Voting Power

Voting power in CipherDAO is tied directly to ownership of Cipher Owl NFTs and is calculated deterministically on-chain. When a wallet participates in governance, the protocol checks how many Cipher Owl NFTs that wallet controls at the moment voting starts. Based on that count, voting power is assigned according to predefined tiers. This calculation happens on-chain, so there is no off-chain discretion or manual adjustment.

The current voting power model works as follows:

• A wallet holding 1 Cipher Owl NFT receives 1 voting power

• A wallet holding 3 Cipher Owl NFTs receives 2 voting power

• A wallet holding 6 or more Cipher Owl NFTs receives 5 voting power

These tiers are enforced as a lookup table in the governance program. The wallet’s NFT balance is queried, matched to the appropriate tier, and the resulting voting power is recorded for that proposal. Once voting begins, voting power is fixed for the duration of the vote, even if NFTs are transferred afterward. This prevents vote manipulation through last-minute transfers.

Votes are submitted on-chain as signed transactions. Each vote includes the proposal identifier, the voter’s wallet address, and the calculated voting power. The program verifies ownership, applies the tier logic, and increments the proposal’s vote totals accordingly. Because all of this happens on-chain, anyone can independently verify both eligibility and final vote counts.

Council voting follows the same on-chain mechanics, but with separate role checks. Council wallets are whitelisted in the governance program and receive a fixed voting allowance per month. During the bootstrapping phase, those limits are relaxed, but all council votes are still recorded and auditable on-chain.