Quadratic voting and funding

In quadratic voting, casting n votes for an option costs n² credits, so expressing a strong preference becomes expensive and a large holder's influence grows with the square root of their budget rather than linearly. Quadratic funding applies the same idea to donations: a matching pool is distributed according to the square of the sum of the square roots of individual contributions, so a project backed by many small donors receives far more matching than one backed by a single whale.

The concept was formalised by Glen Weyl, Vitalik Buterin and Zoë Hitzig and became the basis of Gitcoin Grants, which has funded open-source Ethereum tooling through many rounds. Some DAOs and civic experiments also use quadratic voting for polls.

The mechanism only works if each participant is a distinct person. Splitting funds across many wallets defeats it, so programmes rely on Sybil resistance such as identity scores, passports or proof of personhood. Collusion and bribery between donors remain hard to detect.