📚Mission 9
Learning to sign a Snapshot vote.
In the last mission we learned how to make real transactions using the USDC token. In today's mission, we are going to learn what the Snapshot is, its function and importance in learning to use it in practice.
1. Snapshot
Snapshot is a decentralized voting system. It is a system used by DAOs to manage governance. Many tokens have governance utility and allow token holders to vote on certain matters relevant to the DAO.
This voting system is extremely important and useful when it comes to decentralization, so if you ever want to participate in a DAO, it is important to learn how to register your vote and actively participate in the management of the DAO.
The system provides flexibility in how voting power is calculated for a vote. It supports various types of voting to suit the needs of each organization. Creating proposals and voting on Snapshot is easy to use and gas-free as the process is off-chain.
Creating proposals and voting on them is free (no gas cost). Votes are signed messages that can be verified online. Snapshot provides multiple voting systems, flexible voting strategies for calculating results, and it's all open source.
In a decentralized organization (DAO), for example, Snapshot votes can be used to decide what will be done in the company. Votes can be cast using tokens (like our MELK), NFTs and other digital assets. For this mission, we are going to use a space created for it where we will learn to vote using Snapshot.
2. DAOs
What is a DAO? And what do they have to do with our mission? Let's understand this now.
DAOs, or Decentralized Autonomous Organizations in a more formal concept, are groups of people with common goals and objectives, this group being organized by a decentralized leadership, making decisions through voting.
In an analysis with the world of web2, a DAO is a company, however, nobody is the boss. The DAO is run by everyone, through voting systems, and that's where Snapshot comes in. The purpose of DAOs is to establish a company or organization that functions without the presence of a management hierarchy. DAOs also make use of smart contracts, i.e., code contracts that are immutable, to implement automated operations, which no one controls.
See this reference video.
DAOs have a proposal that aims to solve problems, allowing the free molding of the organization, the possibility of presenting innovative ideas by anyone (through the voting system) and recording activities on the blockchain (transparency).
The concept of DAOs is very new in the world, and here in Brazil there are few DAOs. We can cite as an example Web3dev and Bankless Brasil.
3. What is it like to work for a DAO?
After this introduction to the DAO concept, you might be wondering: ok, but how do you work for a DAO?
To explain this workflow, I'll use Web3dev, the DAO I mentioned in the paragraph above, as an example. Web3dev is a DAO focused on education and work on web3 technologies. The DAO structure is divided into Pods. Pods are working groups, with structures defined by the DAO itself and, in the case of Web3dev, with 2 leaders. This group (the Pod) comes together to solve a problem or implement something specific.
If you're interested in this framework, read about PODs in the community manual.
In addition, the DAO has a financial budget that is used to pay POD members and leaders. Activity management is done by pod leaders together with members, using decentralized voting systems (Snapshot), so that everyone can help build a better DAO and service. On the financial side, it is important to note that each DAO has a different structure, but at Web3dev, Pod leaders receive 100 USD and members receive 50 USD. The amount of this compensation is something that could be proposed and voted on using Snapshot.
4. Governance
The governance of a DAO represents how the DAO will be governed, that is, how proposals will be made and actions carried out. To exemplify Web3dev again, the DAO will be governed by W3D token holders. The policy is that treasury allocation (for funding, liquidity and investment), service provider changes and tokenomics updates (governance, sourcing, distribution) will only take place after a successful proposal and vote. In the case of web3dev, governance is being implemented gradually and in phases. At the beginning of the DAO, all decisions will be made by the founders of Web3dev, and then they will be handled by the community.
But why do founders make the decisions from the start?
That’s because at the beginning of a DAO, decision-making by the founders makes initial development faster and more practical, allowing for quick and less bureaucratic decision-making. As the DAO grows, decision-making will be passed on to the community and, consequently, governance will be fully implemented.
5. Melk DAO
After understanding what a DAO is, how it works, its advantages and downsides for a company, it is important to emphasize that: the MELK experiment is also a DAO. We believe in decentralized work and building a collaborative community. So today we are going to teach you how to join our DAO and vote for or against proposals for it!
6. Fazendo parte da Melk DAO
To get started, let's go to the snapshot website. Enter the link below:
Your page should look like this:
Let's understand the screen. It is very simple, we have examples of several "spaces". That's what we call the Snapshot voting space. Each space represents a DAO. We also see a familiar “Connect Wallet” button.
To enter the Melk DAO space, let's first connect our wallet:
When you click “Connect Wallet”, your screen should look like this:
Click on the item where it says MetaMask.
Upon clicking, a pop-up will open asking for your Metamask password and showing the terms for connecting the wallet, as we have done several times during our missions.
After connecting the wallet, your screen should look like this:
Note that now, in the upper right corner, your address is displayed, which means you are connected to Snapshot! Good one!
Now, to find the DAO space of our MELK project, let's type melk in the search bar:
When typing melk, your screen should look like the screen above, showing our MELK DAO as a result. Cool, we found the project's DAO!
Now, let's be part of this DAO. In this way, it will be possible to follow the project votes and integrate all project participants in one place, so that everyone can contribute to the growth of our Melk project!
Click the “Join” button, just below the DAO name:
When you click the button, a Metamask Popup should appear on your screen, like this:
Click “Sign” to agree to your entry into the MELK DAO space!
When you click “Sign”, your screen should look like this:
Note that now, instead of “Join”, “Joined” appears, which means that you have successfully joined the DAO space. Also, on the left part of the site, you can see the melk project icon and a notification sign.
To view the space, click on the icon on the left of the screen, signaled in the image above:
Here is the homepage of our DAO space in Snapshot. We can view active proposals, create new proposals, find Github and the Melk project website, and see how many members are part of our space.
For example, let's visualize one of the proposals that some user made for this mission, in the Snapshot testnet.
It may be that this vote is no longer active at the time you are performing this quest.
Here we can see various information topics about the project, such as the proposal itself, information about the type of vote, the results and finally, the option to vote.
However, if you are new to the project (i.e. got the melks after the proposal was created), you may find that if you try to vote on your own, you won’t be able to, as the snapshot of each user's melk balances is taken in the day of creation of the proposal, and this balance corresponds to the voting power.
For that reason, today's proof of mission will not be a vote on a proposal, but the fact of joining and being a part of Melk Dao and creating a proposal, which we will do in the next phase.
If you want to understand more about how Snapshot works as a whole, you can read more about it at the link below:
7. Creating a Proposal
For the second part of this mission, we are going to create a proposal on the Snapshot testnet. That's because on the Snapshot mainnet, Melk DAO will be used to create real proposals and discussions about what we’re going to do in the DAO. As we have a lot of people doing the experiment, if everyone created proposals on the main DAO Snapshot channel, we would end up with a lot of proposals and a polluted space.
Then, enter the link below, which takes you to the trial version of the snapshot:
Your screen should look like this:
Note that the interface is the same as the original Snapshot. Connect your wallet in the same way we did before and search for Melk, also in the same way as before. After these steps, your screen should look like this:
Now click on the “New Proposal” button, flagged above.
Now add the title and description as flagged above. The idea of this proposal is that you can give feedback about the project in general, about your experience, the operation of the missions, the rewards mechanism, the support for errors, in short, features that you find interesting to highlight and/or make constructive criticisms. In addition, you can also make a proposal for suggestions for improvements and other things that you find relevant.
When ready, click “Continue”, also flagged above.
Now enter any two choice options and click “Publish”. Do not modify the voting system. A Metamask popup will appear on your screen:
Scroll to the bottom and click on “Sign”.
Please note that your proposal is now pending, and only after 24 hours will it be published and allow others to vote. But for the mission verification, it's okay to be in the publishing period. So let's copy the proposal link.
Click “Share”:
And then on “Copy link”:
8. All ready! Post the link to your proposal on Discord!
Congratulations on completing the penultimate mission of the MELK project!
We are finishing our journey. We learned a lot, we understood what the snapshot is, what it is for and we learned to interact with the platform, connecting our wallet and entering the Melk project space. In addition, we also learned to create our own proposal!
To receive your reward, post the link to your newly created proposal in our demo snapshot space! My link, for example, is:
When sending the message, do not write anything other than your proposal link!
Last updated
