-if-lt-b"
}

The algorithm will check if x is smaller than b, the second constant:

• if it's below b, the final Voting Power will be set to a, first constant -> 0

• if it's equal to and higher than b, the final Voting Power will be set to x, the sum of result from the Voting Strategies

As you can see we can easily define what is the minimum Voting Power (our example: 100) coming from different chains that is required for the user to vote!

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

5. holds-tokens

If you want to require users to hold specific tokens in order to be eligible to vote you can use the holds-tokens strategy.

The minimum balance for each token can be customized.

Users who meet the criteria will receive 1 Voting Power regardless of the total value of the tokens they hold.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "XYZ",
  "tokenAddresses": [
    {
      "address": "0x57f1887a8BF19b14fC0dF6Fd9B2acc9Af147eA85",
      "network": "1",
      "decimals": 0,
      "minBalance": 0
    },
    {
      "address": "0xaC4255eC6885E50352A1957062ac418c2CC94e27",
      "network": "137",
      "decimals": 0,
      "minBalance": 0
    }
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

How can users delegate their Voting Power?

Before we jump straight into the Voting Strategies setup, let's first understand how users can delegate their Voting Power to others through Snapshot.

<UPDATE FOR NEW DELEGATION UI>

Voting Strategies

In order to take the delegated Voting Power into account, your space has to use one of the delegation Voting Strategies.

In Snapshot, based on whether the delegated power can be taken back by the delegators when they vote, there are two main delegation strategies:

• with-delegation - the delegator cannot vote, only the delegate can participate in voting

• delegation - allows the delegator to vote despite having delegated their Voting Power

Let's have a look at both in detail:

with-delegation

This strategy is a combination of delegation + own Voting Power (if not delegated to anyone), moreover, it prevents the delegators from taking back their delegated VP.

By using this strategy, one can no longer vote if he delegated to another one, and the delegatee's voting power will be his own VP + delegated VP.

The sub-strategies are used to define the source of own VP and delegation.

Strategy setup

{
  "symbol": "POH (delegated)",
  "delegationSpace": "poh.eth",
  "delegationNetwork": "1",
  "strategies": [
    {
      "name": "erc20-balance-of",
      "params": {
        "address": "0x1dAD862095d40d43c2109370121cf087632874dB",
        "decimals": 0
      }
    }
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

delegation

This strategy returns the delegated Voting Power only.

Now, what's the deal with both delegate and delegator casting a vote?

In the delegation strategy, if A delegates to B and both of them vote, then the delegated voting power is not calculated. Only the vote of A will be calculated.

The vote of B will be counted if A does not vote.

It can include a list of sub-strategies (erc20-..., erc1155-..., whitelist, etc) to calculate the user's Voting Power based on the delegation.

Strategy setup

The below example shows that the space allows YFI balance as the delegated voting power in yam.eth space.

{
  "symbol": "YFI (delegated)",
  "delegationSpace": "yam.eth",
  "strategies": [
    {
      "name": "erc20-balance-of",
      "params": {
        "address": "0xBa37B002AbaFDd8E89a1995dA52740bbC013D992",
        "symbol": "YFI",
        "decimals": 18
      }
    }
  ]
}son

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

Let's start with a quick overview of the ERC721 and ERC1155 standards:

Let's have a look at what Voting Strategies you can use in your space:

erc1155-balance-of

The strategy returns the balance of a specific ERC-1155 token in the user's wallet.

Since the ERC-1155 standard supports multiple token types, the tokenId here may refer to a particular kind of token or a single item of the collection under the contract address.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "ABC",
  "address": "0xE18a32192ED95b0FE9D70D19e5025f103475d7BA",
  "tokenId": "0x8000000000000000000000000000000200000000000000000000000000000000",
  "decimals": 0
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc1155-all-balances-of

This strategy returns the balance of voters for all tokens in an ERC1155 contract.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0x61fcE80D72363B731425c3A2A46a1A5fed9814B2",
  "symbol": "CYBORG"
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc1155-balance-of-ids

Use this strategy if you want to calculate the Voting Power taking into account multiple tokenIDs.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "ABC",
  "address": "0x2939b94BDc377e66A377cfc15028DF3Bd6aC6C28",
  "ids": [
    "59",
    "352"
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc1155-with-multiplier

The equivalent of the erc721-with-multiplierVoting Strategy.

By adjusting the multiplier to 5, if a user owns 1 DAWN in his wallet, they will get 5 Voting Power (1*5).

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0x2C56b43983Ca77cc29b27B4a731F0f0d54ae7e52",
  "tokenId": 1,
  "symbol": "DAWN",
  "decimals": 0,
  "multiplier": 5
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc1155-balance-of-ids-weighted

If you'd like to give more or less weight to a list of specific tokenIDs, you can do so by using this strategy. It might serve as a great addition to the erc1155-with-multiplier for VP differentiation.

Strategy setup:

{
  "symbol": "ABC",
  "address": "0x28472a58A490c5e09A238847F66A68a47cC76f0f",
  "ids": [
    "0",
    "1"
  ],
  "weight": 10
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

ERC-721 was the first standardized interface for creating and trading NFTs and is still considered the gold standard.

ADD SOME JOYFUL TEXT HERE

In Snapshot, the balanceOf method is applied to both the erc721 and erc20 strategies. The main difference in their implementation is that the decimal of an NFT should always be set to 0.

erc721

This strategy returns the balance of the specific ERC721 NFT that the user holds.

It's the most common strategy for NFT-based voting.

How to set it up? Just provide the contract address of the NFT and its symbol.

One who owned the specified NFT at the snapshot of proposal creation will be able to vote based on the number of NFTs they have in their wallet.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0xb47e3cd837dDF8e4c57F05d70Ab865de6e193BBB",
  "symbol": "PUNK"
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc721-with-multiplier

This strategy gives an arbitrary weight to the balance of the voters for a specific ERC721 NFT.

By adjusting the multiplier to 100, if a user owns 1 LAND in his wallet, he will get 100 votes (1*100) on the proposal.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0xf87e31492faf9a91b02ee0deaad50d51d56d5d4d",
  "symbol": "LAND",
  "multiplier": 100
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc721-with-tokenid

Each NFT under the same contract address can be identified by its unique tokenID.

This strategy returns the balance of the voters for a specific ERC721 NFT with a given tokenID.

If a user holds the NFT which tokenID is included in the tokenIds parameter, they will get 1 vote regardless of how many they hold in total.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0x22C1f6050E56d2876009903609a2cC3fEf83B415",
  "symbol": "POAP",
  "tokenIds": ["613607", "613237"]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc721-with-tokenid-weighted

This strategy is a modification of erc721-with-tokenid.

It allows 1 vote per whitelisted tokenID specified in the parameter.

So in contrary to the previous strategy, the user who holds three NFTs, each included in the strategy setup, will have 3 Voting Power.

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0x30cDAc3871c41a63767247C8D1a2dE59f5714e78",
  "symbol": "Reaper(s)",
  "tokenIds": ["2112", "2871", "3221", "3587"]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

erc721-with-tokenid-range-weights

The strategy returns the weighted balance of the voters for ERC721 NFT of which the Token ID is specified in the tokenIdWeightRanges.

Why it might be useful for your space?

• NFTs in the collection have continuous tokenIDs

• You want to assign different weights to specific batches of the collection (higher VP for first NFT minters, lower VP for latest NFT owners)

The NFT can be assigned a different weight based on the range its token ID falls within.

For example, a user who owns 3 NFTs with the tokenIds: 1000, 6000 and 8000 respectively will have 3 Voting Power. [(1*2)+(1*1)+(1*0)]

Strategy setup:

{
  "address": "0xbc4ca0eda7647a8ab7c2061c2e118a18a936f13d",
  "symbol": "BAYC",
  "defaultWeight": 0,
  "tokenIdWeightRanges": [
    { "start": 0, "end": 1000, "weight": 2 },
    { "start": 1001, "end": 6000, "weight": 1 }
  ]
}

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

What is a proposal?

Proposal is the key element of the voting system. It presents a change suggestion related to a specific organization and enables eligible users to cast their vote.

Who can create a proposal?

Create a proposal

1. Head to the space which you wish to create your proposal for.

2. Connect with the wallet provider - make sure the connected wallet is where you hold the tokens relevant to the specific space.

3. Click New proposal in space sidebar:\
4. Fill in the following fields: - Title - Description (optional, 10K character limit) - Discussion link (optional)\
5. Select the desired voting system, specify the possible vote options, and define the duration of your proposal. Make sure you allow enough time for users to vote.\
6. Click Publish - and that's it! You can see your proposal in the proposals list on the space page.

Snapshot block number

When you create a proposal by default the snapshot block number will be populated with the latest block synced from our node.

Proposals limitations

• There is a character limit of 10,000 for the description of a proposal.

• One address can have a maximum of 10 active proposals at a time, across multiple spaces.

• Each space has a limit on the number of proposals created daily and monthly:

• All testnet spaces will have the same proposal limits as a Verified space

Delegate your voting power on Snapshot

2. Enter the address you want to delegate to.

3. To limit the delegation to a specific space, tap the on toggle button and enter the space key (example: balancer.eth) you want your delegation to take effect on. If no space is selected, the effect will take place for all spaces.

4. Click Confirm to save your delegation.

POAPs stands for Proof of Attendance Protocol. In simple terms, POAPs are like digital badges or tokens that you can earn for attending or participating in certain events, both in-person and online.

Let's say you attend a conference, workshop, or even a virtual event. The organizers of that event can create a unique digital token called a POAP. It serves as proof that someone was present or participated in that specific event. Each token has a unique code or ID that represents their attendance.

Now, how can you reward your community for their attendance by giving them Voting Power?

There are several strategies that you can use for your Space:

The poap strategy returns the balance of POAP for a certain event as Voting Power. However, when the eventIds is skipped, it will return the number of all POAP tokens owned by the address.

Strategy setup:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

Since POAP is an ERC721 NFT, it can be distinguished by its tokenID, i.e. each tokenID represents a unique POAP. One can designate multiple tokenIDs and attach different weight to each.

Who can vote on proposals?

There are several aspects that define if you are eligible to vote on a specific proposal.

Voting strategies

More often than not the answer is - you did not hold the sufficient amount of specified token at the time of proposal creation.

Voting validation

Cast a vote

1. Click the Connect wallet button in the top right corner.

2. Connect with the wallet provider where you hold the tokens relevant for the space you want to vote in.

3. Go to the space page on Snapshot and selected the active proposal you are interested in.

5. Click to Vote button and sign the message via your wallet provider when prompted.

What is a voting strategy?

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.

In technical terms a strategy is a JavaScript function that returns a score for a set of addresses.

Voting strategies can be used to create a score from on-chain data, the data however does not necessarily need to be monetary. As an example a strategy can calculate how many POAPs or specific NFTs a user owns.

How to set up a strategy?

Majority of spaces on Snapshot is using a single strategy however if you need a more complex calculation, you can combine up to 8 strategies. They will be applied to all proposals created for your space (created after the update of the settings) and the voting power will be calculated cumulatively.

In order to set up a voting strategy head to your space settings and scroll down to Strategies section. You should see the below pop-up after clicking Add strategy and selecting a strategy from the list:

You will see that there is information that you need to provide in order to make the strategy work, for example the network where the token is deployed, its symbol and address of the token's contract.

Testing a voting strategy

Before you add the strategy to your space's settings we highly recommend to test it in the Playground in order to avoid any potential issues with the voting process.

You can access it from the strategy's detail page by clicking the Playground on the right-hand side:

Your browser will load a Playground page where you can test the custom setup for the chosen strategy. As you can see on the below screenshot you can set the required parameters and provide a list of addresses which in this case are or are not holding a the PUNK ERC721 token.

Snapshot provides several Voting Strategies that allow you to use your own API to return user's Voting Power or for example perform mathematical calculations on the results from existing Strategies.

This strategy allows off-chain data to be used as Voting Power through calling a custom API endpoint to request the score for a set of addresses.

It's useful to use this strategy if your API can return the Voting Power directly. It's network agnostic.

Strategy setup:

If you are passing an IPFS URL use the following format:

If you are passing a JSON URL use the following format:

If you are passing an API URL use the following format:

If you are passing a API URL with POST method use the following format:

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

Math strategy is powerful in its composability. It allows you to apply common mathematical operations to the outputs of Voting Strategies.

How to set it up for a multichain scenario?

If the Voting Power calculated for your space is based on tokens on different chains and you want to set a minimum threshold defining if a user is eligible to vote, you can use the a-if-lt-b operand. Don't worry if it sounds cryptic, we will go through it step by step.

Let's look at the formula first: (x, a, b) = x < b ? a : x, where:

• x - sum of Voting Power calculated by the two Voting Strategies on chains 137 and 1 (as per the example below)

• a - first constant, in our case it's 0

• b - first constant, in our case it's 100

Strategy setup:

The algorithm will check if x is smaller than b, the second constant:

• if it's below b, the final Voting Power will be set to a, first constant -> 0

• if it's equal to and higher than b, the final Voting Power will be set to x, the sum of result from the Voting Strategies

As you can see we can easily define what is the minimum Voting Power (our example: 100) coming from different chains that is required for the user to vote!

You can test it out in the Playground on Snapshot:

What is a validation strategy?

A voting validation is a JavaScript function that returns a boolean (true or false) for the connected account. Voting validations are being used on Snapshot to decide if an account can vote or create a proposal in a specific space. Each space can use one voting validation for all of its proposals at a time. While voting strategies calculate the Voting Power mainly on the basis of the monetary assets, the validation strategy can serve as a protection against Sybil attacks. It can take into consideration how many POAPs an account owns or track the account activity to assess if the account is a bot or a real human.

The default validation is checking if the address has any voting power. If the voting power is higher than 0 the connected account is validated. A validation strategy can send a call to a node or subgraph.

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 or post spam votes.

Therefore for Proposal Validation 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.

How to use validation strategies:

Validation strategies can be used for two purposes:

• proposal validation - determine if the account can create a new proposal,

• voting validation - determine if the account can take part in the voting process.

Proposal Validation in Space Settings

Head to Proposals tab in the sidebar to update the configuration:

Voting Validation in Space Settings

Head to Voting tab in the sidebar to update the configuration:

If you want to allow addresses with any voting power to vote you can use the default voting validation.

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 strategy example - Basic

The Basic validation strategy allows you to use existing Voting Strategies configured for your space or define a custom setup to determine if a user is eligible to create a proposal or cast a vote.

In order to use existing setup of Voting Strategies you can simply chose Basic Validation and define a required threshold as on the screenshot below. 100 corresponds to user's Voting Power calculated on the basis of the Voting Strategies.

If you wish to use a different configuration, toggle the Use custom strategies button and define the strategies for your use case:

Validation strategy example - Gitcoin Passport

Validation strategy built together with Gitcoin Passport. 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.

Implementation

Have a look at the example of the Gitcoin Passport validation strategy.

Voting validation can be specified in your space settings at https://snapshot.page/#/<SPACE ADDRESS>/settings.

Create a custom validation

Find more voting validations here:

You can use a Gnosis Safe to vote, create a proposal or setup a space on Snapshot.

Gnosis Safe interface

Asynchronous signing

If you'd like to enable asynchronous signing for all Safe's signers and not have to keep the modal open, you have to enable on-chain signatures in the Safe settings.\

1. Go to Safe Settings -> Safe Apps.

2. Enable Always use on-chain signatures

Overview

Snapshot.js is an open source JavaScript client which comes with the core functions of the Snapshot's off-chain voting system. It was designed to work both in the browser and with Node.js.

Get started

Installation

Node.js

To install Snapshot.js on Node.js, open your terminal and run:

Browser

You can create an index.html file and include Snapshot.js with:

Development

Install dependencies

Build package

Usage

Base features

Init client

Cast a vote

Create proposal

Create or edit a space

Join a space

Utils

getScores

Calculate voting power for a list of voters.

getVp

Retrieve voting power for a specific address using given strategies.

validate

Validate an address using a given validation strategy.

getProvider

Return a Ethers.js JsonRPCProvider connected to an archive node.

To help integrators track and identify activity originating from their applications, Snapshot supports an optional app parameter. This parameter can be included when users cast votes or create proposals, allowing you to tag these actions with your application's identifier.

Using app with Snapshot.js

Adding app to Snapshot URLs

For platforms that redirect users to Snapshot, you can append the app parameter to the URL. This tags the action with your application's identifier when the user interacts on Snapshot.

URL format:

Example:

Parameter requirements

• Format: Lowercase alphanumeric string

• Maximum length: 24 characters

• Purpose: The app parameter will be stored with the vote or proposal data on Snapshot. This enables you to identify and analyze activities originating from your application.

By using the app parameter, you can seamlessly integrate Snapshot into your platform while maintaining clear visibility over user interactions related to your application.

To add your own voting validation strategy on Snapshot you need to fork the snapshot-strategies repository and create a pull request.

1. Navigate to the src\validations.

2. Create a copy of the basic strategy folder and rename it to the name of your voting validation.

3. Customize the logic of your voting validation.

If you are not sure about the Validation class, have a look at its definition:

4. Test your validation

To make sure your validation passes all tests, run:

4. Make sure you pass the checklist

Have a look here on the requirements for adding a new validation strategy and make sure you fulfill the points in the checklist:

5. Create a pull request

The team will then review your PR and after it's approved and merged it will be available to choose in your space settings.

If you can't find a strategy that fits your the needs of your space you can create a new custom one. Follow the steps below to learn how to do that:

1. Fork the snapshot-strategies repository

Create a fork of the snapshot-strategies repository:

2. Duplicate the erc20-balance-of strategy folder

Navigate to strategies directory, duplicate the erc20-balance-of directory and rename it to the chosen name for your new strategy.

3. Write the logic for your strategy

There are several files you need to edit:

a. index.ts

This file defines the logic for calculation of the voting power. As an example, the erc20-balance-of is taking as parameters space, network, provider, addresses, options and snapshot in order to be able to retrieve the balances of the token specified in the options parameter for the provided addresses:

b. schema.json

Describe the structure of your strategy by editing the properties, required and additionalProperties key-value pairs according to the logic from index.ts file:

d. ./snapshot-strategies/src/strategies/index.ts

d. examples.json

Provide an example for the custom strategy setup which will be displayed on https://snapshot.org on the strategy's details page.

Make sure to include all the parameters you defined above and a list of addresses to test against:

e. README.md

Write the description of how the strategy works and provide an example of the setup. It will be displayed on the strategy's details page.

4. Test the strategy locally

Once you saved all the files run the below command with the name of your new strategy:

5. Review the checklist

6. Create a pull request

The review can take the team up to 72 hours, so please be patient 🙏

7. Try it out!

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

Limits

🔓 No API Key: 100 requests per minute.

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

How can I get an API Key?

1. Apply via the request form

API Key Request Form

2. Wait 72 hours

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

3. Generate the API Key

a) Sign the message with keyword generateKey:

b) 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. As an example:

You will receive the API Key as a response of the curl request. Make sure to store it securely.

How to structure the query with my key?

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

Alternatively, you can use the apiKey param in the query string with your key as a value:

If you are using the GraphQL interface you need to provide your key in the headers tab:

Snapshot uses webhooks to notify your application when an event happens. Webhooks are particularly useful for asynchronous events like when a proposal is created, when it starts, or when it ends.

The webhook server sends a request for any new event, the request is sent to the configured URL with POST method and the event object as body.

Here is an example of the event object:

Here are the possible events:

proposal/created When a new proposal is created

proposal/start When the voting period for a proposal starts.

proposal/end When the voting period for a proposal ends.

proposal/deleted When a proposal is deleted by the author or an admin of the space.

Test a webhook

Subscribe to events

How to delegate?

Snapshot enables a couple of ways to delegate your Voting Power to another address (a delegate).

You can delegate your Voting Power via:

Let's look at each option in detail.

Delegates registry

It is possible to discover the Delegate registry of Spaces that provided their custom delegation contract in settings.

Head to the Space page and click Delegates in the left sidebar**:**

You will then see a list of delegates for the Space with the number of their delegators and their total Voting Power within the Space.

You can delegate your Voting Power to one of the delegates directly by clicking the Delegate button:

Delegate page

2. Enter the address you want to delegate to.

3. To limit the delegation to a specific space, tap the on switch button and enter the space key (example: balancer.eth) you want your delegation to take effect on. If no space is selected, the effect will take place for all spaces.

4. Click confirm to save your delegation.

Smart contract interaction

You need to call the setDelegate method with the space id as the first argument (space id is its ENS domain name, for example fabien.eth), and the address of the delegate as the second argument.

Here is an example of integration in a Solidity contract:

Supported networks

• Mainnet

• Sepolia

• Optimism

• Arbitrum

• Polygon

• BNB Chain

• Gnosis Chain

• Fantom

• Base

• Base sepolia

• Linea

• Blast

• Sonic

• Mantle

Delegation contract