Questions:

• Create a dashboard that shows how Realms and Snapshot are growing and used in comparison to one another.

• What trends do you see between governance behavior between the two chains?

• Does a platform seem to capture more market share of its users on their respective chain than the other?

• What seems to influence voting behavior on each platform?

• Does one platform have more proposals and voting opportunities than the other?

• Are whales more powerful on Realms or on Snapshot?

• How can each platform become more decentralized?

What is Realms? \n Realms offers a front-end for SPL Governance so that builders can create DAOs, manage their communities, vote on proposals and allocate their treasury. A one stop shop for any group looking to run their operations on the Solana blockchain.

What is Snapshot?

Snapshot is a place where projects can create proposals for people to vote on using cryptocurrency. In the industry, this process is called ‘vote signaling’. Traditionally, to vote using cryptocurrency would normally incur fees to process the movement of currency from one wallet to another. 

But on Snapshot, that doesn’t happen, thanks to the clever use of the decentralized storage network called IPFS. Because Snapshot doesn’t use ‘on-chain’ verification, any votes are essentially fee-less. 

As you can see, I divided the entire snapshot data into several groups based on different chains and compared them with Realms data.

According to my analysis:

• Realms has the lowest number of unique voters of all the popular Snapshot chains I've considered in this dashboard.
• Realms has the lowest number of votes of all the popular Snapshot chains I've considered too.
• The number of proposals presented in Realms ranks second after the proposals of Ethereum presented in Snapshot.

The following charts show how Realms and Snapshot are growing over time.

The above chart shows the monthly unique voters.

If we consider the rank of Realms among all chains in terms of the number of unique voters, we can see that in December 2021 (the beginning of the comparison period), it had the last rank, and in August 2022 (the end of the comparison period) had the last rank again. Therefore, we can say that there has been no progress compared to the rest of the chains, although the cumulative chart shows this issue better.

The above chart shows the monthly number of votes.

If we consider the rank of Realms among all chains in terms of the number of votes, we can see that in December 2021 (the beginning of the comparison period), it has a rank of 7 out of 8, and in August 2022 (the end of the comparison period) has a rank of 6 out of 8. Therefore, we can say that there has been progressing compared to the rest of the chains almost Arbitrum and Fantom over time.

The above chart shows the monthly number of votes.

If we consider the rank of Realms among all chains in terms of the number of unique proposals, we can see that in December 2021 (the beginning of the comparison period), it has a rank of 4 out of 8, and in August 2022 (the end of the comparison period) has a rank of 2 out of 8. Therefore, we can say that there has been progressing compared to the rest of the chains almost BSC and Polygon over time.

To be fair, since Realms data exists since December 1st, we consider the same date for the snapshot.

Solution:

To answer this question, I used solana.core.fact_proposal_votes and ethereum.core.ez_snapshot tables.

As you know, snapshot works on several chains and supports EVM-based networks. While Realms only belongs to the Solana network. So the overall comparison between the two is not fair. So I'll compare the snapshot data on some of the more popular chains individually with Realms to make it a bit fairer.

The snapshot chains I decided to compare are:

Ethereum, Arbitrum, Optimism, BSC, Polygon, Avalanche, Fantom.

Vs

Realms on Solana.

At the first, I compare the total unique voters, total votes, and total proposal.

The above chart shows the cumulative monthly unique voters.

The cumulative chart shows us the better position of Realms compared to other snapshot chains. As you can see, cumulatively, Realms still has the lowest number of unique voters compared to the rest. It can even be said that their difference is large, so that the number of Optimism voters in Snapshot, which has the lowest number of unique voters among Snapshot chains, is about four times the number of Realms voters.

The above chart shows the cumulative monthly number of votes.

The cumulative chart shows us the better position of Realms compared to other snapshot chains. As you can see, cumulatively, Realms still has the lowest number of votes compared to the rest.

We can see that even though Realms has been promoted from 7th to 6th rank at the end of the period, it is still in last place compared to various Snapshot chains. The reason for this is that Snapshot had so many votes early in the period that it was able to compensate for the low number of votes at the end of the period.

The above chart shows the cumulative monthly number of unique proposals.

The cumulative chart shows us the better position of Realms compared to other snapshot chains. As you can see, cumulatively, Realms passed Polygon in Feb 2022 and passed BSC in Apr 2022. Also, the number of Ethereum proposals is far from that of Realms and is almost double.

This section shows what percentage of each blockchain user participates in their voting platform i.e. Realms or Snapshot.

It is necessary to mention that in this section only the Ethereum blockchain is considered in the snapshot.

Let me explain my method:

• count all unique on Ethereum and Solana by using the transactions table.
• count all unique voters on Ethereum - SnapShot and Realms.
• calculate (platform users / blockchain users) * 100

So According to my analysis:

• 1.43% of Ethereum users voted on SnapShot so far.
• 0.04% of Solana users voted on Realms so far.

Another interesting issue is how many voters are whales on each of the platforms, Snapshot, and Realms.

It is necessary to mention that in this section only the Ethereum blockchain is considered in the snapshot.

Also, those who hold more than 1M dollars in their wallet are whales.

According to my analysis:

• The odd thing is that none of the Ethereum voters in the snapshot are whales.
• 0.06% of Realms voters are Solana whales.

Conclusion:

• Realms has the lowest number of unique voters among popular Snapshot chains. Also has the lowest number of votes among popular Snapshot chains. but the number of proposals presented in Realms ranks second after the proposals of Ethereum presented in Snapshot. So we can say Realms is far behind Snapshot in terms of the number of unique voters and the number of votes, but in terms of the number of proposals presented in it, it can be said that it is on the level of Snapshot.
• 1.43% of Ethereum users voted on SnapShot and 0.04% of Solana users voted on Realms so far. So totally, it should be said that few blockchain users use these voting platforms.
• The number of whales as voters of these platforms is very small. As it is 0% in Snapshot and 0.06% in Realms, so it can be said that whales do not pay attention to voting.

So based on above charts, Realms is far behind Snapshot in terms of the number of unique voters and the number of votes, but in terms of the number of proposals presented in it, it can be said that it is on the level of Snapshot.