Quadratic voting and funding protocols have seen increasing adoption in web3 and beyond as a way to more fairly reach decisions and allocate resources. However, these mechanisms have widely reported shortcomings, both theoretical and practical, and more nuanced protocols which consider aspects of voter identity and expertise have been proposed. These more plural approaches show promise, but have seen little in the way of experimental validation. Our project will field test some of these alternatives to quadratic voting, particularly collection-oriented cluster match, to assess their soundness and their practical application to real-world settings.

As a data scientist holding a Ph.D. in Economics, I specialize in the development of economic frameworks, conducting advanced analytics, and translating findings into actionable business insights across a wide array of projects. At present, my focus lies on refining and empirically validating plural voting mechanisms.

After graduating with a Masters in Philosophy from Cambridge, Rich worked as an academic editor assisting at all stages of the peer review and publication process. He transitioned to web3 in 2016, and since 2021 he has been the governance steward at HOPR, experimenting with different approaches to voting mechanisms, sound proposal formation and broader governance design.