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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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
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Generating Abstain inertia GIF (120 frames)...
Saved: ../data/onchain/../snapshots/cv_abstain_animated.gif
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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