Quadratic Funding

Quadratic Funding (QF) is a crowd-funding mechanism that amplifies available resources by inviting community members to make donations (big or small) that act as votes on where to allocate funds. The broader the support, the bigger the match! - wtfisqf.com

First detailed in a paper by Ethereum-founder Vitalik Buterin, quadratic funding is a democratic approach to public funding. Typically there is a pre-existing "match pool" to be distributed to eligible grantees - but how much should go to which grantee?

QF describes a way the public can vote with their dollars (or tokens) and uniquely reward many smaller donations over few larger ones. This non-1-to-1 voting method has been highly effective at determining an equitable distribution of the match pool, as well as having the affect of raising additional funding for grantees.

Quadratic Voting (QV) is similar to quadratic funding, but employs a valueless voting token instead of conventional dollars/tokens.