Quadratic Voting Efficiency
Quadratic Voting Efficiency refers to the mechanism in decentralized governance where the cost of casting additional votes on a single proposal increases quadratically rather than linearly. In this system, a voter must spend tokens to acquire voting power, where the cost of N votes is N squared.
This design is intended to prevent whales or dominant stakeholders from monopolizing decision-making by making it prohibitively expensive to influence outcomes disproportionately. It aims to better reflect the intensity of preference among participants rather than just the raw amount of capital held.
By balancing the influence of large holders with the collective sentiment of smaller participants, it enhances the legitimacy of protocol governance. This efficiency metric measures how well the voting system minimizes the deadweight loss associated with collective decision-making in DAO structures.
It effectively aligns governance outcomes with the broader interests of the protocol ecosystem. Ultimately, it serves as a tool to mitigate sybil attacks and prevent the capture of governance by narrow interest groups.