What is Cygnet?

Cygnet is a consensus-building tool for collectives. With Cygnet, peers can submit proposals for projects and decide how to allocate available resources to realize them.

How does it work?

Cygnet uses quadratic voting (QV) for the decision making process. QV is a multivoting system that enables participants to express their preferences over a series of proposals in a way that is more nuanced than 1-person-1-vote or 1-token-1-vote mechanisms.

In Cygnet, every voter has a fixed number of voice credits (100) that can be allocated across difference proposals. In order to express a higher preference one needs to spend more voice credits. The effective vote is the square root of the voice credits. For instance, allocating 25 voice credits to a proposal provides 5 effective votes. Because effective votes are the square root of voice credits, it incentives people to spread their voting power across many proposals, unless they want to register very strong preferences for specific proposals.

This is a way to address the problem of the “tyranny of the majority” because it makes it more expensive to express higher preference.

Cygnet aims to make the relation between voice credits and effective votes visually clear.

Where can I learn more about quadratic voting?

We recommend you check this helpful primer compiled by RadicalxChange.

Why do I need Discord or Slack to sign use Cygnet?

Cygnet uses Discord or Slack to verify the identity of the participants and prevent Sybil attacks — that is, it makes sure that one person cannot submit multiple votes through different accounts.

I still have questions…

Don’t worry! Feel free to get in touch either on Discord or via email at blackswan@cyg.network and we’ll be happy to answer any other questions you may have.