On Chain Voting

On-chain voting is a mechanism where governance decisions for a protocol are recorded directly on the blockchain. This ensures that the voting process is transparent, verifiable, and immutable, as anyone can audit the results.

Participants cast their votes by interacting with a smart contract, usually by locking or staking their governance tokens for a specified period. The weight of each vote is typically proportional to the number of tokens held, though some protocols use quadratic voting to mitigate the influence of large holders.

Because the voting happens on-chain, the results can automatically trigger changes in the protocol's smart contracts if the proposal passes. This tight integration between voting and execution is a hallmark of truly decentralized systems, though it requires rigorous security auditing to prevent manipulation.