Cowrie Research

plcr-voting

2 min read

PLCR Voting

  • Name: PLCR Voting (Partial-Lock Commit-Reveal Voting)
  • URL: https://github.com/ConsenSys/PLCRVoting
  • Category: token-weighted voting primitive / commit-reveal voting middleware / token-curated-registry governance primitive
  • Tags: ethereum-ecosystem
  • Summary: PLCR Voting is old token-voting plumbing. The point is not a whole governance system or registry. The point is concurrent commit-reveal polls with partial token locking, so one contract can track hidden votes across many polls without freezing every deposited token all at once.
  • What it does:
    • Lets ERC-20 holders deposit voting rights into one contract and participate in multiple simultaneous polls
    • Uses commit-reveal voting so vote direction stays hidden during commit and becomes visible during reveal
    • Tracks the maximum amount locked across active polls, leaving unused voting rights withdrawable instead of freezing the full deposit per poll
    • Includes rescue and unlock paths for unrevealed votes once reveal windows end
    • Exposes a lower-layer poll mechanism that downstream registries or governance apps can call for challenge resolution and reward accounting
  • Key claims:
    • The repository README is clear about the main job: permit multi-poll voting without double-voting inside any one poll. That concurrency property is the real mechanism.
    • The adChain walkthrough is the useful companion source because it explains why partial lock matters. Naive per-poll locking strands too much capital.
    • PLCR is narrower than many later writeups imply. It handles hidden commitments and token-lock accounting; registry admission, slashing, and reward policy belong to the calling system.
    • The primary materials also make clear that minority-voter slashing is not intrinsic to PLCR itself. Secret ballots, partial locking, and punishment logic are separable layers.
    • The linked-list commitment bookkeeping is part of the note’s value. Liquidity preservation here is not hand-wavy UX polish; it is state-management machinery inside the voting primitive.
  • Whitepaper: No canonical standalone PLCR whitepaper surfaced in this pass. The strongest primary materials were the ConsenSys repository README and adChain’s implementation walkthrough collected in ../../whitepapers/plcr-voting-primary-sources-2026-05-13.md.
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