The problem Conviction Vaults solves

Problem We're Solving

Communities struggle to continuously allocate to the people and work that create the most impact. Common mechanisms like token votes are binary, easy to game and build voter fatigue. They also tend to spend their treasury instead of turning capital into a sustainable funding stream.

Our solution: Conviction Vaults (Gardens × Octant)

Conviction Vaults pair time-weighted signaling (conviction voting) with yield-only funding from Octant Vaults:

• Communities stake their treasury into an Octant Vault.
• Builders/resources publish proposals detailing value and impact in the community.
• Community members signal support for proposals and their conviction accrues over time with their voting weight tied to their** governance tokens staked**.
• On a configurable cadence (weekly → yearly), only the yield is distributed proportionally to conviction across active proposals.

What are the benefits?

• Higher-quality signal: Time-weighted support rewards sustained backing over drive-by votes while making it harder to game.
• Predictable, safer disbursements: Epoch based payouts, spend caps, and streaming/vesting limit blow-ups and improve budgeting.
• Continuous prioritization, less churn: Proposals self-order over time; fewer one-off, binary votes and lower governance overhead.
• Adaptive accountability: When support is withdrawn, conviction decays, naturally winding down funding for under-performing work.

Why Octant x Gardens Is A Perfect Fit

• Aligned by Time: Both systems operate on continuous, time-based dynamics. Octant’s yield accrues steadily just as conviction builds gradually, creating natural temporal harmony between growth and governance.
• Composable by Design: Governance and decision making live within Gardens, while yield generation and distribution remain within Octant. Each protocol focuses on what it does best, forming a modular, synergistic system for sustainable coordination.
• Impact Over Hype: Together, they enable a flow of sustainable capital that rewards consistent support and enduring conviction, rather than one-off, high-noise votes.

Octant vaults with conviction voting on Gardens unlock a powerful growth mechanism for communities who can now garner support not by asking for donations but instead by staking and trusting that with conviction funds are allocated to people and resources the community values.

Challenges we ran into

During the hackathon, we experienced a couple of minor challenges, mainly around how to architect conviction voting with Vaults and Gardens.

The challenges we faced:

• Conviction Vaults Architecture: Understanding what elements of Vaults could be integrated with the Gardens protocol in a manner that didn't break functionality.
• Understanding Yield Dynamic with Vaults: Took some time to understand the different ways vaults can generate yield and Octant vaults’ relations to ERC-4626.
• Time Constraint - Due to the async nature of the hackathon, the week time length and it flowing with regular work made it much more difficult to complete building