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Streaming Quadratic Voting

Streaming Quadratic Voting

TL;DR:

Streaming Quadratic Voting (SQV) lets community members allocate support to projects or proposals in real time—using quadratic cost principles to weight their votes. Instead of casting votes once, they stream their preferences over time, enabling fluid, adaptive governance.


In classic Quadratic Voting, participants allocate “voice credits” to express preference intensity: more votes = higher cost (quadratically). SQV builds on this by making that allocation continuous, allowing people to rebalance their preferences dynamically. Your vote is no longer fixed—it’s a stream that reflects your current values.


This enables:

  • Responsive prioritization: people can change their votes as contexts shift
  • Longer-term signaling: the duration and strength of your support both matter
  • New governance rhythms: no more waiting for rounds or snapshots


SQV may use tokens, reputation points, or time-weighted signal credits, and can power allocation decisions, prioritization processes, or live dashboards in onchain environments.

Best For

  • Prioritizing ongoing public goods or protocol upgrades
  • Continuous governance and planning
  • Systems where priorities evolve quickly
  • High-engagement communities

Good At

  1. Capturing evolving community sentiment
  2. Preventing vote-buying and plutocracy via quadratic cost
  3. Supporting more expressive, nuanced inputs
  4. Creating low-latency decision loops

Dependencies / Requirements

  • A credit system (token- or point-based)
  • UI/UX for live preference management
  • Quadratic cost logic implemented in real time
  • Limits or rate controls to prevent gaming or vote-spamming

Not Good At

  • Low-engagement or low-context communities
  • Binary or one-time decision-making
  • Situations where stable outcomes are needed quickly
  • Systems without reliable identity or signal limits

Who Should Use It?

  • Protocol governance seeking adaptive prioritization
  • Communities allocating bandwidth, funding, or roadmap attention
  • DAOs experimenting with continuous decision flows
  • Builders wanting more expressive and granular feedback loops

Example Use Cases

  • A protocol uses SQV to let token holders continuously vote on priority features or roadmap items
  • A grants program allows voters to stream support to different domains (e.g. dev tools, education) in real time
  • A civic DAO uses SQV for participatory budgeting—citizens stream their preferences over a month, and allocations shift accordingly