Conviction voting is a continuous, time-weighted way to express support for proposals, used in systems such as Gardens. Instead of relying only on a single vote during a fixed window, participants allocate voting weight to proposals and that support builds conviction over time. If support is removed, conviction falls according to the system’s rules.
How support accumulates
Participants direct some eligible voting weight toward one or more proposals. A configured growth parameter determines how quickly sustained support gains strength. In a funding pool, a proposal can become executable after its conviction reaches a threshold. The threshold can depend on factors such as the pool’s available voting weight, the amount requested, and safeguards chosen by the pool’s designers.
There is no single universal formula or parameter set for every deployment. Gardens documents different pool settings, including a conviction-growth period, minimum thresholds, and funding limits. These choices shape how long support needs to remain allocated and which proposals can pass.
How it differs from a snapshot vote
A snapshot vote typically calculates voting power at a defined time and collects choices during a set voting period. Conviction voting instead tracks support as it persists and can evaluate several proposals continuously. This may suit ongoing funding decisions where a community wants proposals to compete for a shared pool rather than wait for one scheduled voting round.
It does not mean every DAO uses conviction voting, nor that proposals pass without rules. A pool still needs an eligibility model, parameters, and conditions for executing approved actions.
Trade-offs and cautions
Time-weighting can make a brief, late increase in support less decisive than support maintained over time, but it is not an automatic anti-whale guarantee. A participant with substantial voting weight may still have substantial influence. The threshold curve and spending limits matter, and a poorly configured pool may be too permissive or too difficult to use.
Keeping weight allocated also has an opportunity cost: participants may be unable to use it elsewhere while supporting a proposal. The mechanism can make preferences visible as they change, but it does not remove disagreement, collusion, voter concentration, or the need to inspect who controls the pool and its treasury.
Related Terms
See Also
- Why DAO Governance Votes Often Fall Short
- Are Layer 2 Networks Actually Decentralized?
- What Is Tokenomics?
- Explore crypto with ChangeNOW
Sources
- Gardens V2, Conviction 101 — The documentation defines support, time-accumulated conviction, configurable parameters, and funding thresholds.
- Gardens V2, Conviction Parameters — This page explains how pool-specific growth, minimum-threshold, and spending-limit settings affect proposal passage.
- BlockScience conviction-voting research repository — The repository describes continuous proposal support and thresholds that depend on requested funds.
Social Media Sentiment
A Reddit discussion about low DAO voter turnout captures the wider participation problem that continuous mechanisms try to address; the thread does not specifically evaluate conviction voting, so it is only adjacent context. Read the Reddit discussion.
Last updated: 2026-10