A Case Study in Plural Governance Design

We describe the development and application of a plural algorithm for collective decision making. Specifically, we describe a modification to an algorithm called Quadratic Funding (QF), which was used by a crowdfunding platform named Gitcoin from 2018-2023. QF suffered drawbacks in practice due to its non-plural nature. Our modification to it, Connection Oriented Quadratic Funding (CO-QF), has been in use at Gitcoin since 2023, where it has directed the flow of 2.9 million dollars to crowdfunded projects. We describe the plural design principles behind CO-QF. Through qualitative interviews with Gitcoin community members, we explore how CO-QF provided a framework for aligning public decisions with diverse sets of viewpoints, allowing it to solve the problems suffered by QF. We conclude by discussing how CO-QF represents a plural framework for public decision making in general, including decisions about AI alignment.