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Star Voting

Star Voting

TL;DR:

In STAR Voting, voters rate each option (e.g. 0–5 stars). After all ballots are scored, the two highest-rated options go to a runoff—and the option preferred by a majority wins. This lets people express support for multiple ideas without vote-splitting.


STAR Voting (Score Then Automatic Runoff) solves several problems found in first-past-the-post and ranked-choice voting systems:

  • It allows voters to support multiple strong candidates
  • It reduces strategic voting
  • It ensures the winner is both well-liked and broadly supported


Though originally developed for political elections, STAR Voting has potential in Web3 for:

  • DAO decision-making
  • Project prioritization
  • Grants selection
  • Round governance


In onchain or offchain systems, STAR Voting can be used to score proposals, contributors, or domains before a final decision. It encourages expressiveness (via scoring) while still producing a single, decisive outcome.

Best For

  • Selecting one option from many
  • Communities seeking fairer, more expressive voting
  • Governance decisions where consensus and decisiveness both matter
  • Rounds or allocations where multiple good options exist

Good At

  1. Avoiding vote-splitting and polarization
  2. Encouraging honest expression of preferences
  3. Producing clear winners without runoffs dragging on
  4. Supporting voter nuance and decisiveness in one round

Dependencies / Requirements

  • A UI to support scoring ballots (0–5 scale)
  • Infrastructure to calculate aggregate scores
  • Logic to identify top two and determine majority preference
  • Optional sybil resistance or weighting mechanisms

Not Good At

  • Funding many options simultaneously
  • Continuous or real-time voting scenarios
  • Environments needing proportional representation
  • Low-participation groups (may produce distorted scoring)

Who Should Use It?

  • DAOs looking for expressive yet decisive governance tools
  • Communities selecting a lead project, steward, or proposal
  • Ecosystems where multiple good options compete and voters need nuance
  • Protocols experimenting with post-binary voting systems

Example Use Cases

  • A DAO uses STAR Voting to choose one proposal to fund from a list of six
  • A grants committee uses STAR to let voters rate all projects, with a final runoff between the two top scorers
  • A community selects a new core steward via STAR Voting, ensuring the winner has both high ratings and broad support