FAQ on Proposals

How to Participate in Governance

You can firstly participate in governance by voting on proposals that resonate with you. If you don’t have complete clarity about a proposal, you can first check out our official governance Discord and our community forum to learn more about it before placing a vote.

For those of you who are very familiar with SnowSwap and governance in the DeFi space, based on your observations, you can create proposals to make a positive change to the platform. A proposal is also known as a SIP (SnowSwap Improvement Proposal).

SIPs require voting on Snapshot via DAO. They can perform on-chain actions on the DAO, such as changes of the parameters of the DAO and the protocol or its codebase. Or they can serve as a signal to the community about the willingness to perform a certain action, such as implementing specific features or distribution of funds. Voting for SIPs is only possible via on-chain transactions using voting power gained by holding SNOW directly or staking it in Frosty’s pool, at the moment of the proposal creation.

All proposals must follow the guidelines below. A proposal must clearly define how and why SnowSwap should be changed and ensure that the proposed improvement is introduced in a responsible way, respecting the highest quality, security and community standards. SIPs are critical to the evolution of SnowSwap and the governance process and must be rigidly structured and formalized to avoid any ambiguity.

Votes on SIPs are first taken off-chain in this forum (using a poll); if the off-chain vote is successful, a poll is then conducted using Snapshot. If the Snapshot poll ends with a majority for change, the change will be implemented on the platform by members of the DAO.

Proposal Lifecycle

  1. Creation of the proposal topic thread on this forum in the Proposals category (see SIP Topic in Discussion Forum below)
  2. Discussion of the proposal topic on this forum with the community. A poll must be embedded in the topic, allowing for forum users to conduct a rough off-chain vote
  3. When rough consensus is reached and the proposal is approved by the forum community, allowed entities will create the signal proposal on Snapshot.
  4. When the SIP is approved by Snapshot voting it should be executed by entities specified in the proposal
  5. After all polls have been completed, the thread owner should post a summary to the thread and the thread should be considered finished. A moderator will be pinged to set the thread to closed after the last reply.

Creating a SIP Topic in Discussion Forum

Every proposal starts on this forum as a separate topic in the Proposals category and should include information enough to form and execute the final SIP, including:

  • Use the correct category, i.e. Proposals.
  • Title starting with “Proposal:”
  • Short summary
  • Rationale (reason of the proposal)
  • Executors (entities responsible for the execution)
  • Public forum poll (embedded in post) with open results. Use the following settings for any polls:
    Results: Visible On Vote
    Show who voted: Enabled
    Automatically Close Poll: Disabled

Refer to our sample proposal for more details.

Typical Engagement with SnowSwap DAO

When participating in SnowSwap governance via the DAO, you typically will do the following steps:

  1. Read about the new SIP on our governance portal
  2. Engage in our community forum and signal your view
  3. Discuss the proposal with community members on our official Discord server in the #suggestions or #general-chat channels.
  4. Make your decision and cast your vote on Snapshot
  5. Upon casting your vote, you can then monitor the status of the proposal on the governance dashboard.