Onchain Atlas

Conviction Voting

Instead of voting once on a fixed deadline, you leave your tokens staked behind a proposal, and its 'conviction' builds up over time until it's strong enough to release funds automatically.

Also called: continuous voting · streaming governance · time-weighted proposal funding

What it is

Conviction voting is a way to fund proposals continuously rather than through periodic up-or-down votes. Members signal support by locking (staking) tokens behind a proposal, and the longer support stays in place, the more "conviction" it accumulates — like a battery charging. When conviction crosses a threshold tied to how much money is being requested, the proposal executes automatically, with no fixed voting deadline or quorum.

How it works

  1. A shared pool of funds (a "common pool") exists, often replenished by ongoing token issuance or protocol revenue.
  2. Anyone can submit a funding proposal specifying an amount requested from the pool.
  3. Token holders stake (lock) some or all of their tokens behind proposals they support; a token can typically only back one proposal at a time.
  4. Each proposal accumulates a "conviction" score that grows the longer support remains staked, following a decay curve — conviction rises while support holds and decays if support is withdrawn, smoothing out short-term flips.
  5. The threshold a proposal must cross to pass is a function of the amount requested relative to the pool: small requests need little conviction and pass fast; large requests need much more sustained support.
  6. Once conviction crosses the threshold, the smart contract releases the funds automatically — no separate execution vote is needed.
  7. Members can withdraw their stake at any time to redirect it to a different proposal, and conviction on the abandoned proposal decays rather than vanishing instantly.
  8. Multiple proposals can accumulate conviction in parallel, so many small requests can be funded simultaneously without competing in a single discrete election.

Why designers use it

  • Removes the overhead of scheduling votes, setting quorums, and coordinating turnout for every single spending decision.
  • Naturally weights decisions by sustained conviction rather than a one-time snapshot, discouraging last-minute vote flipping.
  • Lets many small, low-controversy proposals pass quickly while reserving real friction for large, contentious requests.
  • Fits communities with continuous funding needs (ongoing grants, public goods) better than episodic ballot-style governance.

Failure modes

  • Reflexive treasury risk: if the common pool is denominated in the community's own token, a price crash shrinks real funding capacity right when the community needs it most.
  • Plutocratic drift: conviction is still proportional to tokens staked, so large holders can outlast smaller ones simply by having more capital to leave locked indefinitely.
  • Sybil dilution: without identity verification, one person can split holdings across wallets to support multiple proposals that a single wallet couldn't back simultaneously.
  • Gaming via micro-proposals: bad actors can split a large request into many small ones, each individually under the radar, to bypass the higher threshold meant for big asks.
  • Illiquidity for voters: because staking locks tokens away from other uses (trading, other governance), participation can be discouraged during volatile markets.

What to check before using it

  • Decide whether the common pool holds the native token, external assets (stablecoins/ETH), or both — this determines how exposed funding capacity is to token price swings.
  • Tune the conviction growth/decay half-life and threshold curve to your community's proposal volume; too slow and nothing gets funded, too fast and it's gameable.
  • Consider pairing with identity or sybil-resistance tooling if funding power should reflect distinct humans rather than raw token balance.
  • Model how large a single proposal can be relative to the pool before it structurally cannot pass, or before it can drain the pool too fast.
  • Decide whether stake is at risk (can be slashed) or purely locked-and-recoverable, since that changes the psychology of long-term commitment.

Experiments that used it · 3

Shown oldest first, so you can watch the design evolve.

Commons Stack
A toolkit-and-culture project (Augmented Bonding Curve, Conviction Voting, Trusted Seed) for funding and governing 'commons' microeconomies, best known through its flagship instantiation, the Token Engineering Commons.
2019 partial success
Token Engineering Commons
A community-launched 'commons economy' for funding token-engineering public goods, run on an augmented bonding curve and conviction voting from 2021 until its deliberate sunset in December 2025.
2021 partial success
1Hive Gardens
1Hive's Gardens turned the 1Hive DAO's own operating system — conviction voting, a community covenant, and the Celeste dispute court — into a reusable template for bottom-up, continuously funded DAOs.
2021 partial success