Why On-Chain Reputation Must Precede Quadratic Voting

Quadratic Voting's core premise—that cost scales quadratically with influence—is broken by cheap, fake identities. Without Sybil resistance, a whale can split funds across thousands of wallets to dominate governance at linear cost, defeating the entire mechanism.

• Result: Governance is captured, not curated.
• Example: Early Gitcoin rounds required manual verification to prevent this.

Reputation must be a non-transferable, earned asset built from verifiable on-chain actions—transaction history, protocol usage, successful contributions. This creates a cost to corruption, as malicious acts destroy hard-earned social capital.

• Mechanism: Think POAPs for participation, Optimism's Attestations, or Ethereum's ERC-7231.
• Outcome: Voting power derives from proven skin-in-the-game, not just capital.

Static reputation decays. Systems need live oracles (e.g., Karma3 Labs, Orange Protocol) that continuously score wallets based on multi-chain activity, social graph analysis, and contribution quality. This dynamic score becomes the input for Quadratic Voting weight.

• Prevents: Stale identities and one-time airdrop farmers.
• Enables: Real-time governance power reflecting current engagement.

Without a cost to identity creation, airdrop farmers and whales can spawn infinite wallets to capture governance. This renders quadratic voting's 'one-person-one-vote' ideal meaningless, as seen in early Optimism and Uniswap distributions.

• Sybil cost is near-zero: Creating 10k wallets costs <$1k on L2s.
• Vote dilution: Legitimate user voices are drowned out by synthetic actors.
• Protocol capture: Decision-making is gamed by those with capital, not conviction.

Protocols like Worldcoin and BrightID use biometric or social graph verification to issue a globally unique, Sybil-resistant identity. This creates a bounded set of human participants, establishing the foundational layer for any meaningful voting system.

• Unique human bound: 1 person = 1 verified identity, globally.
• Privacy-preserving: Zero-knowledge proofs can verify uniqueness without revealing personal data.
• Governance prerequisite: Enables fair distribution of voting power and resources.

Platforms like Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) and Gitcoin Passport allow protocols to issue verifiable, composable credentials about a user's actions. Reputation becomes a portable asset built from contributions across DAOs, DeFi, and developer ecosystems.

• Composable data: Credentials from Optimism governance can inform voting weight in Arbitrum.
• Transparent scoring: Reputation is publicly verifiable and algorithmically auditable.
• Anti-collusion: Graph analysis can detect coordinated voting rings before they form.

Projects like Olympus DAO's gOHM and Curve's veToken model introduce stake-based reputation, where influence is earned through proven, skin-in-the-game commitment. This moves beyond binary identity to a scalar reputation score weighted by time and capital at risk.

• Costly to fake: Building reputation requires locked capital or consistent participation.
• Time-weighted: Long-term alignment is rewarded over mercenary capital.
• Quadratic-ready: Staked reputation scores provide the ideal input for quadratic voting calculations.

Services like UMA's Optimistic Oracle and Chainlink can resolve off-chain reputation data (GitHub commits, real-world credentials) onto the blockchain. This bridges Web2 and Web3 identity, allowing for sophisticated, multi-dimensional reputation frameworks that resist on-chain gaming.

• Cross-chain resolution: Aggregates reputation data from any chain or source.
• Dispute period: Enables community challenges to fraudulent attestations.
• Rich context: Incorporates verifiable off-chain work and expertise.

With this stack in place, quadratic voting transforms from a theoretical ideal to a practical mechanism. A user's voting power becomes a function of their verified uniqueness (Worldcoin), attested contributions (EAS), and staked commitment (veTokens), making governance attacks economically non-viable.

• Sybil-resistant: Attack cost rises to match the value being captured.
• Meritocratic: Influence correlates with proven contribution, not just wealth.
• Protocols enabled: Optimism's Citizen House and Compound Grants become viable models.

QV's core assumption—one-human-one-vote—is broken in pseudonymous environments. Attackers can cheaply create thousands of wallets to dominate governance, as seen in early Gitcoin Grants rounds. Without a cost to identity, QV amplifies capital, not community sentiment.

• Key Consequence: Governance is captured by the wealthy or malicious.
• Key Metric: A Sybil attack can be executed for the cost of ~$50 in gas to create 100+ wallets.

Reputation must be a non-transferable, earned asset (like POAPs or Proof of Humanity) that acts as voting collateral. This creates a skin-in-the-game requirement, aligning voter incentives with protocol health. Systems like Optimism's AttestationStation and Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS) provide the primitive.

• Key Benefit: Voting power is gated by verifiable, costly-to-fake actions.
• Key Benefit: Enables delegation to high-reputation experts.

Combine a reputation score R with capital c in the QV formula: Voting Power = R * sqrt(c). This ensures whales cannot buy influence without contribution, and contributors have amplified voice without capital. This mirrors Vitalik's original vision for Liberal Radicalism.

• Key Benefit: Dual-axis governance balancing capital and contribution.
• Key Metric: Reduces Sybil attack surface by requiring ~$10k+ in earned reputation per meaningful vote.