Snapshot Labs

Snapshot Labs operates as a pivotal infrastructure provider in the decentralized governance sector, offering a platform for off-chain, gasless voting. The company was established in 2020, with Fabien Marino credited as the founder and CEO. The genesis of Snapshot is tied to Marino's work at the automated market maker Balancer. The initial objective was to devise a flexible voting system that could grant voting power to BAL tokens within Balancer's liquidity pools, a task that proved too computationally intensive for on-chain execution. This challenge led to the development of an off-chain solution using the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS), which serendipitously resulted in a fee-free, or "gasless," voting mechanism.

The platform caters to Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs), Decentralized Finance (DeFi) protocols, and NFT communities, enabling them to conduct voting processes without incurring transaction costs on the blockchain. This model significantly lowers the barrier to participation in governance for these organizations. Snapshot's core service is a decentralized voting system where proposals and votes are stored on IPFS as signed messages, ensuring transparency and verifiability without requiring on-chain transactions for every vote. The business makes money by providing this essential infrastructure, although specific revenue streams are not publicly detailed. It operates on an open-source model, fostering a trustless environment crucial for decentralized governance.

In November 2021, Snapshot Labs secured $4 million in a seed funding round. The round was led by 1kx and saw participation from prominent investors including Coinbase Ventures, StarkWare, Gnosis, and MetaCartel Ventures. This marked the company's first formal capital raise, having been previously supported by Gitcoin donations and funds from various DAOs. The company has since introduced new features like "Snapshot X," an on-chain voting protocol, and "Boost," a tool to incentivize voter participation with rewards. The platform is widely adopted, serving thousands of communities, including major projects like Aave, Uniswap, and the Ethereum Name System (ENS).

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