Plural Voting

Unlike one-token-one-vote, plural voting calculates voting power using a combination of factors. Common metrics include:

• Token Ownership: The base stake.
• Vesting/Lock-up Time: Longer commitments increase power (e.g., ve-token models).
• Reputation/Activity: Contributions like development, community moderation, or consistent participation.
• Delegated Stake: Power received from other token holders. This creates a more nuanced measure of a participant's stake in the protocol's future.

A canonical implementation where users lock their governance tokens for a chosen duration. Voting power is directly proportional to the amount locked multiplied by the lock time. Key features:

• Non-transferable Voting Rights: The voting power (veTokens) is not tradable.
• Progressive Decay: Power diminishes linearly as the lock period expires.
• Incentive Alignment: Rewards long-term holders over short-term speculators, as seen in protocols like Curve Finance and Balancer.

A primary goal is to reduce pure token-weighted plutocracy, where the wealthiest holders dominate decisions. By incorporating non-financial factors like time or reputation, the system:

• Dilutes the power of large, liquid holders who may have short-term interests.
• Empowers dedicated, long-term community members even with smaller capital.
• Aims to create a governance structure more resistant to hostile takeovers or mercenary capital.

Advanced plural voting mechanisms that further refine influence:

• Quadratic Voting (QV): Participants allocate a budget of "voice credits." The cost of votes on a proposal scales quadratically (e.g., 1 vote costs 1 credit, 2 votes cost 4 credits). This makes extremely high concentration of votes economically prohibitive, favoring broader consensus.
• Conviction Voting: Voting power accrues over time a voter continuously supports a proposal, measuring intensity of preference rather than just a snapshot vote.

Plural systems often facilitate delegated democracy where token holders can delegate their compounded voting power (token + time weight) to experts or representatives. This acknowledges that:

• Not all holders are deeply informed on every technical proposal.
• Delegates can build reputations based on their voting history and expertise.
• It creates a layer of professional governance participation, similar to a board of directors, while maintaining the ability for users to revoke delegation.

While aiming for fairer governance, plural voting introduces significant complexity:

• Sybil Resistance: Systems relying on reputation or activity require robust identity verification to prevent fake accounts (Sybil attacks).
• Parameter Sensitivity: The weight given to each factor (time vs. tokens) is a critical, often subjective, design choice that can itself be gamed.
• Usability Barrier: More complex than simple token voting, potentially reducing voter participation. It often leads to higher gas costs and more intricate smart contract logic.

A classic plural voting model where the cost of additional votes on a single proposal increases quadratically. This aims to reduce the power of large capital holders and better reflect the intensity of voter preference.

• Mechanism: A voter allocates a budget of 'voice credits'. The cost of casting n votes for an option is n² credits.
• Example: With 100 credits, a user could cast 10 votes on one proposal (cost: 10² = 100) or 7 votes on one and √51 ≈ 7 votes on another.
• Use Case: Used in Gitcoin Grants to fund public goods, allowing communities to signal strong support for specific projects without being dominated by a single large donor.

A time-based plural voting system where voting power accrues the longer a voter's tokens are committed to a proposal. It measures sustained belief rather than a snapshot of capital.

• Mechanism: A voter stakes tokens on a proposal. Their voting power increases over time according to a decay function, up to a maximum. Power is withdrawn immediately if they change their vote.
• Key Feature: Naturally surfaces proposals with broad, long-term community support and filters out fleeting trends.
• Use Case: Pioneered by Commons Stack and used in DAOs like 1Hive for continuous funding allocation, allowing the most persistently supported ideas to eventually pass.

Applies plural voting through staking mechanisms to curate lists, where both inclusion and challenge votes are weighted by staked economic deposit.

• Process: A lister stakes tokens to add an item. Challengers stake tokens to dispute it. The community votes, with voting power proportional to stake, to decide the outcome; the losing side forfeits its stake.
• Plural Element: Voting power is a function of both token ownership and the willingness to risk those tokens (skin in the game).
• Use Case: Used to curate registries of high-quality oracles, reputable service providers, or verified news sources, as seen in early models like AdChain.

Voting power is derived from non-transferable reputation points earned through contributions, completely decoupling governance from liquid token ownership.

• Mechanism: DAO members earn Soulbound Tokens (SBTs) or reputation points for verified contributions like code commits, proposal writing, or community moderation. These grant voting rights.
• Plural Aspect: Power is based on a pluralism of actions and proven engagement, not just financial capital.
• Use Case: SourceCred instances or DAOstack's reputation systems reward active participants, aiming for meritocratic governance. This aligns with Vitalik Buterin's concept of 'proof-of-personhood' governance.

A hybrid model where users delegate voting power to representatives, but the delegate's effective power is multiplied based on secondary criteria like expertise or tenure.

• Mechanism: A token holder delegates to a 'delegate.' The protocol applies a multiplier (e.g., 1.5x) to that delegate's votes if they pass certain qualifications (e.g., completing a course, maintaining a long delegation history).
• Goal: Incentivizes delegation to informed, committed participants while preserving the liquid democracy model.
• Use Case: Proposed in upgrades to protocols like Compound or Uniswap, where skilled delegates could receive bonus voting power to enhance governance quality.

While designed for fairness, plural voting systems introduce unique complexities and potential vulnerabilities.

• Sybil Attacks: Systems based on non-financial metrics (e.g., one-person-one-vote) are vulnerable to identity forgery. Proof-of-personhood solutions are an ongoing challenge.
• Complexity & UX: Mechanisms like quadratic voting can be difficult for average users to understand and interact with optimally, potentially reducing participation.
• Collusion & Circumvention: Wealthy actors can still game quadratic systems by splitting funds across multiple identities (Sybil) unless robust prevention is in place.
• Example: Early quadratic funding rounds required sophisticated Sybil resistance analysis to prevent fraud.

A plural voting application where stakeholders use tokens to vote on the inclusion or removal of items from a list, with their stake at risk. This creates cryptoeconomic incentives for maintaining list quality.

• Mechanism: Participants deposit tokens to challenge or support list entries. The outcome is decided by a vote of token holders.
• Purpose: To create trusted, decentralized lists (e.g., of oracles, service providers, or content).
• Voting Factors: Combines stake size (financial skin-in-the-game) with community consensus.

A governance model that uses prediction markets to make decisions, representing a form of plural voting based on aggregated market intelligence and financial stake.

• Process: 1. A community votes on a metric of success (e.g., 'Increase TVL'). 2. Prediction markets are created to trade on the outcome of different policy proposals. 3. The policy predicted to optimize the metric is implemented.
• Voting Power: Derived from a participant's willingness to bet capital on their beliefs about policy outcomes.
• Goal: To separate value judgments (what to optimize) from factual predictions (how to achieve it).

Plural voting systems increasingly incorporate non-token metrics to measure contribution and allocate influence, moving beyond pure capital weight.

• Common Factors:
  • Proof-of-Personhood / Sybil Resistance: One vote per verified human (e.g., BrightID).
  • Proof-of-Contribution: Voting power based on verifiable work (e.g., code commits, community moderation).
  • Reputation / Soulbound Tokens (SBTs): Non-transferable tokens representing standing or achievements within a community.
• Objective: To align governance power with long-term alignment and active participation, not just wealth.

Plural voting is a governance design that decouples voting power from a simple 'one-token, one-vote' model. Its primary goal is to mitigate whale dominance and better align influence with a participant's long-term commitment or specific expertise, rather than just their capital. This is achieved by applying functions (like quadratic or reputation-based) to raw token holdings to calculate final voting power.

A canonical form of plural voting where the cost to cast n votes scales quadratically. A user pays a cost proportional to n², but their voting power increases only linearly. This makes it economically irrational for a single entity to dominate a vote, as the cost becomes prohibitive. It strongly favors preference intensity expressed by many small holders over concentrated capital.

Plural voting systems, especially Quadratic Voting, are highly vulnerable to Sybil attacks, where an attacker creates many fake identities to split their capital and gain disproportionate influence. Mitigating this requires a robust, costly, and often centralized identity verification or proof-of-personhood system, creating a central tension between decentralization/security and the desired egalitarian outcome.

Voting power is derived from a non-transferable reputation score earned through verifiable contributions (e.g., successful code commits, helpful forum posts). This aims to align power with expertise and skin-in-the-game. Key challenges include:

• Defining objective metrics for contribution.
• Preventing reputation oligarchies.
• Ensuring the system is Sybil-resistant from the outset.

Plural voting changes voter strategy. In QV, voters must budget their "voice credits" across proposals, leading to vote allocation games. Participants may engage in vote trading or form coalitions. The mechanism must be designed to discourage collusion and bribery, which can subvert the system's egalitarian goals and become a new attack vector.

Real-world deployment faces significant hurdles:

• Complexity: Harder for users to understand than simple token voting.
• Cost: Quadratic voting requires frequent, costly on-chain calculations or secure off-chain tallying.
• Identity Oracle Risk: Reliance on external systems for Sybil resistance introduces a single point of failure.
• Parameter Sensitivity: Poorly chosen coefficients (e.g., the cost function in QV) can break the mechanism.