Why Quadratic Voting Alone Cannot Secure the Commons

QV's cost curve (cost = votes²) is a weak deterrent against identity fragmentation. A whale can split a $10k stake into 100 identities for a 10x voting power multiplier at the same cost. This undermines the core 'one-person-one-vote' ethos.\n- Cost of Attack: Scales linearly with desired influence, not quadratically.\n- Real-World Failure: Gitcoin Grants' early rounds required centralized Sybil detection to remain functional.

QV only taxes influence within the voting mechanism. It cannot prevent off-chain deal-making where voters pool funds and vote as a bloc, effectively recreating a linear voting outcome. This is the $100B+ DAO treasury problem.\n- Unenforceable: On-chain logic is blind to real-world agreements.\n- Protocols at Risk: MakerDAO, Uniswap, and other major treasuries are vulnerable to this covert capture.

QV assumes informed, rational voters. In practice, >90% of token holders delegate or abstain. Complex quadratic math exacerbates this, leading to low participation and decision-making by a small, potentially malicious cadre.\n- Participation Crisis: Low turnout invalidates any voting model's legitimacy.\n- Solution Space: Requires layered approaches like futarchy (Augur) or conviction voting (Commons Stack).

QV's cost function is trivial to game with pseudonymous wallets. One person can spin up thousands of wallets to manipulate outcomes, rendering the mechanism's democratic intent meaningless.

• Key Benefit: Sybil-resistance via Proof of Personhood (Worldcoin, BrightID) or proof-of-stake skin-in-the-game.
• Key Benefit: Enables legitimate preference aggregation by ensuring one-human-one-vote integrity.

QV captures a snapshot of sentiment, but public goods require sustained commitment. Conviction Voting (as pioneered by Commons Stack) uses time-as-currency.

• Key Benefit: Mitigates whimsical spending by requiring voters to lock tokens, with influence growing over time.
• Key Benefit: Creates anti-sybil properties by raising the capital and time cost of attack vectors.

QV's transparent preference revelation creates a perfect bribery market. Adversaries can cheaply pay marginal voters to distort their votes, a flaw identified in Gitcoin Grants early rounds.

• Key Benefit: Privacy-preserving tech (e.g., MACI, zk-SNARKs) breaks the link between voter identity and vote, making bribes unverifiable.
• Key Benefit: Forces colluders into costly, trust-based schemes, raising the attack barrier.

QV funds proposals, not outcomes. RetroPGF (used by Optimism, Arbitrum) rewards proven impact after value is delivered, aligning incentives with results.

• Key Benefit: Eliminates funding misallocation risk for unproven ideas.
• Key Benefit: Creates a meritocratic flywheel where builders are incentivized to deliver utility, not just market proposals.

QV requires voters to hold and spend capital on every decision, leading to low participation and capital lockup that could be used productively elsewhere (e.g., DeFi).

• Key Benefit: Delegation systems (like Boardroom, Snapshot) allow token holders to delegate voting power to knowledgeable stewards.
• Key Benefit: Futarchy (proposed by Gnosis) uses prediction markets to make decisions, leveraging the wisdom of capital-efficient crowds.

Static QV fails for managing dynamic, scarce resources like domain names or virtual land. Harberger Taxes (self-assessed property tax with forced sale option) create continuous markets.

• Key Benefit: Ensures high-value use allocation by forcing owners to pay a tax equal to their public value assessment.
• Key Benefit: Provides sustainable revenue stream for the commons, directly funding public goods from resource usage.

QV's cost function (cost = votes²) assumes unique human identities. Without a robust identity layer, attackers can split capital across thousands of pseudonymous wallets to dominate outcomes for less than the value of the grant.

• Attack Cost: Scales linearly, while influence scales quadratically.
• Real-World Impact: See Gitcoin Grants rounds pre-Passport, where a few actors could sway millions in matching funds.
• Mitigation Requires: Proof-of-personhood (Worldcoin), social graph analysis (Gitcoin Passport), or stake-based weighting.

QV only penalizes on-chain vote concentration. It does nothing to stop off-chain collusion where voters pool funds and coordinate voting patterns to bypass the quadratic cost.

• Unobservable: Cartels form in Telegram groups, not on the blockchain.
• Breaks Mechanism Design: Renders the cost function meaningless; reverts to 'one-dollar, one-vote'.
• Partial Solutions: MACI (Minimal Anti-Collusion Infrastructure) for privacy, or continuous mechanisms like Harberger taxes that increase holding costs.

Pure QV for funding allocation is noise. Effective systems use QV as a signal layer atop a curated list of qualified projects. This separates discovery (community) from high-stakes allocation (experts).

• Optimism's Model: Round 3 used ~100 badgeholders to curate projects, then used QV for badgeholder voting.
• Reduces Surface Area: Limits Sybil/collusion attacks to the smaller, more accountable curator set.
• Builder Action: Implement a two-phase process: 1) Application/curation via DAO vote or subcommittee, 2) QV-based distribution among finalists.

QV treats all voters as equally informed, which they are not. This leads to low-information herding, popularity contests, and misallocation away from niche, high-impact work.

• Missing Layer: No weight for voter expertise or proven contribution history.
• See Also: Conviction Voting (time-weighted signals) or Peer Prediction mechanisms to reward accurate forecasting.
• Practical Step: Integrate reputation or stake-weighting from systems like SourceCred or POAP to create a context-aware QV hybrid.

QV is a single tool, not a full system. Its security depends on the broader application architecture. Isolate the QV component to minimize its attack surface and financial impact.

• Architecture Lesson: Use QV for non-binding signaling or to distribute a small, fixed matching pool (e.g., Farcaster Frames funding).
• Cap the Damage: Never let QV directly control a protocol treasury; use it to advise a multisig or slow DAO.
• Defense in Depth: Combine with fraud proofs, delay periods, and quorums to allow for human intervention.

For high-stakes, complex funding decisions (e.g., protocol parameter changes), QV is insufficient. Use it to surface proposals, but let prediction markets determine the outcome based on expected value.

• Hybrid Model: 1) QV selects top 3-5 proposals, 2) Prediction markets (e.g., Polymarket forks) trade on each proposal's success metric, 3) Highest-valued proposal wins funding.
• Aligns Incentives: Puts capital behind beliefs, filtering out sentiment and sybils.
• Implementation Path: Leverage Oracle-based resolution (Chainlink, UMA) to settle market outcomes automatically.