Quadratic Voting is a voting mechanism for DAOs that provides a more nuanced way for participants to express their preferences in democratic processes. The system was initially proposed in 2018 by economist Glen Weyl and law professor Eric Posner.
In Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAO), Quadratic Voting can be applied to enable members to express their preferences more effectively without favoring token holders with more influence.
In this method, each voter receives a fixed number of tokens or "voice credits" to cast their vote. However, instead of each token counting as one vote, the number of votes that a voter can cast is proportional to the square root of the number of tokens they have. For instance, a voter with 100 tokens can cast 10 votes (the square root of 100).
This approach ensures that those who are more passionate about a proposal are given greater weight, while those who may hold more tokens but do not have a strong opinion either way are limited in their influence.
Moreover, Quadratic Voting allows voters to allocate their votes across multiple proposals. For instance, a voter could allocate 5 votes in favor of one proposal and 5 votes against another, or they could use all their votes on a single proposal if they have a strong preference.
Overall, Quadratic Voting promotes a more democratic and inclusive decision-making process in DAOs, while also facilitating a more nuanced expression of voter preferences.
If you are interested to read more about DAO governance and voting mechanisms, you may read the following blogpost: Governance and Voting Mechanism Models of DAOs
