1. How Snapshot X Works
2. The First Vote on Starknet
3. Latest Starknet Upgrade

For the first time, participants in decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) and other blockchain communities can vote onchain without paying gas fees thanks to the launch of the new governance protocol Snapshot X, built on Starknet's rollup technology.

How Snapshot X Works

Snapshot X utilizes Starknet tech and storage proofs to provide gas-fee voting, allowing users to prove ownership of assets on one blockchain without moving them. This process allegedly reduces costs and improves security, facilitating onchain governance on one blockchain while holding assets on another. The protocol features a modular design that offers “customizable, trustless, and decentralized voting,” according to Jeremy Musighi, Snapshot Labs’ chief operating officer.

The First Vote on Starknet

Starting on Sept. 10, the Starknet crypto community will be the first to use Snapshot X to vote on a staking proposal that will impact native STRK tokenholders. STRK holders will decide on the minting mechanism for Starknet staking through a custom interface built on Snapshot X, while the Starknet Governance Hub facilitates the vote. The staking vote is set to finish on Sept. 13 and will determine new token distribution, creation, and allowance of minting modification over time to ensure sustainability and balance.

Latest Starknet Upgrade

On Aug. 28, the layer-2 (L2) blockchain Starknet rolled out upgrade 0.13.2, which introduced parallel execution to enable the simultaneous processing of multiple transactions. As the first to issue this technology on an L2 network on Ethereum mainnet, Eli Ben-Sasson, CEO of StarkWare and board member at the Starknet Foundation, expects it to become an “industry norm.” The new tech addresses the limitations of sequential transaction processing, which traditionally results in bottlenecks during high demand for L2 networks.

The launch of Snapshot X and the latest innovations from Starknet demonstrate efforts to improve and make blockchain governance processes more affordable, which may become the new industry standard.