Token holders are not forced to stake their XTZ, however. Token holders can voluntarily participate in staking by delegating them to other bakers to stake on their behalf.
Similarly, XTZ holders can also delegate their tokens for the process of voting in governance proposals. The on-chain governance structure of Tezos is such that voting on proposals is related to the size of a user’s network holdings in XTZ. Proposals can be issued by developers and other network participants with invoices attached to them for funding of development.
The initial voting system is pre-defined, but what is unique about Tezos is that the voting mechanism can actually be changed by governance proposals, just like many other aspects of the network. Stakeholder votes can trigger protocol changes, and even core tenets of the network can be altered, albeit with much more difficulty. The concept is to foster a community environment that is capable of rapidly evolving the network to meet dynamic requirements.