Approval Voting vs Ranked-Choice Voting

Voters approve any number of candidates. This leads to lower cognitive load and faster decision-making. This matters for high-frequency, low-stakes governance like parameter tweaks in DAOs (e.g., Uniswap temperature checks) or community grants with many applicants.

Often elects broadly acceptable candidates over polarizing ones. It mitigates vote-splitting in multi-winner elections. This matters for electing diverse committees (e.g., Optimism's Citizen House) or selecting multiple protocol delegates where broad consensus is valued.

Incentivizes bullet voting (approving only your top choice) to avoid helping competitors. This can devolve into simple plurality voting. This is a critical flaw for contentious elections with strong factions, as seen in early Moloch DAO forks, where it failed to capture nuanced preferences.

Cannot express order of preference. A voter who slightly prefers A over B must give them equal weight. This matters for high-consequence, single-choice elections (e.g., selecting a core protocol upgrade path) where the intensity of preference is crucial data.

Voters rank candidates (1st, 2nd, 3rd). Captures nuanced support and ensures the winner has majority support through instant runoff. This matters for electing singular, high-authority roles like a Foundation president or a lead protocol steward.

Prevents similar candidates from splitting the vote. If a voter's first choice is eliminated, their vote transfers to their next preference. This is vital for ecosystems with multiple similar proposals (e.g., different grant proposals for the same tooling category).

Higher voter comprehension barrier and more complex tallying. Requires more sophisticated voting interfaces and smart contract logic. This is a significant drawback for large, permissionless tokenholder votes where simplicity and gas efficiency are paramount.

A candidate can lose by receiving more first-choice votes (a failure of monotonicity). While rare, this theoretical flaw can undermine legitimacy in highly contested, closely watched elections where every vote is scrutinized.

One-click voting: Voters simply approve any number of options. This leads to lower cognitive load and faster decision-making. This matters for high-frequency governance, like parameter adjustments in DAOs like Maker or Compound, where voter turnout and speed are critical.

No spoiler effect: Voters can support multiple similar proposals without fear of splitting the vote. This matters for ecosystems like Optimism's Grants Council, where funding multiple worthy projects in a single round is a common goal.

Binary expression: Cannot indicate strength of preference between approved options. A voter's strong favorite and mild approval are weighted equally. This is a problem for contentious treasury allocations (e.g., Uniswap Grants) where preference intensity is crucial for legitimacy.

Least-objectionable outcomes: Can favor broadly acceptable but unambitious proposals over strong, polarizing ones. This risks stagnation in protocol upgrades for L1s like Ethereum, where bold, technical EIPs may not achieve consensus.

Full preference ordering: Voters rank options (1st, 2nd, 3rd). This captures nuanced support and ensures the winner has the broadest consensus. This matters for electing key roles (e.g., Arbitrum Security Council members) where a candidate acceptable to most is better than one loved by few.

Higher cognitive cost: Requires understanding and ranking all options. This can suppress participation. In complex multi-proposal rounds (e.g., Aave governance), this leads to lower turnout or invalid ballots, undermining decentralization.

Multi-round tallying: Requires iterative elimination and vote redistribution. On-chain, this means higher gas costs and more complex smart contract logic. For high-throughput L2s like Starknet or zkSync, this adds execution overhead per vote.

Counter-intuitive results: In some cases, ranking a candidate higher can cause them to lose, and ranking them lower can cause them to win. This violates voter intuition and can lead to disputes over legitimacy, a significant risk for high-stakes protocol decisions.