Snapshots vs Agora Proposals

Snapshot Governance Actions

On Clarity, Snapshots are taken every minute to facilitate off-chain Snapshot Governance Actions. Snapshots are not recorded on-chain, which makes them more flexible but less decentralized.

There are multiple types of Snapshot Governance Actions that Clarity Facilitates.

Forums

Forums are a place for early-stage ideas to be ironed out by a community. New ideas for Proposals can be brought up in Forums, which provide a low-stakes environment to be refined before moving on to future governance steps.

Closed Polls

Closed Polls provide a way to gather community sentiment quickly and easily. Closed Polls are called 'Closed' because the options are not open to the public. Options are predefined by the Poll Creator.

Open Polls

Open Polls provide a way to gather and leverage community intelligence. Open Polls allow any community member to submit an option to be considered. Community members vote on which community submission they like best.

Snapshot Proposal

Snapshot Proposals are 'official' decisions for non-Agora Organizations. While they are still off-chain, they indicate a higher level of social commitment to the decision that is made. For Agora DAOs, Agora Proposals can be used in replacement of Snapshot Proposals.

All Snapshot Governance Actions have the following steps:

Draft

Optional state available to Organization's who require admin approval before sending a Poll to the public.

Accepting Submissions

A state specific to Open Polls, which allow community submissions to be voted on. During this time anyone in the community can submit their idea to be considered.

Voting

Voting for the Poll is open to the community. Voting Power is updated every minute based on snapshots taken

Concluded

Voting on the Poll has ended and results have been published.

Agora Proposals

Agora Proposals are community-wide votes that are recorded with transactions on-chain. Agora Proposals that pass a community vote execute smart contract effects automatically.

Participation in Agora Proposals cannot be gated to Admin users. Instead, any DAO member owning a Stake that holds enough Governance Tokens to satisfy the relevant user participation threshold has the ability to create and vote on Agora Proposals.

Figure 1: Stages of a Proposal

Agora Proposal Timing Configuration

Agora Proposals use governance thresholds and timing configurations that are pre-defined by the DAO's Governor Contract, so they cannot be configured on a per-proposal basis. The stages all Agora Proposals must pass through are shown and described above in Figure 1.

Agora Proposal stages:

Draft

The proposal has been submitted, but a community-wide vote has not yet started.

Voting

Voting for the proposal is open to the community. Votes are submitted via on-chain transactions that are tracked by Agora.

After the voting period (V in fig. 1) has concluded Agora checks if the vote tally meets the Proposal Approval Threshold.

Locked

Passed proposals are locked for a specified amount of time (L in fig. 1) before executing their effects.

Executing

The window of time (E in fig. 1), where the proposals effect smart contracts are executing.

Executed

The proposal passed, and the effects were successfully executed in the allotted time.

Failed

The proposal either did not receive enough votes to execute, or the effects were not executed within the Execution stage

Comparisons

Snapshot Proposal Pros

• Free to create & vote on because transactions are not submitted on-chain.

• Quick and flexible way to make 'official' decisions.

• Allows restricting who can create/approve governance actions, which is useful to many early-stage projects, or teams who desire more control over the direction of their project.

• Malicious proposals that passed are not automatically executed.

Snapshot Proposal Cons

• Some members may not have the ability to create Snapshot Proposals, no matter how many Governance Tokens they hold, depending on how the Organization is configured.

• Rely on trusted actor(s) to execute decisions of the Organization.

• Snapshot Proposals and their votes are not stored on-chain, so more trust is required when members want to self-verify votes are counted accurately.

Agora Proposal Pros

• Passed Agora Proposals are executed automatically via smart contracts.

• No dependency on actor(s) to execute passed Agora Proposals.

• Any DAO member holding enough Governance Tokens can create and vote on Agora Proposals. The participation thresholds for these actions are public and transparent.

• All governance actions are recorded on-chain, which allows trustless self-verification of the recording of votes.

Agora Proposal Cons

• Governance actions require on-chain transactions, which cost users fees.

• Less flexible on a per-use basis, since the DAO's Governor Contract sets the thresholds and timing.