Gnosis and Snapshot have collaborated to develop SafeSnap, a product that allows for automatically executing successful governance votes on Snapshot. The module, which combines features of Gnosis Safe Multisig and the Snapshot off-chain governance platform, was released on Tuesday. Snapshot is a “governance-as-a-service” provider for a number of decentralized finance projects, including Yearn.finance, SushiSwap, Balancer, Aave, Cream and others. It provides a simple interface to create governance proposals and lets users vote on them by connecting their wallets and the governance tokens contained within. The actual voting process is conducted off-chain, however, to save on gas costs and complexity. Snapshot …

Voting is a very important part of any democracy, as it gives its citizens the chance to participate in the democratic governance process. In a democracy, the objective of voting is not just the creation of government but a collective effort that drives the interests of the society and the economy. The fundamental objective of voting across the world is to ensure that it happens in a fair and transparent way. The traditional ballot system has existed for years, but it’s safe to say now that it has outlived its time. Challenges, such as double voting, spurious votes and ballot …

From the United States to Uganda, allegations of vote rigging have become part and parcel of elections worldwide. Some of these claims are legitimate, with strongmen leaders suppressing the will of the people in a desperate attempt to cling on to power. But in other cases, such accusations are made with little evidence. Fake videos swirl online that paint a picture of manipulation on an industrial scale — depicting a world where ballot papers are dumped in bins. Whether true or false, even the mere suggestion of vote rigging is enough to undermine confidence in the democratic process — dividing …

Trials of blockchain-aided voting in India that would enable voters to post ballots from outside their home provinces are to begin soon. Chief Election Commissioner Sunil Arora said that research using the cutting-edge technology had already started and that mock trials were to be launched in the very near future, as reported by The Wire. India’s Election Commission worked alongside researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in creating a secure way to verify identities and enable voting from far-flung regions of the country, and beyond. On the same day, Arora confirmed a proposal that would give Indians living …

After a week of at times rancorous debate, an 11-author team of Yearn.finance core contributors and community members have submitted today a proposal to increase the supply of YFI by 6666 tokens — a quantity worth roughly $225 million at today’s prices. The proposal is the culmination of a wider discussion about developer incentives for decentralized finance’s (DeFi) original yield vault project. While the Twitter discourse revolved around memes and namecalling, on Yearn’s governance forum debate of the pros and cons of a mint were far more sophisticated. Community members analyzed team token allocations for popular DeFi platforms such as …

What started as a simple governance proposal to build a war chest for the the Yearn.finance development team has now spilled over into a wider conversation about incentivization, sustainability, and fair project launches in the decentralized finance (DeFi) space. On Wednesday, Jan. 13 six Yearn community members including multiple core contributors proposed a “Buyback and Build” program that would divert protocol fees towards bolstering the treasury — a proposal that would alter the current system which distributes a dividend to governance participants. The proposal has since been nicknamed ‘BABY.’ In an interview with Cointelegraph, semi-anonymous Yearn core contributor and one …

It’s been a rough week for the Aragon governance platform where philosophical differences have brought about a long list of resignations. Aragon co-founder Jorge Izquierdo announced on Jan. 11 he would no longer be working as CEO of the for-profit Aragon One, a company dedicated to building tools and services related to Aragon. Aragon is an Ethereum-based platform involved with decentralized governance. The announcement took place just hours after news broke that Aragon had purchased Dvote Labs, the company behind blockchain voting protocol Vocdoni. Today I resigned as Aragon One's CEO. Leading this team has been the privilege and adventure …

Aragon, a platform specializing in managing decentralized autonomous organizations, announced a merger with the Vocdoni protocol, a blockchain voting and governance solution provider. Unlike the Yearn.finance mergers, this acquisition has a much more traditional nature. Aragon has acquired Dvote Labs OU, the company behind the Vocdoni protocol. Its 11 team members will be hired into a new company controlled by Aragon and Vocdoni members. The teams will work on building an integrated solution to boost the Aragon ecosystem. Vocdoni technology uses zero-knowledge cryptography to enable anonymous voting, in addition to leveraging decentralized technologies like the Interplanetary File System and Libp2p, …

The United States Presidential elections on Nov. 3 were contentious to begin with, but unfounded and inaccurate accusations of electoral fraud from the defeated President Trump cast a pall over the whole procedure. Daniel Hardman, chief architect and chief information security officer at self-sovereign identity solution Evernym, thinks blockchain might help voting in general going forward. “Basically, blockchain can provide a way for voters to be reliably and securely registered to vote, and then when votes are cast, blockchain can be a mechanism for proving that somebody has the right to vote, based on their prior registration,” Hardman told Cointelegraph. …

Blockchain at Berkley, a student-run blockchain organization, has become the tenth-largest delegate for the Uniswap exchange, highlighting the diverse groups involved with the emerging DeFi platform. The student group has amassed 2.5 million votes, where it’s tied with three other organizations, according to Sybil, an Ethereum governance tool. That gives Blockchain at Berkley a vote weight of 2.336%. Dharma is the largest delegate with 16,659,333 votes, or 14.632%. Verifying ourselves as a @UniswapProtocol #UNIDelegate on Sybil️https://t.co/SuuzI9Tj7Y addr:0x458cEec48586a85fCFEb4A179706656eE321730E sig:0xd18f9512640a34b30aa63ac13f6f8281971f2ee54ecd789c9311f57ace51a399707e37bb8b417b8ed9b54c9d6db98b8e83935c45d7521219a79fc3bb2f2eda161b — Blockchain at Berkeley (@CalBlockchain) December 21, 2020 Founded in Oct 2016, Blockchain at Berkeley describes itself as a “hub for blockchain …

For the first time in Romania, the recent national parliamentary elections, which were held in November, used blockchain technology with the main purpose to guarantee the integrity of the electoral process and to strengthen its transparency. The government aimed to ensure tamper-proof and real-time data on voters’ presence. There is still a way to go for the voters to be empowered to record, manage, count and check the votes themselves (without bypassing it to the electoral authorities) by allowing them to hold a copy of the voting record. However, the perspectives of fostering the development of a tech-enabled community consensus …

On Monday, the majority of the Compound Finance governance community voted against a proposed compensation plan for users affected by the Dai liquidations that occurred on Nov. 26. Figures from the Compound governance dashboard show 681,290 votes against and only 212,952 votes in favor. Also, COMP whales such as Polychain Capital and Dharma were against the plan, judging by their “no” votes cast. As previously reported by Cointelegraph, some leveraged COMP farmers suffered massive liquidations amid a temporary glitch in the oracle price feed for the Dai stablecoin coming from Coinbase on Nov. 26. With Dai at a 30% premium, …