CoW DAO integrates oSnap for decentralized governance

CoW DAO is an open organization of developers, traders, market makers, and various community members aligned with the vision of providing traders with the best prices and comprehensive MEV protection. CoW DAO is focused on building and maintaining CoW Protocol, a fair and decentralized trading system, and MEV Blocker, an RPC endpoint. CoW Protocol’s technology powers a network of traders and solvers, enabling trustless and efficient peer-to-peer trading through a unique “batch auction” system. This positions CoW Protocol as native trading infrastructure for discrete-time settlement layers like Ethereum. MEV Blocker is designed to protect transactions from MEV attacks such as front-running and sandwiching. In addition to protecting trades from harmful MEV, MEV Blocker leverages an Order Flow Auction between various searchers and builders to offer rebates to users for certain trades.

oSnap is a DAO governance tool built and secured by UMA. It allows communities to vote off-chain and automatically execute the successful proposals on-chain. oSnap automatically integrates with the DAO’s Snapshot space and the Safe wallet holding the DAO’s treasury funds. Transactions approved by the community are validated on-chain and executed without the need for centralized multisig approval.

CoW DAO is looking forward to integrating oSnap, as it will give the DAO several advantages including:

• A decentralized process to execute successful proposals that no longer requires the involvement of multisig signers → Instead of having the multisig owners push successful proposals on-chain themselves, the oSnap bot will automatically execute them
• Extra on-chain guarantees through a challenge period → Through oSnap, voters will be able to challenge proposals during a “challenge period” that takes place after the successful passing of a proposal
• One step closer to a more decentralized and resilient CoW DAO → Integrating oSnap allows CoW DAO to run 100% through on-chain governance without relying on any off-chain infrastructure or trusted parties

How it works

On a technical level, Snapshot allows users to integrate transaction data into their proposals using its transaction builder tool. Community members can include specific transactions in their proposals for the DAO to execute. Once a proposal is published, Snapshot uses the decentralized hosting service IPFS to store and share this transaction data, assigning it a unique identifier in the process.

Once a proposal is approved, the oSnap system takes charge of submitting the transaction data to UMA’s optimistic oracle. The oracle then verifies that the transaction matches the data stored at the IPFS identifier. If the oracle confirms the match, the transaction is executed using funds from the DAO Safe. However, in the event of an invalid or malicious transaction, the system automatically removes the data before it reaches the blockchain.

This integration is a step forward for CoW DAO’s decentralization. If you are interested in participating in the CoW DAO governance process, you have several options:

• Forum → CoW DAO’s forum is the main venue for governance-related discussion. Signing up for the forum allows community members to post and participate in discussions.
• Snapshot → CoW DAO’s Snapshot space is a simple voting interface that allows users to vote on proposals. Votes on Snapshot are weighted by the number of vCOW+COW held or delegated to the address used to vote.
• Discord → The CoW DAO Discord server is currently the main discussion hub for the CoW community and an informal place for governance discussions. The “governance-discussion” channel is where governance matters and proposals are discussed.

Learn more

CoW DAO is a decentralized organization maintaining CoW Protocol and MEV Blocker for the effective protection of Ethereum traders across DeFi. CoW Protocol leverages batch auctions to find the best prices for user trades, while MEV Blocker maintains a decentralized network of searchers & builders who protect users from MEV and provide them with rebates from profitable backrunning opportunities.

oSnap is a governance tool secured by UMA and audited by Open Zeppelin. It is free to use and can be integrated in less than 60 seconds.

UMA is an optimistic oracle that can validate any independently verifiable data on the blockchain. UMA ensures protocol security by incentivizing validators to identify and delete false information passing through the oracle. Since launching in 2020, UMA has secured more than 10,000 critical data assertions. It has never been corrupted.