"Pupupupuisland | How does the "Quadratic Voting" find the next step for democracy in the blockchain community?"

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Is the current democratic system the best solution?

Other than casting a blank vote, can we effectively give up citizenship?

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How can we avoid extreme or majority-violent voting results?

What kind of voting mechanism highlights the intensity of everyone's opinions?

Let's use simple graphics and text to understand "Quadratic voting."

Is "one person, one vote, equal value for each vote" really the best solution for democracy?

From electing class monitors in elementary school, selling goods at school fairs in middle school, choosing club officers in college, to presidential elections as adults, we have been using the "one person, one vote, equal value for each vote" model. Whether in textbooks or real life, this "simple majority rule" has shaped our understanding of "democracy," and many believe it is the only best solution.

However, this democratic system, while straightforward, also has some obvious issues. For instance, citizens are forced to vote on social issues they are not interested in or informed about, casting a vote without knowing the consequences. In specific professional fields, a large group of uninformed voters can outweigh the judgment or opinions of a few experts. When faced with multiple options, people may give up their preferred choice and opt for a slightly less disliked option that is more likely to win.

While this system achieves the most "simple, brutal" fairness, it often results in voting outcomes that do not reflect true public opinion, making it difficult to gauge the level of concern each individual has on different issues and thus hindering the maximization of social public interest.

Divisible Citizen Rights｜From "one citizen = one vote" to "one citizen = 100 points"

In 2018, Microsoft's Chief Researcher Glen Weyl and Eric Posner proposed "Quadratic Voting" in their book "Radical Markets." The concept involves expressing preferences through allocated voting, then calculating additional voting costs squared to address the problem of "majority tyranny."

Each citizen initially receives the same number of points, which can be exchanged for actual votes during voting. However, when exchanging for more votes in the same vote, the cost increases exponentially, for example: exchanging one vote costs 1 point, two votes cost 4 points, and three votes cost 9 points.

Voters can choose to express their stance and strengthen their power on issues they care about, or remain silent on issues they are indifferent to, freely distributing the use of power. But when they need to exert a significant amount of power or express a strong opinion on an issue, they also incur higher "marginal costs."

Freely Allocatable Citizen Rights｜From "binary" choices to "multiple" choices

Firstly, every citizen has the same citizenship rights and is equal, thus each is allocated 100 points. Suppose a voter will encounter four votes in the upcoming year: a local council election, a presidential election, a referendum on environmental issues, and a referendum on national economic policies.

Based on their level of understanding and concern for each issue, they can allocate different proportions of points for use. For instance, they may have moved away from their registered residence and may not be as concerned or informed about the local council, preferring the local residents who truly care about the community's development to decide. Thus, they use 1 point to cast 1 vote for the local council. Conversely, they may pay more attention to political parties or the presidential election, so they use 25 points to cast 5 votes. On public issues, they may have less knowledge about environmental issues, so they use 16 points to cast 4 votes. However, national economic policies will impact their work and future development, so they decide to spend nearly half of their 49 points to cast 7 votes.

On The Economist's "A SQUARE VOTE" website, visitors can simulate the above example, which helps visualize the allocation of votes for each issue. Users can freely allocate 100 points to 10 issues, and after voting, the footer will automatically calculate the number of votes and distribution ratios for each issue.

Avoiding Polarization of Citizen Rights｜Why "square root" instead of directly "summing up"?

After the "square root" conversion, they have used 1 point for 1 vote in the local council, 25 points for 5 votes in the presidential election, 16 points for 4 votes on environmental issues, and 49 points for 7 votes on national economic policies.

In the case of national economic policies, the 49 points of influence they spent does not directly equate to the power of 49 individuals with 1 point each, but rather results in 7 votes "weakened" after taking the square root of 49. This means that when someone wants to express a stronger opinion in a vote, they must incur exponentially higher costs. When applied to smaller-scale social issues, passionate minorities who truly care can counterbalance the indifferent majority with their votes, while also avoiding extreme results from a large influx of votes.

The concept of "the more you use, the higher the unit cost" has long been present in our lives, such as Taiwan Power Company's "electricity tier pricing algorithm": the higher the total electricity usage, the more expensive each kilowatt-hour becomes.

This system not only allows citizens to express opinions more customarily and distribute power more freely but also helps us focus our time and energy on researching issues that interest us. When the level of public interest in different issues can be more concretely demonstrated, people are naturally more willing to participate in public affairs and therefore use their power more judiciously.

Why Should "Quadratic Voting" Start Experimenting from the "Blockchain Community"?

In theory, Quadratic Voting seems to optimize the current democratic system, but in practice, there is still a lack of sufficient research results from practical applications.

If we were to rashly change the voting rules in real life, we might encounter many prerequisites, such as finding a group of people interested in participating in public affairs, ensuring the results of this vote have a substantial impact, having sufficient common interests among groups, members needing some consensus while also caring about different issues, and a significant amount of time and cost required from voting to result execution.

Therefore, compared to politics or public affairs in real life, the following characteristics of blockchain communities may be more suitable as an experimental model for a "small-scale society":

1. Common Interests: Most community members gather based on some common interest, such as holding a specific currency or NFT, making them more concerned about the community's future rather than individual interests

2. Self-Organized Groups: Community members choose to join voluntarily, and the proportion of those who care about public affairs is higher within the group

3. Efficient Execution, Low Cost: Through smart contracts, the voting results of community members can be automatically executed in some votes, significantly reducing administrative process time and costs

4. Transparent and Immutable Data: Voting conducted on the blockchain is transparent, and the process and results can be publicly available, preventing opaque operations or tampering

5. Anonymous Voting: Participants only need to use an anonymous "wallet address" for identity verification to participate in voting

While there are already some similar voting tools in blockchain communities, the user adoption rate remains low, and the general public is still unfamiliar with this concept. There is still significant room for improvement and growth in education, products, and the market.

Our Lives and Technology Are Advancing Rapidly, but Why Is Democracy Stagnant?

Although most news media focus on blockchain for price fluctuations, the metaverse, Ponzi schemes, or an JPG worth millions, it quietly exerts substantial influence in the political arena. For example, individuals raise funds for street protest supplies through NFTs, crowdfund legal fees for illegally detained political prisoners using cryptocurrency, record past government secrets on the immutable blockchain network, or donate to the most famous anti-war campaign in Ukraine.

Twenty years ago, people could only get news from newspapers or TV and could only express dissatisfaction in the living room or go through great lengths to protest on the streets. Now, we can easily pick up our phones, express our opinions on social platforms, criticize the government directly in the comments section, and gather more like-minded individuals. These modes of social operation, now taken for granted, were unimaginable twenty years ago; so, what new forms of political participation might we not yet envision twenty years from now?

In 2019, the Colorado State House of Representatives in the United States began using Quadratic Voting to prioritize the budget for the next two years. That same year, Taiwan's Presidential Hackathon began using Quadratic Voting for proposal voting.

As this democratic model is gradually verified to be effective in specific areas, it will eventually diffuse into the daily lives of the general public, such as clubs, student organizations, unions, non-profit organizations, shareholder meetings, and eventually larger social and political activities. What we can do now is to start implementing and experimenting with this system in the "virtual society" of the blockchain community.

References/Extended Reading

A SQUARE VOTE
Democracy Earth
Quadratic Voting in Blockchain Governance
Quadratic Payments: A Primer
Citizen DingYoutube"A New Democratic Choice? Quadratic Voting!"
Block Trend "Quadratic Voting: Fair Voting with Unequal Votes"
Business Weekly Column: "Quadratic Voting" and "Shared Self-Assessment"
Kevin Lin's "Quadratic Voting"
RadicalxChange Foundation
Gitcoin Open Source Donation Platform
Radical Markets: Uprooting Inequality, Economic Stagnation, and Political Turmoil with a New Market Design (Chapter Two | Radical Democratic System)