Quadratic Voting and Quadratic Funding

Voice for the Many, Not Just the Money

Quadratic voting (QV) and quadratic funding (QF) are how Luminism balances individual stakes with collective welfare.

Quadratic voting

Classic coin voting is linear: 100 tokens = 100 votes. QV makes influence grow with the square root of spending. Buying 4 votes costs 16 credits; 9 votes costs 81. Big holders can still signal strongly, but at rising cost, so they can’t swamp everyone else.

QV depends on Sybil resistance. Without unique identities, someone could split stake across many wallets. Ethereum communities have paired QV with Proof of Humanity, BrightID, and similar tools so QV becomes “quadratic human voting,” not just quadratic coin voting. Gitcoin DAO and other pilots have already run QV for budgeting and governance.

Quadratic funding

QF applies the same idea to money. A matching pool (from donors, treasuries, foundations) amplifies small contributions from many people more than large contributions from a few. A dollar from 100 people outweighs $100 from one person in the formula [10], steering funds toward broadly valued public goods.

Gitcoin pioneered QF on Ethereum and has directed $50M+ to open-source and ecosystem projects [4]. No mandates, no central allocator—just code, matching pools, and community signals. Other ecosystems and even non-crypto orgs have copied the model because it reliably funds shared infrastructure.

Why this matters

QV and QF let communities express preference strength without handing control to the wealthiest. They’re modular: plug them into DAOs, grants programs, or civic pilots. If you run a DAO, try a QV vote on your next proposal. If you steward a treasury, stand up a small QF round. Each experiment pushes Luminism from theory into practice.