Liquid Democracy

One of the key pillars for Cardano's viability is active community engagement and participation. This necessitates an effective governance mechanism. Using an iterative, anti-fragile approach and setting high standards for effective decision making, IOG provides the Cardano community with the mechanisms and human processes required to help decide & build the future of Cardano.

IOG plans to deliver this through absolute Liquid democracy - collective decision-making through direct participation and dynamic representation.

Liquid democracy is a concept of hybrid governance system that stands somewhere between representative and direct democracy. Ada holders can choose to vote directly, or delegate their votes to domain experts called Delegate Representatives (dReps_)_. This democratic culture plays a key role in Cardano's long-term sustainability as a public blockchain system.

Liquid democracy is also about the staking benefits. Cardano’s delegation mechanism is based on a liquid democracy, meaning that staked ada are never locked and can be utilized at any time. Other platforms use a third-party protocol to make staked tokens liquid, which has the potential to introduce security problems.