Quadratic Voting (QV) excels at cost-prohibitive sybil resistance because each additional vote's cost increases quadratically. For example, a whale with 100,000 tokens would need to spend 10,000 times more capital than a user with 100 tokens to exert 100 times the voting power. This mathematical property, used by Gitcoin Grants to distribute over $50M in funding, effectively flattens power curves and promotes broad-based, small-donor participation.
LABS
Comparisons
Quadratic Voting vs Conviction Voting for Curation
A technical analysis of two leading anti-whale curation mechanisms. Quadratic Voting scales cost quadratically to limit capital dominance, while Conviction Voting accumulates voting power over time to favor sustained support.
Chainscore © 2026
introduction
THE ANALYSIS
Introduction: The Curation Problem and Anti-Whale Solutions
A data-driven comparison of Quadratic Voting and Conviction Voting for mitigating whale dominance in decentralized curation.
Conviction Voting (CV) takes a different approach by temporal weighting, where voting power accrues over time a user's tokens are committed to a proposal. This results in a trade-off: it prevents flash loan attacks and rewards long-term conviction (as seen in Commons Stack's 1Hive gardens), but it can create inertia, slowing the system's responsiveness to new, high-priority proposals compared to QV's snapshot-in-time decisions.
The key trade-off: If your priority is immediate, sybil-resistant decision-making for frequent events (e.g., grant rounds, content ranking), choose Quadratic Voting. If you prioritize patient capital, attack resistance via time locks, and funding continuous public goods, choose Conviction Voting.
tldr-summary
Quadratic Voting vs Conviction Voting
TL;DR: Core Differentiators at a Glance
Key strengths and trade-offs for protocol governance and community curation.
01
Quadratic Voting: Anti-Whale & Pluralistic
Cost scales quadratically with votes: A voter with 10x the capital pays 100x the cost, strongly diluting whale influence. This is critical for public goods funding (e.g., Gitcoin Grants) and community-driven curation where preventing Sybil attacks and plutocracy is paramount.
02
Quadratic Voting: Snapshot-Based & Simple
Operates on discrete voting periods (e.g., weekly rounds). Voters express preferences once per proposal, leading to clear, final outcomes. Ideal for budget allocation votes and retroactive funding where timely, decisive results are needed, as seen in Optimism's Citizen House.
03
Conviction Voting: Dynamic & Continuous
Voting power accrues over time as tokens are staked on a proposal. This creates a market signal for demand, allowing priorities to shift fluidly without fixed deadlines. Best for ongoing treasury management and prioritizing a development backlog, as implemented by Commons Stack and 1Hive Gardens.
04
Conviction Voting: Resistance to Snapshot Manipulation
High cost to change votes due to the reset of accrued conviction. This protects against last-minute governance attacks and proposal flooding. Essential for high-value protocol parameter updates and long-term strategic decisions where stability and commitment are valued over speed.
HEAD-TO-HEAD COMPARISON
Feature Comparison: Quadratic Voting vs Conviction Voting
Direct comparison of governance mechanisms for community curation and funding allocation.
| Metric | Quadratic Voting (QV) | Conviction Voting (CV) |
|---|---|---|
Primary Anti-Sybil Mechanism | Cost scales quadratically with votes | Time-locked voting power (conviction) |
Funding Allocation Speed | Discrete voting rounds (e.g., weekly) | Continuous, real-time streaming |
Voter Capital Efficiency | Capital is spent or locked per vote | Capital remains staked and reusable |
Best For | Snapshot-style polls, one-off decisions | Prioritizing a backlog, continuous funding |
Key Protocol Example | Gitcoin Grants | Commons Stack, 1Hive Gardens |
Resistance to Whales | High (cost prohibitive for large swings) | Medium (mitigated by time preference) |
Standard Implementation | EIP-XXXX (draft), OpenZeppelin | Conviction Voting SDK (1Hive) |
pros-cons-a
CURATION MECHANISMS COMPARED
Quadratic Voting vs Conviction Voting
Key strengths and trade-offs for allocating funds in DAOs and protocol treasuries.
01
Quadratic Voting: Pros
Prevents whale dominance: Voting power scales with the square root of tokens committed, making it exponentially expensive for large holders to dominate. This matters for community-driven grants like Gitcoin rounds, ensuring a wider distribution of influence.
02
Quadratic Voting: Cons
Vulnerable to Sybil attacks: Requires robust identity verification (e.g., BrightID, Proof of Humanity) to prevent users from splitting funds into multiple wallets to game the system. This adds complexity and centralization risk for permissionless protocols.
03
Conviction Voting: Pros
Signals long-term preference: Voting power accrues over time a voter's tokens are committed, creating a "heat map" of sustained community demand. This is ideal for continuous funding in DAOs like Commons Stack, filtering out noise for high-conviction proposals.
04
Conviction Voting: Cons
Slow decision velocity: Proposals require time to build sufficient "conviction," making it poorly suited for time-sensitive governance decisions (e.g., emergency parameter changes). It favors patience over agility.
pros-cons-b
CURATION MECHANISM COMPARISON
Quadratic Voting vs Conviction Voting
Key strengths and trade-offs for allocating community funds or curating lists.
01
Quadratic Voting: Pros
Prevents whale dominance: Voting power is the square root of tokens spent, drastically reducing large holder influence. This matters for fair community sentiment in one-off polls (e.g., Gitcoin Grants).
- Example: A voter with 100 tokens gets 10 votes, while a voter with 10,000 tokens gets only 100 votes.
- Clear snapshot: Provides a decisive, time-bound result ideal for retroactive funding rounds or protocol parameter votes.
02
Quadratic Voting: Cons
Vulnerable to Sybil attacks: Without robust identity proof (like BrightID or Proof of Humanity), users can split funds into multiple wallets to game the square root calculation. This matters for permissionless environments.
- High coordination cost: Requires organizing voters for a specific snapshot time, missing continuous sentiment.
- Example: Early Gitcoin rounds required careful Sybil defense layers to maintain integrity.
03
Conviction Voting: Pros
Continuous, capital-efficient signaling: Voters stake tokens over time, with "conviction" accruing. This matters for prioritizing a backlog of proposals without constant voting (e.g., Commons Stack, 1Hive Gardens).
- Dynamic resource allocation: Funds are released gradually as conviction grows, allowing the community to shift support as new proposals emerge.
- Example: A proposal for a new DApp feature can gain funding over weeks, outcompeting stale ideas.
04
Conviction Voting: Cons
Slow initial execution: High-conviction thresholds mean new, urgent proposals struggle to get funded quickly. This matters for time-sensitive grants or bug bounties.
- Capital lock-up: Voters' tokens are staked and subject to a decay function upon withdrawal, reducing liquidity.
- Complexity for voters: Requires understanding of alpha decay rates and super-majority thresholds, creating a steeper learning curve than simple yes/no voting.
05
Choose Quadratic Voting For
One-off, high-stakes decisions where a clear, tamper-resistant snapshot of broad community preference is needed.
- Best for: Retroactive funding rounds (Optimism Grants), protocol upgrade votes, electing committee members.
- Key Tools: Snapshot, Vocdoni, Gitcoin's CLR.
06
Choose Conviction Voting For
Continuous curation and prioritization of an ongoing funding pool or feature backlog.
- Best for: DAO treasuries (MolochDAO forks), community-managed grant programs, progressive decentralization of protocol parameters.
- Key Tools: 1Hive's Gardens, Commons Stack, Conviction Voting modules in DAO tooling (Aragon).
CHOOSE YOUR PRIORITY
When to Use Each Mechanism: A Scenario-Based Guide
Quadratic Voting for DAO Governance
Verdict: Best for broad, inclusive decision-making on high-stakes, one-off proposals. Strengths: Dilutes whale power by squaring votes, promoting more equitable outcomes for funding allocations (e.g., Gitcoin Grants) or protocol upgrades. It's ideal for gauging the intensity of preference across a large, diverse community on discrete choices. Weaknesses: Vulnerable to Sybil attacks without robust identity verification (e.g., BrightID, Proof of Humanity). Complex for voters to understand cost implications. Key Protocol: Primarily used in Gitcoin Grants for public goods funding.
Conviction Voting for DAO Governance
Verdict: Superior for continuous resource allocation and prioritizing a backlog of ideas. Strengths: Uses time-weighted staking to signal sustained support, naturally surfacing the most demanded projects (e.g., funding a new front-end or a marketing initiative). It's anti-plutocratic over time and reduces voter fatigue for ongoing decisions. Weaknesses: Slower to react to urgent issues. Requires capital to be locked, creating opportunity cost. Key Protocol: Implemented by 1Hive's Gardens and Commons Stack for community treasuries.
QUADRATIC VOTING VS CONVICTION VOTING
Technical Deep Dive: Implementation and Attack Vectors
A technical comparison of two leading on-chain governance mechanisms for curation, focusing on their core implementations, computational demands, and susceptibility to different attack vectors.
Quadratic Voting (QV) is significantly more computationally expensive to implement securely. The core challenge is verifying the square root calculation of the total tokens spent by a voter, which requires complex cryptographic proofs (like zk-SNARKs) to prevent sybil attacks without a trusted identity layer. In contrast, Conviction Voting's core logic is simpler, involving continuous time-based accumulation of voting power, which is less intensive to compute on-chain but requires more complex off-chain client-side logic to track and display dynamic conviction scores.
verdict
THE ANALYSIS
Verdict and Final Recommendation
A data-driven breakdown of when to deploy Quadratic Voting or Conviction Voting for your protocol's curation needs.
Quadratic Voting (QV) excels at sybil-resistant, one-off decision-making because it uses a cost function (cost = votes²) to severely penalize concentrated capital. For example, Gitcoin Grants has used QV to allocate over $50M in matching funds, effectively surfacing community-preferred projects while limiting the influence of large whales. Its strength is in creating a snapshot of broad sentiment for discrete events like grant rounds or parameter votes, where preventing vote-buying is critical.
Conviction Voting (CV) takes a different approach by modeling continuous, evolving preference through a time-decay mechanism. Voters stake tokens into proposals, and "conviction" accumulates over time, funding proposals only when a threshold is met. This results in a trade-off: it enables dynamic resource allocation without fixed voting periods (as seen in Commons Stack's 1Hive Gardens), but requires sustained voter engagement and can be slower to reach decisions compared to QV's snapshot model.
The key trade-off: If your priority is resisting whale dominance in periodic, high-stakes votes (e.g., treasury grants, protocol upgrades), choose Quadratic Voting. It's the definitive tool for fair, sybil-resistant snapshots. If you prioritize continuous, demand-driven funding for an ongoing curation market (e.g., a decentralized development backlog, recurring community initiatives) and can tolerate a slower, more emergent decision pace, choose Conviction Voting. Your choice fundamentally shapes whether governance is a series of elections or a fluid marketplace.
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