If you are working on a Web3 project and dreaming of launching a decentralized protocol, you have probably asked yourself this: “How do we make governance fair?”

It is a tough nut to crack. Traditional voting systems like one-person-one-vote break down in crypto. It is too easy for someone to spin up thousands of wallets and skew the results (hello, Sybil attack). Stake-weighted voting fixes this by tying voting power to the amount a participant has locked in the protocol. People with real skin in the game gain influence, while spam and bad actors get priced out.

In this guide you will build a production-ready stake-weighted voting system in Clarity on the Stacks blockchain. Not just code snippets: the whole workflow, including

staking and unstaking
voting with stake
changing a vote
read-only endpoints for dashboards
security best practices

By the end you will have a smart contract that can power DAO proposals, DeFi governance, or any on-chain community vote.

What You Need

Clarity basics (syntax, types, functions)
Stacks dev tools, especially Clarinet
Basic command-line comfort

Install Clarinet if you have not already:

brew install clarinet
clarinet --version

Why Stake-Weighted Voting?

Sybil resistance

Spinning up a thousand wallets is trivial. Accumulating a thousand wallets worth of stake is not.

Better incentives

People who lock real value are more likely to vote in the long-term interests of the protocol.

Capital-backed security

The cost to attack governance rises with the amount of capital required to swing a vote.

Designing the Contract

Goals:

Stake to vote: only users who lock STX can participate.
Flexible voting: users can change their vote while a proposal is active.
Gas efficiency: minimal state and calls.
Visibility: clear read-only functions for front-end apps.

Data structures

;; user address → staked amount
(define-map user-stakes principal uint)

;; proposal id → running totals
(define-map proposal-votes uint { total-yes: uint, total-no: uint })

;; composite key (proposal, voter) → vote details
(define-map user-votes
  { proposal-id: uint, voter: principal }
  { vote: bool, amount: uint }
)

Step-by-Step Build

1. Contract setup

(define-constant CONTRACT-OWNER tx-sender)
(define-constant ERR-INSUFFICIENT-STAKE (err u100))
(define-data-var min-stake-amount uint u1000000) ;; 1 STX in micro-STX
(define-data-var total-staked uint u0)

2. Staking and unstaking

Users deposit STX to gain voting rights:

(define-public (stake-tokens (amount uint)) ... )

and withdraw when they no longer need them:

(define-public (unstake-tokens (amount uint)) ... )

Use (as-contract ...) for all transfers to stay safe.

3. Casting votes

(define-public (cast-vote (proposal-id uint) (vote-for bool)) ... )

A user’s current stake becomes their vote weight. No double voting.

4. Changing votes

(define-public (change-vote (proposal-id uint) (new-vote-for bool)) ... )

Updates both the voter’s record and the proposal totals.

5. Read-only helpers

(define-read-only (get-vote-totals (proposal-id uint)) ...)
(define-read-only (get-user-stake (user principal)) ...)
(define-read-only (has-voted (proposal-id uint) (user principal)) ...)
(define-read-only (get-vote-summary (proposal-id uint)) ...)

These endpoints keep your UI gas-free and responsive.

Security Notes

Flash-loan attack: use snapshot voting so only balances before the proposal start count.
Vote buying: commit-reveal or encrypted voting can help, though stake requirements already raise the cost.
Clarity features: no reentrancy, plus clear checks-effects-interactions ordering.

Testing with Clarinet

Clarinet lets you write deterministic tests. A minimal example:

Clarinet.test({
  name: "Stake and vote successfully",
  async fn(chain, accounts) { ... }
});

Run tests often and cover edge cases.

You Now Have

A staking engine
Flexible vote casting
Transparent, auditable results
Gas-free read-only queries
Secure foundations

Next Steps

Deploy to Stacks testnet
Add vote delegation
Hook into a proposal contract for full DAO governance

Helpful Links

Clarity docs: https://docs.stacks.co/write-smart-contracts/clarity-overview
Clarinet repo: https://github.com/hirosystems/clarinet
Stacks Discord: https://discord.com/invite/stacks

If this guide sparks an idea or helps you ship, let me know. I am excited to see what you build.

From Zero to DAO: How to Build a Stake-Weighted Voting System in Clarity