Gnosis and Snapshot introduces decentralised governance tool

SafeSnap will combine Snapshot with Gnosis Safe to enable the decentralised on-chain execution of off-chain votes

Gnosis, a developer portal that builds new market mechanisms for decentralised finance (DeFi), yesterday introduced SafeSnap, a decentralised governance product developed in collaboration with off-chain governance platform Snapshot.

As DeFi projects on Ethereum have grown in popularity, so too has decentralised governance, with many centralised teams transferring control of their projects to the wider community. While some use on-chain governance tools like Aragon or DAOStack, rising gas fees mean that many projects have turned to off-chain voting tools like Snapshot, even though this sacrifices some measure of decentralisation.

However, Gnosis saw a way to bring DeFi projects a governance tool that was truly decentralised, while remaining secure and accessible. Gnosis is best known for its digital asset management platform Gnosis Safe. Over $19.5 billion worth of digital assets are currently secured in Gnosis Safes by a myriad of Ethereum-based projects including Aave, SushiSwap, Yearn, Balancer, Synthetix, DIA, YAM, mStable and dHEDGE.

Many of these projects also use Snapshot in their governance process. Proposals can be created through a simple user interface and governance token holders connect their wallets in order to vote on them. The proposals are not binding, however, as their execution requires the input of multisignature key holders.

Now Gnosis Safe is combining with Snapshot to create SafeSnap, which enables the decentralised execution of crypto governance proposals. Votes can be cast off-chain via a Gnosis Safe module connected to an oracle and then the result executed on-chain in a trustless manner.

Teams can move to decentralisation gradually by adding SafeSnap to their Gnosis Safe but keeping Gnosis Safe multisig signers as a safeguard to be removed later by the community if desired.

A number of DeFi projects committed to a process of progressive decentralisation have already confirmed their intention to use SafeSnap to this end. They are, namely, GnosisDAO, SushiSwap, Yearn, Balancer, Synthetix, mStable, dHEDGE, BrightID, EPNS, Stakewise and PoolTogether.

SafeSnap has already been successfully audited by the G0 Group and been through internal testing. Now, in order to ensure the security of the module, the SafeSnap Bug Bounty programme has been opened up to the public with up to $50,000 on offer for identifying threats.