Hi ICONists🧑🚀,
In this article, we’d like to get into ICON Vote: the communication platform for the ICON Community, P-Reps, and ICX investors.
So, what is ICON Vote? ICON Vote is created by ICX Station and is a platform that gives every P-Rep the possibility to hold decentralized governance polls, and eventually advance towards becoming more decentralized or even forming a DAO. Thanks to this platform, delegators can turn into active participants. The creators of ICON Vote believe that this will help support the growth of the ICON ecosystem. However, the vision of ICON Vote is not just to allow P-Reps to propose votes to their delegators; the platform aims to become the standard communication medium between all P-Reps and their supporters.
The platform is designed to help P-Rep understand what their voters want. It also gives ICX investors a voice; they can share their opinion on what they want to see. While there are already many channels that P-Reps use to communicate with their audience, they are often for all general platforms. ICON Vote gives a more precise way to communicate and keep oversight of requests and opinions. Additionally, the platform available as a DApp on the ICON ecosystem as well.
The creators of the platform describe the following benefits. Firstly, the platform gives a voice to the silent majority. Social media can often push people towards a specific direction based on vocal minorities that hold others back to participate. ICON Vote gives them a space to voice their opinions. Secondly, allowing more ways to provide feedback creates the possibility to utilize collective intelligence within the community. And lastly, it is efficient and productive. Discussion can go on and on, while voting can help move a conversation forward. Even though a debate is necessary to bring up new ideas, they regularly stagnate without a clear outcome. Voting will help illustrate the result, and hopefully sometimes help to agree to disagree.
📖 Background
One of the primary use cases or reasons blockchain is found to be useful is to create trust between two parties who are unfamiliar with each other through a trustless system. As a result, the creators of ICON Vote started to research what kind of use cases require trust, but don’t have it yet. Soon, they realized that many future organizations (DAOs) would need trust to function better. Many online communities struggle to regain confidence from their users, and blockchain-based governance systems can bring meaningful value to the DAOs.
The ICON ecosystem has on-chain governance tools. However, ICON Vote was created because ICX Station believed that there was a need for active contribution and participation. Not just from P-Reps, but especially from the community and ICX investors. The limited communication channels between P-Reps and ICX investors, such as Telegram and Twitter, are hard to keep up with an entire discussion can’t be followed because they were not designed for long-form discussions about governance or financing. Since voting is seen as the vital feature of governance, ICON Vote was created to enable P-Reps and ICX holder to interact directly through on-chain votes (accessible only to their voter base).
🔎 How To Use ICON Vote
To participate in a vote proposed by a P-Rep, first, you’ll have to sign up by clicking Join Now. Then, type in your desired “username” and “password” and click to sign up.
![](https://www.blog.stakin.com/content/images/max/800/0-2Hl0QZ8VjLS-dq4d.png)
After signing up, you’ll have to verify that you own an ICX Wallet by signing a transaction from your wallet. Click on “Verify ICON Address”, you’ll have the option to do so with your ICONEX wallet or Ledger. Once selected, click on “Check Your Verified Address” to confirm.
![](https://www.blog.stakin.com/content/images/max/800/0-n1DE4EQ7-X7FuQAL.png)
Once this is set-up, you’re ready to participate in voting. Sign in with your newly required username and password. Then, go to “Vote Explorer”. In the Vote Explorer, you will see a list of all the ICON P-Reps. However, you can only click on the ones that you have delegated ICX to. Click on the P-Rep you’d like to see the different votes for. The P-rep page will show you votes, the total ICX delegated to the P-Rep, and the voting power (see image below).
![](https://www.blog.stakin.com/content/images/max/800/0-i3Mc_CXaoyVdSy2c.png)
Click an option that you would like to vote for. The voting result page will show up after selecting the option. The Redline on the green bar shows the “quorum requirement” (for example, the vote needs to have 20 percent or more of ICX delegated to the P-Rep to participate in the vote for the vote to be valid). It also shows the minimum approval rate to pass, the total number of delegates, the total number of votes, and your number of votes. Additionally, votes will be recorded on the blockchain and shown at the bottom of the page. And it’s as easy as that.
![](https://www.blog.stakin.com/content/images/max/800/0-cVnvIlOZxbSEZgEZ.png)
🗳 ️Vote on our latest proposals here!
DISCLAIMER: This is not financial advice. Staking, delegation, and cryptocurrencies involve a high degree of risk, and there is always the possibility of loss, including the loss of all staked digital assets. Additionally, delegators are at risk of slashing in case of security or liveness faults on some protocols. We advise you to do your due diligence before choosing a validator.