PIP-68 - Upgrade VeloraDAO's space to Snapshot Pro

[SEEDGov]

PIP-68 - Upgrade VeloraDAO’s space to Snapshot Pro

Abstract:

Snapshot is currently undergoing an update to its pricing policy and as of August 15, 2025, the “split delegation” strategy will no longer be included in the free plan — the one currently used by VeloraDAO. This feature is not only widely used but also highly valuable and actively promoted by the DAO and the procol.

Therefore, we propose approving the upgrade to the Snapshot Pro plan to ensure continued access to this essential tool.

Goals & Review:

VeloraDAO has been using Snapshot as its main voting platform under the free tier, which has so far met all its governance needs.

However, due to recent updates to Snapshot’s pricing model, the platform has informed VeloraDAO that the ‘split-delegation’ strategy and others will require a Pro plan starting August 15, 2025. Given the strategic importance of this feature, we recommend proceeding with the plan upgrade accordingly.

The split delegation feature allows a tokenholder to divide their voting power among two or more delegates and it also enables partial self-delegation, while assigning the remaining voting power to one or more delegates.

This feature is particularly useful and highly desirable, as it allows tokenholders to avoid the limitation of delegating 100% of their voting power to a single delegate. Instead, it enables them to distribute their voting power across two or more delegates, assigning any percentage they wish to each one. Additionally, they can retain a portion of their voting power for self-voting, while delegating the remainder to one or more delegates.

In short, split delegation provides a broad and highly flexible delegation system, empowering tokenholders to fully customize how they participate in governance. This is a significant improvement over the traditional model, which only allows full delegation to a single delegate.

For this reason, both the Velora protocol and its DAO have made ongoing efforts to promote this freature through communication efforts and educational guides. By offering such flexibility, split delegation enables different types of tokenholders to delegate in the way that best suits their preferences and engagement style.

We have the knowledge that these efforts have not gone unnoticed—split delegation is used in VeloraDAO by tokenholders who have chosen to distribute their voting power across multiple delegates.

If VeloraDAO does not upgrade to Snapshot Pro and this feature is removed, tokenholders currently relying on split delegation will be forced to rethink their strategy. They would have to choose between assigning 100% of their voting power to a single delegate or revoking all delegations to retain full V.P. for themselves. This change could disrupt the current balance of voting power, leaving some delegates with reduced or no influence, and ultimately jeopardizing the DAO’s ability to meet quorum requirements.

For these reasons, we believe it is crucial to upgrade to Snapshot Pro, in order to maintain VeloraDAO’s flexible and inclusive delegation system and avoid potential governance setbacks.

The cost of upgrading to Snapshot Pro is $600 per month, or $6,000 for an annual subscription (which reduces the monthly cost to $500, saving $1,200 per year). Since this is an essential service for VeloraDAO’s governance operations, the annual plan makes the most sense—not only to reduce administrative overhead but also to benefit from a 16.67% discount.

Additionally, the Snapshot free plan will be reduced to very basic and limited functionality. Therefore, upgrading to Snapshot Pro not only preserves the essential split delegation feature, but also unlocks several valuable tools for VeloraDAO, including increasing the character limit from 10,000 to 40,000—a significant improvement, as proposals have often needed to be shortened and linked externally to the forum—, custom domain, additional voting strategiesm access to a dedicated private Telegram support group, and other features available here.

Consequently, to preserve the split delegation feature and take advantage of these improvements, we propose:

1. Upgrading VeloraDAO’s space to the Snapshot Pro plan;
2. Approving an expense of $6,000 from the DAO treasury to cover the annual subscription;
3. Allocating an annual budget to renew Snapshot Pro every year, unless a migration to another voting platform occurs before the end of an anual period, in which case future allocation would be automatically discontinued.

Means:

The primary mean of this proposal is to ensure the continuation of a critical feature on VeloraDAO’s voting portal on Snapshot: the split delegation strategy. To maintain this functionality, an upgrade to the Snapshot Pro plan is required.

As a secondary main, the upgrade would also unlock valuable extended features that will no longer be available under the limited free plan, which is being reduced to only basic functionality.

This proposal does not require any additional Velora, external product or development.

Implementation Overview:

1. Immediately make the payment of $6,000 to upgrade to Sanpshot Pro for one year.
   • As stated in the previously referenced link, payment must be made with crypto using ETH, USDC, USDT, DAI or GHO on Ethereum or Base at this address: 0x6A870312a810409Ff4f1e8Ff2A2724ad8820Fd70
   • We propose making the payment in USDC or USDT in order to avoid price fluctuations due to asset volatility.
2. Provide for future years an allocation of annual funds to cover the cost of the Snapshot Pro plan in future years, unless the DAO decides to migrate to a different voting platform before the end of a yearly period. In that case, the fund allocation would automatically be discontinued from that point onward.

We do not foresee any potential negative outcome of the present proposal and it is not expected for the DAO to derive any associated implementation action.

Time of Implementation:

The proposal will be implemented immediately after its passing.

Budget:

The proposed budget is $6,000 per year as long as VeloraDAO continues using Snapshot as its voting platform.

Risk Assessment:

We do not identify any downside or risk associated with this proposal—on the contrary, it presents only advantages. Upgrading to Snapshot Pro would allow VeloraDAO to not only retain its current functionalities, but also gain access to exclusive additional features. Most importantly, it ensures the preservation of the critical split-delegation feature and avoid the potential negative consequences mentioned above.

[Mehdi]

Upgrading to a Pro plan makes sense—not only to improve the user experience for our delegators, but also for the added flexibility it provides, such as split delegations.

However, my primary concern is the difficulty delegators face in identifying the right delegates and allocating voting power based on specific areas of expertise.

For instance, some delegates may have deep knowledge in market dynamics, while others may excel in evaluating grants and managing the treasury. Ideally, delegates should briefly highlight their key strengths or focus areas in their delegation thread in a couple of words, so that delegators can make informed decisions more easily.

Another potential solution is for @SEEDGov or @0xYtocin to conduct due diligence on behalf of the community and propose a balanced composition of delegates with diverse expertise. This would streamline the delegation process and help delegators act more efficiently.

[Ignas]

Appreciate the clear explanation and rationale for upgrading VeloraDAO’s Snapshot to the Pro plan.

The split delegation feature has proven to be an important part of how our tokenholders engage with governance, so this is definitely a yes from me :).

The additional benefits, including expanded proposal character limits, a custom domain for easier access, advanced voting strategies, and direct support from Snapshot, will all contribute to a smoother and more professional governance experience.

I do not see any reason to block this proposal. This is a reasonable action in the current situation and aligns well with VeloraDAO’s needs. More importantly, this upgrade signals a commitment to keeping VeloraDAO’s governance tools modern, functional, and accessible for tokenholders, which is key to maintaining participation and trust.

[jameskbh]

As mentioned, the split delegation is one feature that brings great benefit for the DAO. I believe this proposal is a no-brainer and will bring additional benefits from the other PRO features.

[citizen42]

Fully in favor!
In my opinion without Pro every token‑holder using that feature will be forced into 100 % single‑delegate or no delegation at all, jeopardising a lot of effort we’ve nurtured within Velora DAO.

For US $6 000 yr (effectively US $500 mo, a 16 % discount vs monthly) we not only keep split‑delegation but also gain a lot of features that would be helpful to have,

That’s a trivial spend relative to the treasury and a direct investment in voter flexibility, delegate discovery and professional tooling, no code changes, no downside, only continuity and upside.

LFGrow and LFUpgrade

[boardroom]

Thanks for bringing this to light @SEEDGov. Like other delegates here, we’re largely in favor of this. All-or-nothing delegation is a large enough drawback to not upgrading; it reduces the healthy distribution of split delegation systems.

@Mehdi

my primary concern is the difficulty delegators face in identifying the right delegates

Also largely agree with Mehdi’s point here. That said, perhaps this issue could be addressed in a future proposal to avoid bundling too many action items into a single vote.

@Mehdi

Another potential solution is for @SEEDGov or @0xYtocin to conduct due diligence on behalf of the community and propose a balanced composition of delegates with diverse expertise

This is definitely a viable option for approaching this problem, but it does add some centralization/single-point-of-failure risks. It might implicitly encourage tokenholders to not do their own due diligence on who they’re delegating to and instead trust a select few parties. Some users don’t have time to do that due diligence, which is understandable, but it’s really something that should be encouraged. It’s probably the single most important decision for tokenholders to make if they’re not actively voting themselves, and it’s a one-time “ask” for them to evaluate delegates and choose the delegate(s) who best represent their interest. Again, we’re not opposed completely to Mehdi’s suggestion, but it could be worth exploring a handful of options.

[Curia]

We’re supportive of this proposal and agree that maintaining access to the split delegation feature is an important step in keeping VeloraDAO’s governance flexible, inclusive, and accessible to a broader group of tokenholders. This functionality gives participants more control over how they engage in governance, which is a meaningful improvement compared to the traditional one-to-one delegation model.

At the same time, we believe it would be valuable to have a clearer understanding of how many tokenholders are currently using the split delegation feature. This kind of insight would help the DAO evaluate the effectiveness of past efforts to promote the feature and also provide a stronger basis for assessing whether it makes sense to continue funding the Snapshot Pro subscription in future cycles.

We’ve worked on similar delegation metrics in other ecosystems, such as Optimism, and found them helpful for shaping decisions around governance tooling. At this point, we do not have access to comparable data for VeloraDAO. If it is difficult to collect, we are happy to support or collaborate in any way we can. But if the data already exists, sharing it with the community would be much appreciated.

Having this information will allow for a more informed discussion going forward. It can also help the DAO consider whether new initiatives are needed to increase adoption, especially if current usage is lower than expected.

Thank you to the team for putting together this proposal. We are glad to see thoughtful efforts to maintain and improve the DAO’s governance experience.

[SEEDGov]

@Curia

At this point, we do not have access to comparable data for VeloraDAO. If it is difficult to collect, we are happy to support or collaborate in any way we can. But if the data already exists, sharing it with the community would be much appreciated.

Although we are aware that some token holders use the split-delegation function, we do not have any metrics on this, as Snapshot is an off-chain platform, accessing this type of data through its metadata is very difficult.

Do you have experience of collecting Snapshot metrics related to delegation, such as which wallets are delegating, who they are delegating to, how much they are delegating, and which wallet the VP of each delegate comes from?

[PGov]

Want to chime in that we think the budget is rather reasonable and something we would be in favor of adding. The addition of split delegation feature is one that will prove to be useful in the near future and the character limit is something we’ve come into issues with in the past.

It would be nice to commit to a few things to ensure cost effectiveness for the DAO.

• Negotiate possibly a better rate?
• Make an agreement that going into the future, Snapshot will promise to not raise prices for the DAO if an agreement is reached now to initially fund
• Request a custom/on line support team to help reside over any issues if identified.

[0xAlex]

I strongly support upgrading to Snapshot’s Pro plan, as the split delegation feature is critical for Velora DAO’s governance.

Additionally, the Pro plan offers valuable features like enhanced visibility in Snapshot’s default Space, which can boost awareness of Velora DAO especially with he recent rebranding.

For reference, Arbitrum DAO’s decision to adopt Snapshot Pro, outlined in their proposal here, highlights similar benefits.

I agree with @PGov that negotiating contract terms would be ideal, however the split delegation feature is essential and this should not delay our decision to move forward with the Pro plan.

[AranaDigital]

Unlike a handful of other DAOs, which solely restrict delegation to one delegate per wallet due to smart contract-level limitations (a single mapping(address => address) in the token contract), Snapshot’s system allows PSP holders to assign their full token balance to different delegates. However, it’s unclear to what extent this multi-delegation functionality is currently utilized within the community. Given that a significant portion of PSP ownership belongs to a handful of larger token holders, it may be prudent to engage these stakeholders to understand their delegation preferences and whether they leverage multiple delegates to diversify influence or streamline decision-making (cc @Avantgarde ?). Or maybe there’s a query to find out how often this functionality is being used? From our experience, some larger investors prefer dividing their holdings in multiple wallets, an operational decision for better tracking which wallets are delegating to which delegates, although for most, ownership segregation isn’t preferred.

The cost of $6k per year is not prohibitive, so it does sound like a good investment on the whole. It does seem like the real benefit of the Snapshot Pro subscription is almost exclusively the multi-delegation component. The below components (further listed here) are mostly nice-to-haves as opposed to necessities:

[DAOplomats]

Fully support this proposal. The split-delegation feature is vital for giving tokenholders real choice. This upgrade is a smart and necessary investment in our DAO’s health. This is a clear “Yes” from us. We are happy to contribute and support .
Thank you @SEEDGov team for putting this up

[Curia]

Thanks for the follow-up!
We’ve explored this space a bit mainly through conversations with the Safe and Gnosis Guild teams while they were building out split delegation for SafeDAO. Their system provides detailed views on delegation trees (who’s delegating to whom, how much, and where voting power comes from), which helped us understand what kind of data might be possible to expose. That said, Safe uses its own registry, while Snapshot is off-chain and doesn’t make this metadata as easily accessible. For VeloraDAO specifically, we haven’t yet collected these metrics, but we’ve looked into similar tooling in ecosystems like Optimism (via Agora), so we’re familiar with how the data can be structured if it’s available. We’d be happy to explore this further for Velora either by researching what Snapshot’s current API supports or helping build a basic index if needed. Let us know if that’s something worth syncing on!

[Avantgarde]

Thanks for bringing this to the DAO’s attention @SEEDGov.

We’re currently utilising the split delegation feature across a number of the delegates that are actively participating in the DAO and may extend this further in the future, so loosing this feature would have a significant impact on the distribution of voting power.

Hence, we do think it makes sense to pass this proposal. In the grand scheme of things $6,000 isn’t a whole lot and the additional features will be nice to have, though still worth speaking to the Snapshot team as suggested by @PGov

[SEEDGov]

Given the 7-day debate period for this proposal has concluded and tha we see a favorable reception, we communicate that, in accordance with the PIP Lifecycle approved by PIP-57, we are ending the debate stage and initiating the 2-day frozen period. After this period we will submit the proposal to snapshot.

Thank you all!

[Tane]

We are a bit late to comment, but we also think this is a good idea. We do not see any major issues, and we find split delegation to be useful.
While our position here is not directly about supporting or opposing the proposal itself, @Mehdi’s point is understandable, and we believe it is worth discussing here.

@Mehdi

my primary concern is the difficulty delegators face in identifying the right delegates and allocating voting power based on specific areas of expertise.

We feel that addressing this challenge would inevitably require forming some kind of committee-like structure, and to some extent, this is already happening within Velora. We think it makes sense to expand such structures as needed when new functions are introduced.

@Mehdi

Another potential solution is for @SEEDGov or @0xYtocin to conduct due diligence on behalf of the community and propose a balanced composition of delegates with diverse expertise

For this part, we believe it is better to avoid situations where a specific party is solely responsible for due diligence, as this could lead to an excessive concentration of trust in that person or organization.

[SEEDGov]

The proposal is live on Snapshot, cast your vote! PIP-68 - Upgrade VeloraDAO’s space to Snapshot Pro

[SEEDGov]

We inform the community that today, Monday, August 18th, 2025, the payment of 6,000 USDC for the annual subscription to the Snapshot Pro plan has been completed from the Ethereum Fee Claimer DAO wallet multisig.

No discount could be negotiated since payment is made through an automated payment button.

The following transactions have been duly signed and executed:

• Swap wETH to 6,000 USDC:
  • Hash: Ethereum Transaction Hash: 0xc4520af24b... | Etherscan
  • OnchainDen details: Get your multi-sig transactions signed faster
• Approval of the transfer transaction of 6,000 USDC:
  • Hash: Ethereum Transaction Hash: 0x9c7d72ef6e... | Etherscan
  • OnchainDen details: Get your multi-sig transactions signed faster
• Transfer transaction of 6,000 USDC:
  • Hash: Ethereum Transaction Hash: 0x7bcd48dfcb... | Etherscan
  • OinchainDen detalais: Get your multi-sig transactions signed faster

The transfer was executed on Ethereum to the address 0xe40bfeb5a3014c9b98597088ca71eccdc27ca410 , which is the address officially informed by Snapshot as the only dedicated address to receive payments for Snapshot Pro subscriptions.

Update: We have contacted the Snapshot team, nd they have confirmed that they have received the payment and that Velora’s space has been upgraded to Snapshot Pro.