Using this dashboard, we aim to discuss how governance behavior differs between the Snapshot and Realm chains? Is there a platform that seems to capture a larger share of its users on its respective chain than another? What factors seem to influence voting behavior on each platform? Which platform offers more proposals and voting opportunities? Do whales have more power on Realms or Snapshot? Are there ways to decentralize each platform?
What is Realms DAO?
Solana realms are launched by DAOs for the purpose of supporting their governance with proposals and votes. Then we can say , builders on Solana can use Realms to create DAOs, manage their members, vote on proposals, and allocate their treasuries. Multisig, NFT community DAOs, and community token DAOs can all be run with the tools and integrations provided by Realms. Using Realms, you can build and maintain DAOs on Solana regardless of DAO type or asset type.
It is well known that DAOs are a new form of legal organization known as a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). Since DAOs do not have a central governing body, members typically share a common goal and strive to act in the entity’s best interest. Based on blockchain technology and cryptocurrency enthusiasts, DAOs make decisions using a bottom-up management approach.
What is Snapshot?
The Snapshot platform allows projects to create proposals that people can vote on using cryptocurrency associated with the project. Traditionally, this incurs a lot of gas cost when voting and the gas cost on the Ethereum ecosystem generally goes out of contro. This forces many users on Ethereum ecosystem from skipping governance process. But Snapshot is set to solve this problem. The clever use of IPFS in Snapshot prevents this from happening. As Snapshot does not use on-chain verification, there are no fees associated with voting.
Approach
The purpose of this dashboard is to compare governance behavior between Snapshots and Realms. Following are the steps we took to accomplish this
- First, let’s see how Voters and DAOs compare on Realms and Snapstot.
- Now let’s look at the growth of new DAOs on both chains
- Let’s look at Realms vs Snapshot’s Active DAOs and Active Voters.
- Examine how many unique voters participated in the voting process (active proposals)
- Next, we will look at the top 10 DAOs on Snapshot and Realms according to the number of votes.
- On Snapshot and Realm, we followed the top 10 DAOs based on the number of proposals voted.
- Finally, Take a look at the voter profiles for both chains next.
Governance Behavior Across Realms vs Snapshots
In the below graph we can see how many voters are on Snapshots compared to Realms, and how many DAOs are on Snapshots compared to Realms. As we can see, almost more than 90% of Voters and DAOs are from snapshots. A total of 1,148,523 votes were cast between 2020 and 2022. Out of the two platforms, Platform Snapshot contributes the most (99.6%) to the total number of voters. Realms has the lowest number of votes (4,596), while Snapshot has the highest number of votes (1143,927). It is estimated that there were 7,025 DAOs between 2020 and 2022. From the two platforms, Platform Snapshot contributes the most (93.55%) to the total DAOs. DAOs are divided into 453 realms (Realms) and 6,572 snapshots (Snapshots).
As shown in the following graph, there has been a steady growth of new DAOs onboarding to both Snapshot and Realms since July 2020. In the period July 2020 to August 2022, 7,025 new Daos were created. Out of the 2 Platforms, Platform Snapshot contributes the most (93.55%) to the total New Daos. Among the total New Daos, the lowest number is 453 (Realms) and the highest number is 6,572 (Snapshot). It was observed that the maximum number of New DAOs was 821 in November 2021, and the minimum number was 1 in July 2020. Total New DAOs increased from 1 in July 2020 to 562 in August 2022. A trend of increasing new DAOs can be observed.
We can see from the below graph how new DAOs that are onboarding on both platforms are growing month over month. There have been an increasing number of DAOs created on realms since the beginning. In May 2022, we can see that snapshots have reached a peak when compared to the previous month. Furthermore, we can see that DAOs went peak in June 2022 for Realms, compared to the previous months.
We can see from the below graph that the number of new voters on Realms increased in April 2022 when compared with the previous month. Observing the growth of voters onboarding on both platforms from January 2022, there is a correlation.
A total of 16.37K Active DAOs were registered between July 2020 and August 2022. Based on the data collected from Platform Snapshot, it contributes the most (95.03%) to the total Active DAOs. Active DAOs at the bottom of the list are 813 (Realms), while at the top of the list are 15.56K (Snapshot). It was observed in May 2022 that Active DAOs reached a maximum of 1.69K, and in July 2020 it reached a minimum of 1. Active DAOs increased by almost 10% in August 2022. Between July 2020 and August 2022, there has been an increase in Active DAOs. A trend of increasing activity is evident in Active DAOs.
As we can see, Snapshot has a higher percentage of active DAOs compared to Realms. Nevertheless, we can observe an increase in DAO activity across both platforms.
From July 2020 to August 2022, the total number of voters on both platforms was 1.99M. Of the two platforms, Platform Snapshot contributes the most (99.62%) to the total number of voters. As a comparison, the lowest total number of voters is 7.66K (Realms) and the highest total number of voters is 1.98M (Snapshot). August 2022 reported the highest number of voters with 281.88K, while July 2020 recorded the lowest number with 118. On Sanapshot, we can see an increasing trend of active voters. However, we have noticed a decline in voter activity on Realms over the past six months.
The total number of proposals between July 2020 and August 2022 on both platforms was 65.59K. Out of the two platforms, Platform Snapshot contributes the most proposals (92.73%). The lowest total proposal number is 4.77K (Realms) and the highest total proposal number is 60.83K (Snapshot). There were a maximum of 7.22K proposals in November 2021 and a minimum of 4 proposals in July 2020. Between July 2020 and August 2022, there was an increase in total proposals. There is an increasing trend in proposals. When we compare Snapshot with Realms, we can see there are more active proposals in Snapshot.
Below are graphs showing the top 10 DAOs by number of voters on both platforms. There are 572.2K total votes across Top 10 DAOs. A total of 37.14 % of total votes went to the top 2 DAOs, while over half (52.17%) of the total votes went to the top 3 DAOs. The lowest total number of votes is 21.28K (ctcswap.eth) and the highest is 107.05K (tbcc.eth).
There are 3.1K votes across all top 10 DAOs in Realm. Among the top 10 DAOs, 6orGiJYGXYk9GT2NFoTv2ZMYpA6asMieAqdek4YRH2Dn contributed for 42.78 percent, and the Top 2 contributed for 57.61 percent
The total number of proposals across all Snapshot Top 10 is 7.27K. Approximately 27.25 percent of total proposals came from pancake snapshot proposals, and 60.03% of total proposals came from the Top 3 snapshot proposals. (Dcip.eth) has the lowest number of proposals at 337 and pancake has the highest number of proposals at 1.98K.
Over all realms, the top 10 proposals total 1.83K. Nearly 30% of total proposals were contributed by the GBXLYo4ycRNfzuzYeudu6y2ng4afNeW14WcpM2E4JJSL proposal, while 52.53% were contributed by the top three proposals. Among the total Proposals, 78 (6jydyMWSqV2bFHjCHydEQxa9XfXQWDwjVqAdjBEA1BXx) are the lowest, and 552 (GBXLYo4ycRNfzuzYeudu6y2ng4afNeW14WcpM2E4JJSL) are the highest.
Below is a graph showing the voters profile for both Snapshot and Realms. Almost in both platforms, 1 vote cast is exceeding 47%, which is very close to half. In other words, almost half of the voters cast one vote. In Snapshot, out of the 4 Votes Casted, 1 Vote Casted contributes the most (50.76%) to the total Voters. Voters with more than 50 votes voted 15,576, and with more than 1 vote voted 580,634. In the case of realms, 1 Vote Casted contributes the highest percentage (47.24%) to the total Voters. There are 79 votes cast (more than 50 votes casted) and 2,171 votes cast (1 vote casted).
Observations
- As we already known Realms is a new voting ecosystem, while Snapshot is well established.
- Approximately one million voters have voted on Snapshot so far. On Realms DOA, there have only been about 7,000 active participants so far.
- According to the above analysis, Snapshot has a higher percentage of active DAOs than Realms. Nevertheless, we can observe that DAO activity is increasing across both platforms.
- There are roughly more than 10 times as many active DAOs on Snapshot as there are on Realms – 1.6K active DAOs vs 141 active DAOs
- Nearly 90% of Voters and DAOs come from snapshots,.
- There is an increasing trend of active voters on Sanapshot. The number of Realms voters has declined over the past six months, however.
- Comparing Snapshot with Realms, we can see that Snapshot has more active proposals. Proposals are increasing.
- The total number of proposals across the Snapshot Top 10 is 7.27K. Pancake snapshot proposals accounted for 27.25 percent of all proposals, while the top 3 snapshot proposals accounted for 60.03 percent
- According to the top 10 proposals on Realms, GBXLYo4ycRNfzuzYeudu6y2ng4afNeW14WcpM2E4JJSL contributed nearly 30% of total proposals.
- It is almost 50% majority on both platforms when a voter casts one vote. As we can see from the analysis, the number of voters casting more than 50 votes in both platforms is below 2%.
- Based on these data, we can say that Realms has grown slower than snapshot in terms of users, DAOs, and proposals. . According to the decentralization perspective, snapshots are more popular among larger DAOs making fewer decisions, where realms are more popular among smaller DAOs making many decisions.
WITH snapshot as (
SELECT
'Snapshot' as platform,
voter_category,
count(voter) as voters
FROM (
SELECT
DISTINCT Voter,
COUNT (DISTINCT ID) AS votes,
CASE
when votes = 1 then '1 Vote Casted'
when votes between 2 and 10 then '2 - 10 Votes Casted'
when votes between 11 and 50 then '11 - 50 Votes Casted'
ELSE 'More Than 50 Votes Casted'
END AS voter_category
FROM
ethereum.core.ez_snapshot
GROUP BY voter
)
GROUP BY voter_category
),
realms as (
SELECT
'Realms' as platform,
voter_category,
count(voter) as voters
FROM (
SELECT
DISTINCT Voter,
COUNT (DISTINCT TX_ID) AS votes,
CASE
when votes = 1 then '1 Vote Casted'
when votes between 2 and 10 then '2 - 10 Votes Casted'
when votes between 11 and 50 then '11 - 50 Votes Casted'
ELSE 'More Than 50 Votes Casted'
END AS voter_category
FROM solana.core.fact_proposal_votes WHERE GOVERNANCE_PLATFORM = 'realms'
GROUP BY voter
)
GROUP BY voter_category
)
SELECT * FROM realms
UNION
SELECT * FROM snapshot