Combat Vote

What is Combat?

Combat allows you to pit your coins against others during a vote. Coins which are staked on opposing options get burned out of existence. This differs from other voting options because it enables the possibility of coin loss. Combat is an experimental mode meant to be enabled for only the highest stakes votes.

Tell us what you think about combat in our Discord server.

How does it work?

1. Administrator creates a new vote with the maxlosspercent option set to any number between 0 (disabled) and 100 (maximum possible loss). This represents the maximum percentage an individual could lose of their staked coins.

2. Administrator opens the vote to citizens.

3. Citizens vote by staking coins on one or more options.

4. Administrator ends the vote and the combat algorithm calculates the losses.

   1. If vote is unanimous, all coins are returned to participants unaffected.

   2. If all options received the same amount of votes ( tie ), a percent of coins are burned according to maxlosspercent for each option. Any remaining coins are returned relative to their initial stake.

   3. If vote is contentious but has a winner, the combat algorithm burns a percent of coins according to maxlosspercent for 2nd, 3rd and following places. For example, if set to 100%, all coins from 2nd place down are burned completely.

   4. For first place, we burn the same amount of absolute coins that 2nd place lost. For example, if second place has 10 coins burned, first place also burns 10 coins, irrespective of proportion.

   5. If any coins remain, they are returned to all participants, proportional to their original stake. If maxlosspercent was set to 100%, only 1st place participants will receive any coins back.

The outcome of this vote effectively means that everyone loses something if the vote is not unanimous, and it can be made more severe by increasing the maxlosspercent.

Why Use Combat?

Regular voting is great when you want an answer from the crowd, but sometimes you need something that lets people put their money where their mouth is. Combat adds risk to voting, and therefore creates a different incentive to participation.

1. Combat makes participants think more carefully about voting. There is an economic consideration that increases the sophistication and education around the issue.

2. Combat filters out those who have no stake in the outcome of the vote. This is because if you have no stake in the outcome, there's no reason to risk any coins, naturally creating both an incentive and disincentive for participation.

3. Combat means potential voters may want to better understand and negotiate with parties who disagree with their opinion before committing, in order to minimize losses.

4. Combat adds finality to contentious votes. By effectively burning opposing coins out of existence, the ability for continued dissent through voting is limited.

5. Combat adds a novel twist to voting that requires strategic thinking which may get your community more engaged in both decision making and community building.