# 02_conviction_voting_analysis

# 02 — Conviction Voting Analysis¶

Analyzing the TEC's Disputable Conviction Voting system:

- Proposal outcomes and funding distribution
- Participation dynamics and voter concentration
- Conviction accumulation patterns
- Effective governance throughput

    Proposals: 47
    Stake events: 891
    Support updates: 873

    Proposal status breakdown:
    status
    executed     36
    cancelled    10
    open          1
    Name: count, dtype: int64

## 1. Proposal Funding Distribution¶

How was the common pool allocated? Who were the biggest recipients?

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      plt.savefig(f'{DATA}/../snapshots/cv_funding_distribution.png', dpi=150, bbox_inches='tight')

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      fig.canvas.print_figure(bytes_io, **kw)

    Top 5 beneficiaries by total funding:
      0x3b067af83f540c... :     50,000 TEC (1 proposals)
        - TE Fundamentals / TE Academy
      0x5041a1c1dcc760... :     54,000 TEC (1 proposals)
        - cadCAD Community Funding
      0x0fe03a31c0ab49... :     59,559 TEC (2 proposals)
        - Communitas WG - Second term funding proposal
        - Communitas WG 3-month funding
      0xa26d6aeb775a95... :     64,000 TEC (2 proposals)
        - Support TE Academy
        - Support TE Academy (Part 2)
      0xffbd35255008f8... :     76,801 TEC (2 proposals)
        - Gravity DAO Second funding proposal from the TEC
        - Gravity 6 month funding from the TEC

## 2. Proposal Success/Failure Patterns¶

## 3. Voter Participation & Concentration¶

How concentrated was governance power? Did a small number of whales dominate?

    Participation stats:
      Total unique stakers: 159
      Median proposals per staker: 2
      Mean proposals per staker: 4.5
      Stakers on 1 proposal only: 69
      Stakers on 5+ proposals: 49
      Gini coefficient: 0.843
      Top 10 stakers hold 65.1% of max stake

## 4. Conviction Dynamics Over Time¶

How did conviction accumulate? Were proposals funded quickly or did they require sustained support?

    Conviction dynamics:
      Funded proposals - median days active: 198.0
      Cancelled proposals - median days active: 50.2

## 5. Governance Throughput & Spending Rate¶

    Spending analysis:
      Active period: Jan 2022 to Mar 2023 (404 days)
      Total funded: 680,295 TEC
      Monthly burn rate: ~50,517 TEC/month
      Avg proposal size: 18,897 TEC
      Median proposal size: 14,074 TEC

## 6. Key Findings Summary¶

    ============================================================
    CONVICTION VOTING — KEY FINDINGS
    ============================================================

    SCALE:
      47 total proposals, 36 funded
      680,295 TEC disbursed
      159 unique governance participants

    CONCENTRATION:
      Gini coefficient: 0.843
      Top 10 stakers: 65.1% of stake
      69/159 stakers only voted once

    OUTCOMES:
      36/43 proposals funded (84% success rate)
      7/43 cancelled (16%)

    QUESTIONS FOR DEEPER ANALYSIS:
      1. Did conviction voting favor incumbents/repeat proposers?
      2. How did the 11% spending limit affect large proposals?
      3. Were cancelled proposals victims of insufficient participation or active opposition?
      4. Did the Abstain proposal (#1) serve its intended signal function?
      5. How did staking for CV affect circulating supply and ABC price?

## 7. Conviction Growth & Decay per Proposal¶

Reconstruct per-proposal conviction and staking timelines to see how support built up, peaked, and decayed over each proposal's lifecycle.

    Built timeline: 891 data points across 43 proposals
    Date range: Jan 27 2022 to May 04 2023

    Abstain proposal (#1): 90 data points
      Peak stake: 729,141 TEC
      Final stake: 706,785 TEC
      Peak conviction: 514,968

## 8. The Abstain Proposal as Inertial Force¶

In conviction voting, the Abstain proposal (#1) acts as an inertial brake on all other proposals. Tokens staked on Abstain don't contribute conviction toward any funding request, effectively increasing the threshold for all other proposals. When Abstain stake is high relative to active proposals, it becomes harder to pass funding — this is by design, allowing token holders to signal "slow down" without opposing specific proposals.

How did this inertial force evolve over time?

    Abstain as Inertial Force:
      Peak Abstain stake: 729,141 TEC
      Peak Active stake: 7,668,191 TEC
      Avg Abstain share: 15.7%
      Max Abstain share: 100.0%
      Min Abstain share: 7.7%
      Periods where Abstain > Active: 31/890 events (3%)

## 9. Animated Conviction Dynamics¶

Animated GIFs showing conviction building up over time for each proposal, and the Abstain proposal's inertial effect on governance throughput.

    Generating conviction dynamics GIF (120 frames)...

    Saved: ../data/onchain/../snapshots/cv_conviction_animated.gif

    <IPython.core.display.Image object>

    Generating Abstain inertia GIF (120 frames)...

    Saved: ../data/onchain/../snapshots/cv_abstain_animated.gif

    <IPython.core.display.Image object>

## 10. Proposal Spending by Category¶

Bucketing the 36 funded conviction voting proposals into rough spending categories to understand where the common pool was allocated.

    Spending Category Breakdown:
    Category                            TEC    Pct  #Props   Avg Size
    -----------------------------------------------------------------
    Education & Research            259,515  38.1%       8     32,439
    Working Groups                  143,233  21.1%       5     28,647
    Governance Infrastructure       110,801  16.3%       4     27,700
    Communications                   64,410   9.5%       6     10,735
    Rewards & Recognition            48,000   7.1%       3     16,000
    Transparency & Oversight         39,006   5.7%       5      7,801
    Retroactive Funding               9,830   1.4%       4      2,458
    Other                             5,500   0.8%       1      5,500