Snapshot X Launches Gas-Free Voting For DAOs On Starknet

According to Cointelegraph, participants in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and other blockchain communities can now vote onchain without incurring gas fees, thanks to the launch of Snapshot X. This new governance protocol, built on Starknet’s rollup technology, aims to address the cost and inefficiency associated with governance by eliminating the need for centralized offchain voting and the expenses tied to onchain voting. Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare and board member at the Starknet Foundation, highlighted that this development would enable many DAOs and other entities to adopt gas-free voting. He noted that individuals with voting rights in DAOs that currently vote onchain will no longer be required to pay gas fees, which have sometimes exceeded $10, deterring democratic participation. Snapshot X leverages Starknet technology and storage proofs to facilitate gas-free voting, allowing users to prove asset ownership on one blockchain without transferring them. This approach purportedly reduces costs and enhances security, enabling onchain governance on one blockchain while maintaining assets on another. Jeremy Musighi, Snapshot Labs’ chief operating officer, emphasized the protocol’s modular design, which offers customizable, trustless, and decentralized voting. Starting on September 10, the Starknet crypto community will be the first to utilize Snapshot X for a gasless vote on a staking proposal affecting native STRK tokenholders. STRK holders will decide on the minting mechanism for Starknet staking through a custom interface built on Snapshot X, with the Starknet Governance Hub facilitating the vote. The staking vote, set to conclude on September 13, will determine new token distribution, creation, and the allowance of minting modifications over time to ensure sustainability and balance. In related news, on August 28, Starknet rolled out upgrade 0.13.2, introducing parallel execution to enable the simultaneous processing of multiple transactions. As the first to implement this technology on an L2 network on the Ethereum mainnet, Ben-Sasson expects it to become an industry standard. The new technology addresses the limitations of sequential transaction processing, which traditionally leads to bottlenecks during periods of high demand for L2 networks.