Background Introduction

Snapshot is a decentralized voting system. It is a multichain platform where EVM-based projects can create proposals for people to vote based on their voting power. Like other voting systems, voting power is always the key to passing or failing a proposal. One of the uniqueness of Snapshot is that the voting transactions made on the platform are fee-less as they don’t utilize the on-chain verification, but a decentralized storage network called IPFS. You can refer here to learn more and refer here to find more proposals.

In this dashboard, we are not going to analyze the overview of Snapshot as there are numerous good dashboards created by Flipside’s community already, such as the dashboard created by phu and mattkstewart. Instead of analyzing the overall metrics of Snapshot, we going to take a deeper look at the two most popular Layer-2 networks’ governance voting, including Optimism and Arbitrum. During the Arbitrum Odyssey events, the protocols that participated in the event are actually selected from the polls on Snapshot. Arbitrum uses Snapshot as the voting platform to create proposals and ask for votes from the community. Moreover, instead of polls for the incentives event, Optimism created polls on Snapshot to determine the community's preference for the usage of their governance funds.

In this dashboard, the main metrics we going to look at are:

• The total number of created proposal
• The number of proposal creation by week
• Total votes for each proposal
• Correlation between the total votes and proposal creation timestamp

Other than these, we also will take a deeper look at the proposals’ result status and etc.

Limitation

In the traditional voting system, each vote on a proposal is weighted by voting power. However, due to the absence of voting power in the flipside database, we use the number of the voting id to determine the total votes in this dashboard instead.

TL;DR

Optimism Collection

• There is total number of 38 proposals have been created and there are no ongoing proposals as all of the proposals have already ended.
• 16 of 38 proposals are defeated while the rest 22 are passed. The highest voted proposal is the “Proposal G: Governance Phase 1 - Beefy Finance” with a total vote of 9689. The lowest voted proposal is the “Proposal B: Governance Fund Phase 0 - Uniswap“ with a total vote of 4537.
• We get a clear observation of the increase in total votes for the recent proposals, especially those that were created at the end of July 2022. The total votes for the proposal have increased from ~4.5k to ~9.7k (2.15x) lately.

Arbitrum Odyssey

• There were 14 proposals have been created on Snapshot and all of their voting periods have already ended. Well, all 14 of them were created in week number 15.
• The total votes for each proposal was ranging from ~38k votes to ~52k votes. The highest voted proposal is "Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 7" with the total votes of 52k and the lowest voted proposal is "Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 10" with the total votes of 38k.
• Relatively similar to the trend of the correlation chart of Optimism, the total votes get increased on the recent proposals. The total votes on each proposal increased from ~36k on the earliest created proposal to ~52k on the latest created proposal (1.44x).

Analysis

Optimism Collection

The table down below shows the list of proposals as well as its details. As you can see, Optimism uses Snapshot as a voting platform for them to create polls for the direction of their governance fund. In Snapshot, the proposal creator can set the proposal’s choices as any as their like. However, in the Optimism proposals, the majority of the proposal has 3 fixed selection choices for the voter to choose, which are “For”, “Against” and “Abstain“.

Observation

• In the Optimism Collection, there is a total number of 38 proposals have been created and there are no ongoing proposals as all of the proposals have already ended.
• When we look at the proposal creation by week, we can see that actually there’s no consistent creation of proposals for the direction of their governance fund and there is some week gap between the proposals creation weeks. Moreover, the highest number of the Optimism Collection proposal creations was in week number 25 with a total value of 17 and there are only 2 proposals have been created lately.

Observation

• Out of 38 proposals, almost half the total proposals are defeated, which means the community was against the proposal more than support it. 42.1% or 16 proposals of Optimism Collection are defeated whereas the other 22 or 57.9% are passed.
• Let’s look at the total votes for each proposal by proposal status, as you can see, the total votes of the proposals was ranging from ~4500 votes to ~9700 votes. So far, the highest voted proposal is the “Proposal G: Governance Phase 1 - Beefy Finance” with a total vote of 9689. The lowest voted proposal is the “Proposal B: Governance Fund Phase 0 - Uniswap“ with a total vote of 4537.

> The chart above shows the correlation between the total votes and proposal creation timestamp on proposals. The size of the circle is determined based on the total number of votes on each proposal while the colors indicate a passed or defeated proposal.

Observation

• As you can see, the total number of votes is actually increased over time on the proposals. Overall, we can see a significant increase in total votes on the proposal after July 2022 with the value of >7k vs <6.5k before July 2022. Furthermore, the interaction between the proposal and the community has gotten much better on the recent proposals, especially the proposal created at the end of July 2022.

The table below shows the proposal details, including the proposal title, the total votes, the votes of each selection, result status, proposal status, proposal start time as well as proposal end time.

Arbitrum Odyssey

Unlike the proposals on Optimism with only "For", "Against" and "Abstain" choices, Arbitrum Odyssey created proposals with the selection of the protocols in the list of choices. They selected the projects that get shortlisted in Arbitrum Odyssey event via polls on Snapshot.

Observation There were 14 proposals have been created on Snapshot and all of their voting periods have already ended. Well, all 14 of them were created in week number 15.

> The numbers shown as the legend of the chart of "Total Votes for each Proposal" indicated the poll number of the Arbitrum Odyssey proposals. For example, "1" = Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 1".

Observation

• The total votes for each proposal was ranging from ~38k votes to ~52k votes. The highest voted proposal is "Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 7" with the total votes of 52k and the lowest voted proposal is "Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 10" with the total votes of 38k.
• As you can see, Yield Protocol scored the highest voted project to be listed in Arbitrum Odyssey event in Poll 1, Hashflow scored the highest voted project in Poll 2 and Aboard Exchange scored the highest voted project in Poll 3, so on and so forth.

> The chart above shows the total votes of each choices in each proposal. The numbers shown as the legend of the chart of "Total Votes for each Proposal" indicated the poll number of the Arbitrum Odyssey proposals. For example, "1" = Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 1".

Observation

• The total votes for each choice was ranging from 1371 to 36k. The highest voted project was Hashflow in proposal poll 2 with the value of 37k and the lowest voted project was Stratos in proposal poll 11 with the value of 1371.

> The chart above shows the correlation between the total votes and proposal creation timestamp on proposals. The size of the circle and the colors is determined or labeled based on the total number of votes on each proposal.

Observation

• Relatively similar to the trend of the correlation chart of Optimism, the total votes get increased on the recent proposal, in this case, “Arbitrum Odyssey Poll 14”. The total votes on each proposal increased from ~36k on the earliest created proposal to ~52k on the latest created proposal.

Observation

• “Proposal G: Governance Phase 1- Beefy Finance” got the most “For” votes with a value of 8785 “For“ votes while “Proposal E: Governance Fund Phase 1 - Raptor” got the least “For” votes with a value of 1257 “For” Vote.
• From the normalized chart, we can easily interpret the proposal result by comparing the length of the orange bar (“For“) and the blue bar (“Against”). Longer orange bar = passed while longer blue bar = failed. For example, the blue bar of “Proposal A: Optimistic Railway” is longer than the other with a proportion of 59% hence, this is a failed proposal.
• As you can see, the votes of “Abstain” in every proposal are relatively less with the proportion ranging from 0% to 13% of the total votes.