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What happens when anyone can be your representative? Testing liquid democracy in web3 - a16z crypto

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Lewis Carroll, author of Alice in Wonderland and, surprisingly, a prolific researcher of voting systems, first proposed something like liquid democracy in 1884. The idea is simple: You can vote directly on issues, or you can delegate your vote to someone you trust. A fascinating idea, but perhaps impractical in the 19th century. In the 20th century, famed economist Gordon Tullock pointed out that new technologies — like television and telephones — were starting to make it possible to try something like liquid democracy at scale. Today, computers and the internet have made it truly easy for communities to implement. But should they? My fellow researcher, Sho Miyazaki, and I crunched the data to start tackling this question. Our broader takeaway? Liquid democracy has potential, but it needs the right infrastructure, incentives, and culture to take off. In theory, liquid democracy combines the best of direct democracy and representative democracy, letting people express their personal vie

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