Quadratic Voting in DAOs Explained: How It Prevents Whale Dominance
Quadratic Voting Calculator
How Quadratic Voting Works
Quadratic voting makes it expensive to stack votes. Each vote costs more than the last, using a quadratic formula:
Cost = votes²
This means 1 vote = 1 token, 2 votes = 4 tokens, 3 votes = 9 tokens, and so on.
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Results
Traditional Voting: 10 votes cost 10 tokens
Quadratic Voting: 10 votes cost 100 tokens
This makes it difficult for whales to dominate proposals while giving smaller holders more meaningful influence.
Imagine a DAO where one person holds 100 tokens and everyone else holds just 1 token each. In a normal vote, that one person controls 100 votes out of 199 total - nearly half the power. That’s not democracy. That’s plutocracy in disguise. This is why quadratic voting was invented: to stop whales from running the show.
How Quadratic Voting Works (No Math Degree Needed)
Quadratic voting isn’t about who has the most tokens. It’s about how much you care. In this system, each vote costs more than the last - not linearly, but quadratically. That means:- 1 vote = 1 token
- 2 votes = 4 tokens
- 3 votes = 9 tokens
- 10 votes = 100 tokens
The cost isn’t 10 times more for 10 votes - it’s 100 times more. That’s the square of the number of votes. So if you really care about a proposal, you can spend more. But if you try to buy 50 votes, it’ll cost you 2,500 tokens. Most people won’t - or can’t - do that.
This flips the script. Instead of letting a few big holders dictate outcomes, quadratic voting gives small stakeholders real influence. In a DAO with 99 members holding 1 token each and one whale holding 100 tokens:
- Linear voting: Whale has 100 votes, others have 99. Whale wins.
- Quadratic voting: Whale can cast only 10 votes (square root of 100). Others together can cast 99 votes. The group wins.
That’s not magic. It’s math designed to balance power.
Why Token-Weighted Voting Fails in DAOs
Most DAOs still use simple token-weighted voting. It’s easy to build. But it’s broken.Early DAOs assumed that holding more tokens meant you had more skin in the game - and therefore deserved more say. But that’s not how it plays out. Big holders often:
- Buy votes from smaller members
- Collude with other whales
- Ignore proposals that don’t benefit their portfolio
- Leave the DAO after voting, taking their power with them
Real-world examples show this clearly. In 2023, a major DAO voted to allocate funds to a project that only benefited three large holders. The rest of the community didn’t vote because they knew their 1-token votes wouldn’t matter. That’s not governance. That’s a rigged game.
Quadratic voting fixes this by making it expensive to stack votes. It doesn’t stop whales from participating - it just stops them from dominating.
Real-World Use Cases That Actually Worked
Quadratic voting isn’t just theory. It’s been tested.CityDAO used it to decide which land parcels to buy for a decentralized city. With 2,000+ members, they needed a way to avoid a few rich contributors buying up all the property. Quadratic voting let small holders express strong support for specific locations - and they won several bids.
Codeless Conduct, a hackathon DAO, used quadratic voting to judge submissions. Instead of letting sponsors pick winners, they let participants vote with their tokens. The result? A winning project chosen by 60% of voters - not the top token holder’s favorite.
Realms, a DAO platform, built a plug-in that automatically applies quadratic voting. It uses a credit system: each member gets a fixed number of voting credits per proposal. You can spend them on one issue or spread them out. The platform also integrates with Civic Pass to verify that each vote comes from a real person - not a bot or fake account.
These aren’t niche experiments. They’re working models for how DAOs can make real decisions without surrendering power to a few.
The Big Hurdles: Complexity and Sybil Attacks
Quadratic voting sounds great - until you try to use it.First, the math is confusing. Most people don’t understand why 3 votes cost 9 tokens. If you don’t explain it well, people either don’t vote or vote randomly. DAOs that skipped education saw participation drop by 40% in the first month.
Second, Sybil attacks are a real threat. A bad actor could create 100 fake accounts, each with 1 token, and cast 100 votes - 10 per account - for a total of 1,000 vote points. That’s more than a whale with 10,000 tokens.
That’s why identity verification matters. Realms and other platforms now require:
- Phone number verification
- Proof of human identity via Civic Pass or Worldcoin
- One account per person
Without this, quadratic voting becomes just another tool for manipulation.
Third, voters need a budget. If you give everyone unlimited tokens to vote with, the system breaks. Most DAOs now give members a fixed number of credits per proposal - say, 100 credits - to spend however they want. That forces people to prioritize. Do you spend 81 credits on one proposal? Or spread 10 credits across 10? That’s where real democracy happens.
Who Benefits Most From Quadratic Voting?
It’s not the whales. It’s the quiet majority.People who:
- Hold 1-5 tokens
- Are active in the community but not investors
- Want to shape the direction but don’t have money to buy more tokens
- Are tired of seeing proposals pass because one person owns 30% of the supply
These are the people who usually get ignored. Quadratic voting gives them a voice that scales with their passion - not their wallet.
Studies from Frontiers in Blockchain (2024) show that DAOs using quadratic voting see 3x higher participation from small holders. Proposals that benefit the broader community are 60% more likely to pass.
It’s not perfect. But it’s the only system that makes sense when you care about fairness, not just efficiency.
What’s Next for Quadratic Voting?
The tech is improving fast.In 2024, new tools like DAOstack and Snapshot+ started offering drag-and-drop quadratic voting interfaces. No more spreadsheets or calculators. You just slide a bar to pick how many votes you want - and the system auto-calculates the cost.
Some DAOs are now testing “dynamic credits”: your voting budget increases if you’ve participated in past votes. That rewards engagement, not just token ownership.
And researchers are exploring hybrid models - combining quadratic voting with conviction voting, where votes gain weight over time. That could make long-term commitment matter more than quick flips.
One thing’s clear: as DAOs grow and handle real money, real property, and real legal decisions, they can’t keep using 2020-era voting. The future belongs to systems that reflect true community will - not concentrated wealth.
Should Your DAO Use Quadratic Voting?
If you’re running a DAO and you’ve noticed:- Only 5-10 people vote on every proposal
- The same few addresses always win
- Small holders are disengaged
- Proposals favor whales, not the community
Then you need quadratic voting.
Start small. Pick one proposal to test it on. Use Realms or another platform with built-in support. Educate your members with a 5-minute explainer video. Give everyone the same voting credit budget. Watch what happens.
Don’t wait until you’re flooded with proposals and your community is burned out. Fix the system before it breaks.
Quadratic voting won’t solve everything. But it’s the most honest way we’ve found to let a decentralized group make decisions together - without letting the richest ones call all the shots.
What is quadratic voting in DAOs?
Quadratic voting is a governance system where the cost of casting multiple votes on a proposal increases quadratically. For example, 1 vote costs 1 token, 2 votes cost 4 tokens, 3 votes cost 9 tokens. This makes it expensive for large token holders to dominate decisions, giving smaller stakeholders more influence based on how strongly they feel about an issue.
How does quadratic voting stop whale dominance?
In traditional voting, a whale with 100 tokens gets 100 votes. In quadratic voting, that same whale can only cast 10 votes (the square root of 100). Meanwhile, 99 members with 1 token each can cast 99 votes together. This flips power from concentrated wealth to collective preference, ensuring the majority’s voice isn’t drowned out.
Is quadratic voting more democratic than token-weighted voting?
Yes. Token-weighted voting rewards wealth, not participation. Quadratic voting rewards intensity of preference. Research from Frontiers in Blockchain shows it better reflects the will of a larger number of participants, especially when Sybil attacks are prevented and voters are given equal credit budgets.
What are the biggest challenges of implementing quadratic voting?
The main challenges are voter confusion (the math isn’t intuitive), Sybil attacks (fake accounts), and low participation. Without identity verification (like Civic Pass) and clear education, people either don’t vote or vote randomly. DAOs must also set fair voting credit limits to prevent abuse.
Which DAOs are using quadratic voting successfully?
CityDAO used it to decide land purchases, letting small holders influence property bids. Codeless Conduct used it to judge hackathon entries fairly. Realms offers a plug-in that automates quadratic voting with built-in Sybil resistance. These are real, working examples - not just experiments.
Do I need to hold a lot of tokens to use quadratic voting?
No. In fact, quadratic voting is designed for people who hold few tokens. Your voting power comes from how many votes you want to cast on issues you care about - not how many tokens you own. You can have 1 token and still influence outcomes if you vote strategically.
Can quadratic voting be hacked or manipulated?
Yes - if Sybil attacks aren’t prevented. A bad actor could create hundreds of fake accounts to cast votes. That’s why successful implementations use identity verification like Civic Pass or Worldcoin to ensure each vote comes from a real person. Without this, quadratic voting becomes just another attack surface.
Is quadratic voting the future of DAO governance?
It’s one of the most promising paths. As DAOs handle more complex decisions - funding, legal structure, asset ownership - they need systems that balance efficiency with fairness. Quadratic voting does that better than any other mechanism tested so far. Adoption is still limited, but tools are improving fast. It’s likely to become standard in mature DAOs by 2027.
Bro this is just socialism with blockchain buzzwords. Next they’ll make us vote on how many crypto coins we can own. LOL.
This is actually one of the coolest ideas I’ve seen in DAOs lately. I used to think token voting was fine until I saw how 3 guys owned 70% of the votes in my old DAO. Quadratic voting? It’s like giving the quiet people a megaphone instead of just letting the loudest guy scream over everyone. Real change.
I love how this system actually values participation over wealth. So many DAOs feel like stock markets with extra steps. This feels like community.
Look, I get the math. But let’s be real - most people don’t care enough to even understand why 3 votes cost 9 tokens. I tried explaining this to my cousin who holds 5 tokens in a DAO and he just said ‘so I’m supposed to do math to vote on whether we buy a server?’ No. People want to click a button and move on. This system looks beautiful on paper but in practice? It’s a UX nightmare. You’re asking non-tech people to be accountants just to participate. That’s not inclusion, that’s gatekeeping with a fancy algorithm.
And don’t even get me started on the ‘credit budget’ thing. If you give everyone 100 credits, the whales will just spread them across 10 proposals and still dominate. If you give them 10, no one’s going to use them all and half the proposals die from apathy. It’s a lose-lose unless you’ve got a community that’s already super engaged - and if you’ve got that, why do you need quadratic voting in the first place?
Also, ‘Civic Pass’? You’re asking people to verify their identity with a third party? That’s the opposite of decentralized. You’re trading whale dominance for corporate surveillance dominance. Cool.
Quadratic voting is a mathematical illusion. The square root function is not a democratic function - it’s a statistical smoothing tool. What you’re really doing is compressing the power distribution, not redistributing it. And the assumption that small holders have ‘passion’? That’s a romantic delusion. Most small holders are just speculators who bought in late and are now trying to feel important. The whale? He’s got skin in the game. Real skin. Capital. Risk. You can’t equate emotional investment with economic investment. That’s the fallacy.
Also, Sybil resistance via phone verification? That’s not decentralization. That’s Web2 with a crypto skin. You’re outsourcing identity to centralized providers. You’re not fixing plutocracy - you’re just replacing it with a state-backed ID regime. And you call that progress?
Everyone’s acting like this is some revolutionary breakthrough. Newsflash: quadratic voting was invented in 2017. It’s been tested. It fails in practice. The only reason it’s getting attention now is because whale DAOs are getting called out and they need a PR bandaid. You think people will spend 2500 tokens to vote on a proposal? Nah. They’ll just vote 1-2 times and call it a day. Then you’ve got a system where the most engaged - not the most representative - win. That’s not democracy. That’s a popularity contest for the hyper-motivated.
And don’t get me started on ‘voting credits’. You’re just creating a new form of rationing. Who decides the credit cap? The core team? The same people who’ve been running everything? So now you’ve got centralized control disguised as math. Brilliant.
It’s funny how we treat democracy like it’s a software bug to be optimized. We’re not trying to ‘fix’ governance - we’re trying to make it feel fair while keeping the same power structures intact. Quadratic voting is the neoliberal version of ‘you can vote, but only if you do the homework’. It’s not about empowering the many - it’s about making the few feel less guilty about dominating. The whale still owns the land, the servers, the liquidity. He just can’t vote 100 times. So he hires 100 bots, or buys 100 accounts, or tells his friends to vote his way. And suddenly, we’re all impressed by the ‘math’ while ignoring the human behavior behind it.
Democracy isn’t a formula. It’s a practice. It’s trust. It’s conversation. It’s showing up, week after week, even when it’s boring. No algorithm replaces that. And pretending it does? That’s the real scam.
Yessss this is the future!!! 🚀✨ I’ve been screaming this for years - token-weighted voting is just crypto feudalism 😭 So glad we’re finally moving toward something that values passion over paper wealth. Realms’ plug-in is a game-changer - I used it last week and actually felt like my 2 tokens mattered for once. Also, Civic Pass? YES. No more bots. No more fake accounts. We need this. Let’s make DAOs actually democratic, not just ‘decentralized’ in name. 💪🌍
Quadratic voting is the only thing keeping DAOs from collapsing under the weight of their own greed. You think whales care about ‘fairness’? Nah. They care about control. And this system? It’s the only one that forces them to pay for it. The math isn’t perfect - but it’s the only math that doesn’t let a single address buy the entire governance layer. And yes, Sybil attacks are a problem - but so are 10,000 fake wallets created by a single entity with $500k in capital. At least with identity verification, you’re forcing real cost. Real barriers. Real accountability. This isn’t ideal. But it’s the least broken option we’ve got.
i hate math so much why does everything have to be so complicated now
Let me guess - this is all part of the globalist elite’s plan to replace money with voting credits so they can track every decision you make. You think Civic Pass is for ‘security’? It’s for surveillance. They’re building the ID system for the next phase of the Great Reset. Quadratic voting? It’s not about fairness. It’s about control. You think the whales are the problem? Nah. The real power is in the people who design the system. And they’re not voting with tokens. They’re voting with code.
Oh wow, another ‘democratic’ system that requires identity verification and centralized infrastructure. How novel. I suppose we should all be grateful that the same VC-funded entities that built Uniswap are now also the ones deciding who gets to vote. Truly revolutionary. 🙄
While the theoretical framework of quadratic voting is elegant, its real-world implementation demands rigorous educational infrastructure and cultural alignment. Without consistent, accessible onboarding - particularly for non-technical stakeholders - the system risks alienating precisely the demographic it seeks to empower. The success of CityDAO and Realms is not merely a function of algorithmic design, but of deliberate community cultivation. Governance is not a product; it is a practice. And like any practice, it requires patience, repetition, and shared understanding.
I’ve been in DAOs since 2021 and I’ve seen every voting system under the sun. Linear? Broken. One person, one vote? Too slow. Quadratic? This is the first one that actually made me feel like my voice mattered - even with just 3 tokens. I spent my 81 credits on one proposal to fund a local meetup, and it passed. I’ve never felt more connected to a community. And yeah, the math is weird at first - but the interface explains it in plain language. No spreadsheets. Just a slider. I didn’t need to be an engineer to get it. And the fact that I can’t just dump all my credits on one thing? That’s the whole point. It forces you to think. To care. To choose. That’s democracy.
This is exactly what we need. I used to feel invisible in DAOs - like my 1 token didn’t count. Now I see people like me actually winning votes. It’s not magic. It’s design. And it’s working. Thank you for writing this - it’s the clearest explanation I’ve seen. I’m sharing it with my local crypto study group tomorrow.
Quadratic voting is a distraction. The real issue is token distribution. Fix that first. If you don’t want whales to dominate, stop letting them accumulate 10k tokens in the first place. Cap supply. Limit early allocations. Enforce vesting. Don’t invent complex voting systems to paper over poor tokenomics. That’s like fixing a leaky roof by installing better curtains.
Why are we even talking about this? In America we have one person one vote. Why are we importing this European math nonsense into crypto? This is not democracy. This is technocratic elitism wrapped in blockchain glitter. The only thing that matters is who owns the keys. Not who votes. Not who cares. Who owns. End of story.
Quadratic voting? Sounds like a Marxist plot to redistribute power. Who’s funding these DAOs anyway? The same globalist banks that want to kill cash. You think they want you to have real power? They want you to think you do. Meanwhile they’re building the digital ID system to track every vote, every purchase, every thought. This isn’t freedom. It’s the next phase of control. Wake up.
Let me tell you something - I’ve been in 12 DAOs. I’ve seen people spend 1000 tokens on one vote. I’ve seen whales buy out entire voting rounds. I’ve seen Sybil attacks. And I’ve seen quadratic voting work. Not perfectly. But better than anything else. The math isn’t perfect, but it’s the only thing that forces people to think twice before going all-in. And yes, you need identity checks. No, it’s not ‘decentralized’ in the purest sense. But it’s the only way to stop bots and sock puppets from drowning out real people. If you want true democracy, you have to accept some trade-offs. Stop being a purist. Get practical.
They’re not trying to stop whales. They’re trying to make us believe we’re equal while they quietly control the algorithm. You think the devs behind Realms don’t have their own wallets? Of course they do. And they’re the ones setting the credit limits, the identity rules, the voting caps. This isn’t democracy. It’s a simulation. A very convincing one. But still a simulation. Wake up. The real power is in the code. And the code is written by a handful of people in Silicon Valley.
I tried quadratic voting on a small DAO last month. I didn’t understand it at first. Took me 3 tries. But once I got it? I felt like I could actually influence something. I spread my credits across 4 proposals - one for a community call, one for a translator fund, one for a dev grant, one for merch. And guess what? The translator fund passed. We got Spanish and Mandarin support. Because 50 people like me each spent 10 credits. Not because one whale wanted it. That’s the first time in 3 years I’ve seen a DAO decision that actually reflected the group. I’m not a math person. But I’m a community person. And this? This works for us.
Why do we keep pretending blockchain can fix human behavior? You think people won’t collude? You think whales won’t just create 100 fake wallets? You think Sybil resistance is real? It’s not. It’s theater. And you’re all just performing for each other. This isn’t governance. It’s a reality show where the audience thinks they’re voting, but the producers already picked the winner.
This is a good idea. I’m not a tech expert but I get the point. If you have more money you can still vote more - but it costs a lot more. That makes sense. I think more DAOs should try it. I used to not vote because I felt useless. Now I feel like I can actually help. Thanks for explaining it so clearly.
Quadratic voting is a fascinating social experiment - but its long-term viability hinges on whether we can decouple governance from financial incentives entirely. The moment we anchor voting power to token holdings - even quadratically - we remain tethered to capital. True decentralization requires non-economic participation metrics: time contributed, reputation earned, or community trust accrued. Until then, we are merely refining the architecture of inequality, not dismantling it.
Wait - did you say Realms uses Civic Pass? That’s a centralized identity provider. So you’re building a decentralized system on top of a centralized identity layer? That’s not a hack. That’s a contradiction. You can’t have ‘decentralized governance’ if your identity is controlled by a single company. You’re not fixing the problem - you’re outsourcing it. And now you’ve created a single point of failure. Congratulations.