Vote Decay

To ensure dead people 💀 aren't still signaling their preferences from the grave 🪦, MetaPoll has voting decay.

Unlike previous decay systems, we didn't want the user to need to repeatedly come back every few days to refresh their voting power, because that's annoying. A core part of our design ethos is to put as little burden on voters as possible.

What we are aiming to achieve is a light time cost of a couple minutes once per year ish.

How the decay mechanism works

In addition to the number of eligible votes a voter has, they also have "voting power" which is represented in percentages.

Voting power decays by half after a decay period has been completed. After 5 completed decay periods, the voting power is set to 0% and the vote becomes deactivated.

By default the decay period is set to 400 days. (This parameter could be tweaked in the future if needed.)

Completed Decay Period Number	Days	Voting Power Percentage
0 (no decay applied)	0 - 399	100%
1	400 - 799	50%
2	800 - 1,199	25%
3	1,200 - 1,599	12.5%
4	1,600 - 1,999	6.25%
5	2,000 +	0% (Deactivated)

Applying vote decay to compute votes

To apply the vote decay to the number of votes is simple.

We take the total number of eligible votes [EV] and multiply it by the voting power [VP] to get the total counted votes [CV].

$$\text{CV} = \text{EV}\times\text{VP} \qquad \begin{aligned} \text{CV} &= \text{Counted Votes} \\ \text{Where: } \text{EV} &= \text{Eligible Votes} \\ \text{VP} &= \text{Voting Power} \end{aligned}$$

Viewing vote decay in MetaPoll

Inside a MetaPoll at the lower left corner of the page beside the "enter voting mode" button you'll see your counted votes displayed along with your voting power percentage.

Votes are displayed in the lower left corner of the page.

To get a detailed view of your eligible votes, voting power, and counted votes click the highlighted box containing your counted vote and voting power.

Detailed voting power panel

Understanding the terms

Voting tokens: is the list of all eligible voting tokens in this MetaPoll.

Eligible votes: is the number of eligible votes your logged in account has, broken down token by token.

Counted Votes: is the number of votes that are actually getting counted when creating the results. Counted votes are calculated by multiplying eligible votes with your voting power.

Voting power: is a percentage value that begins at 100% and then halves after every decay period completes. After 5 decay periods the voting power is set to 0%.

Decays in: is an integer that counts down towards the current decay period completion.

Total eligible: is a sum of all eligible votes across all eligible tokens.

Total counted: is a sum of all counted votes across all eligible tokens.

Recast: is an 1 click button to recast your vote with the same option rankings.

How to restore voting power

Voting power can quickly and easily be restored back to full strength by these two options:

1. You can cast another vote on the MetaPoll through the normal voting flow.

2. Within the detailed voting power panel, you can simply click the "recast" button.

Recasting

Recasting your vote is a short cut to voting again with the exact same option rankings. The point of this feature is to save you time if your opinions haven't changed.

You can find the recast button in the detailed voting power panel

Steps to recast:

1. Open detailed voting power panel

2. Click recast button

3. Your wallet will open a new window asking for a signature. Click "sign" button on your wallet.

You're done! A new signed ballot will be submitted and you will be back to 100% voting power with your decay periods reset back to 0.