Quadratic Voting

Quadratic voting is a governance mechanism that allows participants to express the strength of their preferences, not just the direction of their vote. Instead of one token = one vote, users can allocate multiple votes to a single option, but the cost of each additional vote increases quadratically. This system helps balance power between large and small holders and encourages more nuanced, democratic decision-making in DAOs and Web3 governance.

Quadratic voting is often used in grant allocation, community prioritization, and public goods funding, notably in platforms like Gitcoin through its quadratic funding rounds.

How Quadratic Voting Works

• Voting Credits – Users are given a number of tokens or credits to allocate across proposals.
• Vote Allocation – Users can place multiple votes on a single proposal to show strong support.
• Quadratic Cost – The cost of casting n votes is n², meaning each additional vote becomes more expensive.
• Aggregate Results – Proposals with the highest weighted support (considering cost) are prioritized.
• Sybil Resistance – When paired with identity tools, it limits dominance by whales or bots.

Key Features

• Preference Signaling – Reflects how strongly a user feels about an issue, not just yes/no.
• Vote Cost Scaling – Prevents vote-buying and reduces plutocratic outcomes.
• Fairer Distribution – Helps elevate underrepresented community voices.
• Flexible Implementation – Can be used for funding, policy votes, or idea ranking.
• Identity-Sensitive – Often combined with Sybil-resistant identity systems for fairness.

Benefits of Quadratic Voting

• More Democratic Outcomes – Prevents governance from being dominated by large token holders.
• Nuanced Decision-Making – Allows users to weigh trade-offs and show strong preferences.
• Encourages Participation – Makes every voter’s influence more meaningful, even with small holdings.
• Supports Public Goods – Especially powerful in funding ecosystems where the crowd supports the most valuable outcomes.
• Anti-Sybil Mechanism – Harder for bots to manipulate results when identity layers are added.

Use Cases of Quadratic Voting

1. Gitcoin Grants – Community members use quadratic voting to fund public goods and open-source projects.
2. DAO Governance Experiments – DAOs test quadratic voting to improve fairness in proposal decisions.
3. Funding Rounds – Projects allocate resources to initiatives based on community-weighted support.
4. Community Prioritization – Protocols rank product features or roadmap items using preference strength.
5. Social Impact DAOs – Charitable or impact-driven DAOs apply quadratic logic to balance decision-making.
6. NFT Curation – Communities vote on featured artwork or collectibles with quadratic weight to prevent bias.