Conviction Voting
Conviction Voting is a new decision-making process that allows community members to continuously express their preferences and provide funding to proposals. Unlike other decision-making mechanisms, Conviction Voting does not rank proposals in a pairwise manner. Instead, community members can allocate their voting power to multiple proposals based on their preferences. Each proposal is like a bucket, and the tokens representing the weighted opinions are like faucets that pour into the chosen proposal based on the chosen percentage. The longer a proposal is supported, the more it is filled with the voter's conviction. The conviction grows over time according to a decay curve, increasing the weight of the preference. If a voter decides to switch their preference to a new proposal, their conviction will flow out from the previous proposal according to the decay function, as if there were small holes at the bottom of each bucket. This introduces a time dynamic to the system, resembling the dynamics of natural systems. To understand the mechanism of conviction accumulation, you can play with a basic Conviction Voting applet at or check out DappLion's Math-oriented HackMD created for ETHParis. Existing on-chain voting systems face several challenges. One of them is the lack of identity in blockchain, which means that it is not based on the principle of "one person, one ID". Gitcoin Passport aims to address this issue. However, it is important to recognize that this can lead to Plutocracy, where the wealthy and malicious individuals can exert undue influence on the voting process. Tactics such as Vote buying, Plutocracy, and Sybil Attack can be used by these individuals to manipulate the outcome of the voting process. These problems plague many on-chain voting systems today. Time-boxed voting, as seen in multiple on-chain voting scenarios, is particularly susceptible to manipulation at the end of the session. Strategic voters wait to see the initial results before casting their votes and balance their choices to their advantage. Mechanisms such as extending the voting time if the results change at the last moment (wait for quietvoting) or keeping the voting results secret until the end of the voting period (PLCR voting) partially address this issue. However, these mechanisms introduce complexities in user experience and liquidity due to the need for arbitrary token lock periods. On-chain voting also suffers from voter apathy. The participation rate in on-chain voting is even lower than traditional political elections, with only 3.8% participation in a recent Aragon AGP vote. Despite talking about decentralized governance, not many people actively engage in it. On-chain voting systems have a challenging user experience, requiring voters to send multiple transactions within a narrow time frame to confirm their votes, all through the inconvenient user interface of blockchain. With fewer voters, the results may not accurately reflect the sentiment of the community, which is a significant drawback of these new decentralized decision-making systems. Therefore, let's continue to explore improvements in this regard.