6 ♦ · Consensus · Draft
Pairwise Voting
Members compare options two at a time, and a formula turns all those choices into a funding split.
How it works
The DAO lists the projects that want funding. Each member sees two projects at a time and picks the one they value more, then gets a fresh pair. Members can answer as many pairs as they like. The system collects every comparison and scores each project by how often it beats the others, adjusted for the strength of its opponents. That score becomes each project's share of the budget. The DAO then pays out in those proportions.
Use it when
- Split a budget across many projects when members cannot rank them all at once.
- You want quick, low-effort input from many members instead of a few long ballots.
- Rank a long list where each voter knows only part of it.
Watch out for
- Projects with few comparisons get noisy scores, so already popular projects stay on top.
- Voters drop out after a few pairs, so the bottom of the list gets little signal.
Example
Pairwise. General Magic built Pairwise as an optional tool for Optimism's RetroPGF 3 in 2023, where badgeholders compared projects two at a time and exported the results as ballot lists.