How Quadratic Voting Fairly Ensures Mogul Funds Movies That Everyone Wants to See on the Big Screen
Mogul is blazing a trail for the new way to finance and greenlight Hollywood movies – by putting the fans into the director’s chair to choose which movies make it to the big screen (or the streaming service!)
Mogul has built the first ever, consumer-ready, blockchain voting system that uses quadratic votes. This gives Mogul users and STARS holders the fair ability to influence and lend their voice to which movies will get made! You can check out the current showcase, which features Terminal Station, Devilreaux, and MR9 here.
To understand how quadratic voting gives movie fans and the whole Mogul community a voice in choosing the next film it wants to see in production, it’s important to understand what quadratic voting is and why it’s so valuable in preventing skewed voting and wealth domination within a decentralized, token-based system like Mogul.
What Is Quadratic Voting?
A quadratic voting system is an alternative to a plurality voting system. A plurality voting system is one that we are all familiar with. Every voter gets one vote, all votes are equally weighted, and the candidate that ends up with the most votes wins. That’s it!
Quadratic voting uses a quadratic equation to weigh votes differently. With this system, STARS token holders are assigned a certain number of votes per token they own. For every token that a holder has, they get fewer and fewer voting credits, so large token holders with millions of coins are unable to skew the vote. This promotes active participation in voting from all of the STARS token holders, regardless of their size, because each holder has a voice in the process. Small holders actually have a proportionally large voice; which in turn allows Mogul to gauge the sentiment across our entire community and not just a few large holders!
Why Mogul Uses Blockchain Technology for the Voting Process
As far as voting goes, there’s long been a distrust amongst voters as to whether or not their vote actually counts – or is even being counted – due to lack of transparency. The most recent US Presidential election is the most recent example of this distrust in how current voting methodology is lacking.
With blockchain technology, all actions and activities are auditable and public. A blockchain is, simply put, a distributed ledger of immutable data that everyone can see. And because data is not hosted on a centralized server, it cannot be tampered with, edited, or manipulated in any way.
This makes blockchain the perfect landing spot for fair, Internet-based voting and makes it so that movies can be voted by the crowd in a tamper-proof manner.
Why Quadratic Voting Keeps Things Fair
The number of voting credits you get at Mogul depends on how many STARS tokens you own. This is one reason for the implementation of a quadratic voting system. Mogul doesn’t have a “one person, one vote” system. STARS tokens can be earned through on-platform activities, contests, or purchased, so the number of tokens an individual person owns varies a lot!
An early adopter or large purchaser of STARS tokens has many more tokens to vote with than somebody who owns just a few tokens, but quadratic voting makes it less likely for a user with more tokens to skew the voting, because purchasing enough voting credits to do so would be VERY VERY expensive…
There is also a secondary (and equally important) benefit to the quadratic voting system. It prevents voters from buying votes or registering fake Mogul accounts to try and skew the voting of a particular showcase round to unfairly pump up the odds of certain movies going into production.
How Showcase Voting and STARS Tokens Work Together to Finance Movies at Mogul
Mogul’s movie showcase puts 2-5 movies up for voting on behalf of the Mogul community. The movies are chosen by a selection committee filled with industry experts to determine which projects are the most commercially viable. The curation process ensures that STARS token holders are only voting on quality films with high-level actors and a commitment to completing the project.
Each movie works with the Mogul team to curate and design materials for the voters to take a look at to have a more informed vote on which movie they want financed. For example, voters during this voting round can read the script, view the poster (which exists as a 1 of 1 NFT!), project highlights, confirmed cast and crew, and view a rip-o-matic about the movie.
STARS Tokens and Voting Credits
STARS token holders are assigned voting credits based on the square root (rounded down) of the number of tokens they hold.
Mogul then considers all of the votes using the quadratic voting system which exponentially increases the number of credits a voter has to spend in order to count multiple votes for the same movie. To calculate how much extra votes cost, the number of voting credits used to vote for a specific movie more than once is squared.
This means if you vote for a particular movie once, you only use one voting credit. But if you vote for that same movie three times, it actually “costs” you nine tokens. All tokens are returned at the end of the voting period to the user who voted, but tokens must be staked on the movie you want to vote for at the end of the voting round to count toward the final results. The longer your votes are casted, the more rewards you will accrue for giving your vote. Rewards are issued in STARS tokens proportionally, every Ethereum block, according to how many votes you have cast.
For the first showcase round, which begins on August 5th, there are 1 million STARS tokens that are being rewarded to voters, which is over $20,000! Every Ethereum block, which happens every 10 to 20 seconds, there are just over 11 STARS tokens that are proportionally gifted to voters. So, the longer you keep your vote in the system, the more votes you will accrue. No matter which movie you vote for, you will receive the same number of rewards during the voting period. The reasons for this are as follows:
- Voters are encouraged to place their votes early and not wait until the last minute
- All STARS holders are encouraged to vote to earn rewards (reduces voter apathy and increases the likelihood that we will get input from more community members!)
- Voters are not incentivized to vote on a particular movie based on the number of votes that it already has, since they get the rewards just for casting a vote
The chart below illustrates how quickly it becomes more and more expensive to vote for the same movie multiple times and shows how quadratic voting helps make the vote more fair:
How You Can Get in on the Voting Action
As long as you hold STARS tokens, you get voting credits. It’s as simple as that. The more tokens you earn, the more voting credits you’re granted.
Your Mogul account features a Showcase button in the left-hand menu as soon as you log in. You can click there and see which movies the Mogul community is currently showcasing at any given time.
Mogul will notify you when a voting period opens and closes, and you’ll be able to cast your votes at that time. To reward voters and encourage voting, voters will be given free STARS tokens for casting their vote and lending their voice to the Mogul process.
Now that you understand how the quadratic voting system works and how it ensures that films are selected by the entire Mogul community and not just the wealthiest voters, you can decide how many of your voting credits should go towards movies you want to see on the big screen.
That’s the way it should be!
