⏱️ Voting Period: Decision Time
Understand how voting windows balance speed and participation
Follow a proposal from draft to execution
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0 / 5 completed🗳️ Voting Period: The Participation Problem
On-chain voting is binding but expensive. Each vote costs $10-50 in gas (Ethereum mainnet). This creates a problem: low participation. Most DAOs see 5-15% turnout. Only big token holders vote because gas cost > value for small holders. The voting period is typically 3-7 days. Too short = not enough time to mobilize voters. Too long = voter fatigue and declining participation. Most votes happen on day 1 and final day—middle days are dead. Quorum requirements (e.g., 4% of supply must vote) prevent tiny minorities from passing proposals, but also make it hard to pass anything during low-activity periods.
🎮 Interactive: Voting Period Calculator
Adjust voting duration, expected participation, and quorum requirements. See how these factors affect whether a proposal passes and how much gas voters spend.
✓ Typical DAO participation
📈 Participation Over Time
Notice the spikes on Day 1 and final day—typical voting pattern
💰 Gas Cost Analysis
✓ Moderate gas costs typical for mainnet
• Optimal balance of speed and participation
• Standard for most major DAOs (Uniswap, Compound, Aave)
• Allows time for debate without excessive delay
📊 Snapshot vs On-Chain Voting
📸 Snapshot (Off-Chain)
- ✓Free: No gas costs, anyone can vote
- ✓Fast: Results in seconds
- ✗Not binding: Can't execute automatically
- ✗Trust required: Multisig executes if passed
⛓️ On-Chain (Smart Contract)
- ✓Binding: Execution guaranteed
- ✓Trustless: Smart contract enforces results
- ✗Expensive: $10-50 per vote
- ✗Low participation: 5-15% typical
⚖️ Why Quorum Matters
Without quorum, 100 whales could pass a proposal while 99.9% of holders are asleep. Quorum forces broader consensus.
If typical participation is 8% but quorum is 10%, nothing passes. Too-high quorum = governance paralysis. Many DAOs adjust down over time.
During bear markets, participation drops 40-60% (holders disengaged). DAOs with fixed quorum struggle to pass anything when price is down.
💡 Key Insight
Voting period optimization is a trade-off triangle: participation vs. speed vs. cost. Can't optimize all three. Mainnet voting = secure but expensive and slow. Layer 2 (Arbitrum, Optimism) = cheaper but less participation initially. Snapshot = free but not binding. Most mature DAOs use hybrid approach: Snapshot for signaling → On-chain for execution. Compound shows that 5-day voting periods with 4% quorum is the sweet spot for consistent proposal passage (73% historical success rate). Shorter periods see 52% success. Longer periods don't improve outcomes but delay implementation. Next section: what happens after the vote passes—the mandatory safety delay before execution.