# Limitations of using the phrase "quadratic voting"

Source: https://github.com/snapshot-labs/snapshot/issues/951
Kiwi News: https://news.kiwistand.com/stories/Limitations-of-using-the-phrase-quadratic-voting?index=0x653154dc6d5d242f8e4cf0f781c3959083435e4ac047aeb650b3f7c6da15d36a741d01b3
Submitted by macbudkowski.eth on 2023-10-19 UTC, 6 upvotes, 0 comments

## Summary

The author argues that Snapshot's "quadratic" vote type should not be called quadratic voting, since it is a tally method that takes the square root of each option's vote total, not the mechanism proposed by Weyl and Lalley in Radical Markets. Quadratic voting assumes each identity votes once with a fixed number of credits, while Snapshot cannot prevent Sybil identity fraud, so a token-weighted vote lets large ERC20 holders split their balances across many addresses. The author suggests renaming the vote type to something like "vote tally square root" to avoid confusion.

## Article

"Quadratic voting" as it's being defined by academic papers and e.g. on Wikipedia has a particular quality to it as it's supposed to address the tyranny of the majority. The voting mechanism described in Radical Markets and elsewhere makes an implicit assumption that each identity gets to vote once with a fixed number of voting credits.

However, from what I'm understanding when testing snapshot's implementation (this one: https://github.com/snapshot-labs/snapshot/blob/25907c5da4b77462eb65814bd960e525640da3df/src/helpers/voting/quadratic.ts), then the snapshot system itself isn't capable of protecting against identity fraud during votes.

E.g. if a snapshot vote is created with the vote type being quadratic, but e.g. arbitrarily distributed ERC20 token balances are used as a strategy, then the vote shouldn't indeed be called a "quadratic vote".

It's because then, any ERC20 holder is free to distribute their tokens to as many Ethereum addresses that they want before the "snapshot", meaning that big ERC20 holders can have an even higher impact on the vote through creating "Sybils" ("cheating").

I think it is hence important to signal to all users that indeed the snapshot vote type "quadratic" isn't a "quadratic vote", but rather a vote tally algorithm that - for each voting issue, takes the square root of the voting result and assumes it as the outcome.

The similarity to a "quadratic vote" is that the same mathematical function is used in the tally. The name "quadratic vote" is already taken by the idea proposed by Weyl and Lalley in Radical Markets (e.g. see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Quadratic_voting&oldid=1049808681). A quadratic vote makes no fragile assumptions about identities. It guarantees that each person can only vote once and hence is a solution to the tyranny of the majority. Square rooting the vote tally isn't a solution to the tyranny of the majority.

Square rooting the vote tally can also have benefits in voting as e.g. it limits the impact of honest whales. But without Sybil protection and the assumption that 1 address = 1 identity, it's fragile and "unsafe" according to the safety property in distributed systems.

I suggest renaming the vote type to e.g. "vote tally square root".