Conviction Score

Conviction Scores replace subjective reputation with a transparent, algorithmically derived metric for allocating voting power or governance tokens. This mitigates plutocracy (rule by the wealthy) and sybil attacks by weighting influence based on proven, long-term contributions to network health rather than mere token holdings.

• Example: A governance proposal's voting weight could be a function of a participant's Conviction Score, not just their token balance.
• Mechanism: Scores are derived from on-chain actions, making the reputation system verifiable and resistant to manipulation.

Governance systems can use Conviction Scores to automatically surface high-quality proposals. Participants with high scores (indicating consistent, valuable contributions) could have their proposals enter a priority queue or bypass initial friction, such as high proposal deposits.

• Workflow: A high Conviction Score acts as a bond, signaling the proposer's skin-in-the-game and reducing governance spam.
• Outcome: This focuses community attention and voting bandwidth on suggestions most likely to come from aligned, experienced network participants.

Token holders can delegate their voting power to representatives. Conviction Scores provide a critical signal for identifying trustworthy delegates. Instead of choosing based on marketing or social influence, delegators can select agents with a proven track record of positive-sum behavior and protocol-aligned actions quantified on-chain.

• Trust Minimization: Reduces the need for personal trust or off-chain reputation.
• Dynamic Delegation: Delegation pools could automatically rebalance based on the fluctuating Conviction Scores of their constituent delegates.

DePINs require fine-tuning of economic parameters like work rewards, slashing conditions, and inflation schedules. Governance can use aggregate Conviction Score trends as a feedback mechanism.

• Example: If average Conviction Scores across the network are falling, it may signal misaligned incentives, triggering a governance vote to adjust reward parameters.
• Data-Driven Governance: Moves parameter debates from speculation to analysis based on behavioral metrics like loyalty, consistency, and quality of work.

Many DAOs elect smaller committees (e.g., security councils, grant committees) for operational efficiency. Conviction Scores enable meritocratic selection for these roles. Candidates can be ranked or shortlisted based on their objective, on-chain contribution history, ensuring that elected members have demonstrated commitment and competence.

• Anti-Collusion: The transparent and algorithmic nature of the score makes corrupt bargains for council seats more difficult to execute and easier to detect.
• Accountability: Council member performance can be later evaluated against changes in their Conviction Score.

Beyond simple token staking, conviction staking allows participants to stake their reputation (Conviction Score). Actions that harm the network (e.g., voting for malicious proposals, providing faulty work) result in a loss of score, not just slashed tokens. This creates a dual-layered security model.

• Deterrence: Attacks become more expensive, requiring attackers to build and then burn valuable on-chain reputation.
• Alignment: Strongly incentives participants to act as long-term stewards of the network, as their influence is directly tied to their behavioral equity.

The Conviction Score is fundamentally designed to resist Sybil attacks, where a single entity creates many fake identities. It does this by anchoring the score to staked economic value (e.g., ETH, SOL, native tokens) rather than simple identity. A user's influence scales with their skin in the game, making large-scale manipulation economically prohibitive. This transforms capital commitment into a verifiable signal of trust.

A core security mechanism is the time-decay function (often exponential). Conviction decays when a user unstakes or sells assets, but rebuilds slowly through consistent holding. This creates a high cost for short-term, mercenary capital and rewards long-term aligned participants. The system effectively measures sustained conviction, filtering out transient actors who might exploit protocols and exit.

In governance systems, Conviction Score can be used to weight votes or signal on proposals. This aligns decision-making power with long-term stakeholders, a concept known as futarchy or skin-in-the-game governance. It mitigates vote buying and low-cost attack vectors by ensuring those most affected by long-term outcomes (high-conviction stakers) have proportionally greater influence.

Conviction can be integrated with cryptoeconomic security models. For example, a high score might allow a user to post less collateral for a loan or validator role, as their long-term stake acts as a bond. Conversely, malicious actions could trigger a slashing penalty that disproportionately impacts their hard-earned Conviction Score, creating a powerful disincentive against protocol attacks.

The system aims for a Nash Equilibrium where the rational strategy for a participant is to act honestly and maintain long-term alignment. The costs of building high conviction (time, locked capital) are offset by the benefits (governance power, rewards, access). This equilibrium secures the network by making attacks more expensive than honest participation.

When used to weight oracle data submissions (e.g., in decentralized oracle networks), Conviction Score can enhance security. Data points from actors with a long-term, high-value stake in the network's accuracy are weighted more heavily. This reduces the risk of flash loan attacks or short-term manipulation of price feeds, as attackers cannot cheaply acquire high-conviction influence.

The most common governance model where voting power is directly proportional to the number of governance tokens held. This is a core input for many Conviction Score calculations, but the score adds a temporal dimension.

• Key Feature: One token, one vote.
• Limitation: Susceptible to vote buying and short-term speculation.
• Example: In a DAO, a member with 100 tokens has 100 votes.

A voting mechanism designed to reduce the power of large token holders. The cost of votes increases quadratically, allowing many small stakeholders to collectively outweigh a single large one.

• Mechanism: Cost = (Number of Votes)².
• Purpose: To measure intensity of preference, not just capital.
• Relation to Conviction: Both systems aim to refine raw token weight, but Quadratic Voting is applied per proposal, while Conviction Score is a persistent reputation metric.

A governance framework that uses prediction markets or futarchy to surface high-quality proposals before they go to a full token vote. It helps decentralized organizations scale decision-making.

• Core Idea: Use market signals to predict proposal success.
• Conviction Link: A user's Conviction Score can be used to weight their predictions or signals within these auxiliary consensus mechanisms, granting more influence to long-term aligned participants.

A system where token holders can delegate their voting power to representatives or experts. This creates a layer of professional governance and reduces voter apathy.

• Common in: Compound, Uniswap, and many Proof-of-Stake networks.
• Conviction Link: A delegate's Conviction Score can serve as a public, verifiable metric of their governance participation and reliability, helping token holders choose who to delegate to.

A direct precursor to Conviction Scoring. Voting power is based not just on token amount, but on how long those tokens have been committed (e.g., locked in a vault).

• Mechanism: Power = Tokens × Time.
• Purpose: To incentivize and reward long-term holding and engagement.
• Evolution: Conviction Scores often incorporate this principle but may add more behavioral factors like proposal submission and peer validation.

Broader systems that assign non-transferable scores based on contributions. While often used for bounties or social platforms, the principles apply directly to governance.

• Key Traits: Non-transferable, earned through action, can decay.
• Examples: SourceCred, Coordinape.
• Relation: A Conviction Score is a specific type of governance reputation that typically focuses on voting participation, proposal quality, and token commitment over time.