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This section describes how voting and economic incentives operate in practice within Justly.
For the theoretical rationale behind these mechanisms, see Security & Game Theory.
Justly uses an incentive-driven voting system designed to align honest human judgment with economic outcomes. The protocol does not attempt to determine truth algorithmically.
Instead, it relies on structured human voting combined with economic incentives to converge toward fair and reliable decisions.

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Independent juror participation

Jurors participate independently in each dispute and are evaluated economically on outcome coherence. Staking aligns incentives by creating meaningful upside for coherent decisions and downside for incoherent behavior.

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Commit-reveal voting

Justly uses a commit-reveal voting scheme to protect the integrity of the voting process. The process is divided into two phases:
  • Commit phase:
    Selected jurors submit a cryptographic commitment to their vote without revealing its value.
  • Reveal phase:
    Jurors reveal the vote associated with their commitment.
This mechanism:
  • prevents vote copying or coordination,
  • encourages independent decision-making,
  • and protects jurors from external pressure.
The protocol enforces this process uniformly across disputes. Shutter-based reveal automation is planned to make the reveal step feel closer to a single-step flow while preserving the same architecture.

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Finalization rule

The dispute finalizes when either:
  • all effective votes have been revealed, or
  • the voting deadline passes.
If no effective vote exists, the defender is the default outcome.

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Coherent voting

After the valid reveals are counted, the protocol determines the final outcome based on the jurors’ votes. Jurors are considered to have voted coherently if their vote aligns with the final outcome. Coherence is evaluated against the collective result of the dispute, not against an external notion of correctness.

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Rewards

Jurors who vote coherently are rewarded. Rewards are sourced from:
  • predefined dispute fees,
  • and penalties applied to incoherent participation.
Rewards are distributed automatically and proportionally according to protocol rules.

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Penalties

Jurors who vote incoherently are penalized. Penalties may include:
  • partial or total loss of the juror’s stake,
  • depending on the tier and dispute configuration.
Non-participation after selection is treated as incoherence. This mechanism discourages:
  • random voting,
  • low-effort participation,
  • and strategic manipulation.

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Incentive alignment

The voting and incentive system is designed so that:
  • honest voting maximizes expected returns,
  • dishonest or careless voting increases economic risk,
  • and long-term participation favors consistent, coherent behavior.
Over time, this creates a juror pool that is economically aligned with fair and reliable dispute resolution.

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Automatic enforcement

All rewards, penalties, and fund transfers are enforced automatically by smart contracts. The protocol does not rely on discretionary intervention, manual arbitration, or centralized control to execute outcomes. This ensures:
  • predictability,
  • transparency,
  • and neutrality across all disputes.
Once finalized, outcomes cannot be altered or overridden.