Token-Weighted Voting on Moderation vs Flat User Voting

Specific advantage: Voting power is proportional to a user's financial stake (e.g., governance tokens). This creates strong skin-in-the-game and aligns moderator incentives with the long-term health and value of the platform. This matters for protocol-level decisions where financial consequences are high, such as treasury management on Snapshot or parameter changes on Compound.

Specific advantage: Significantly harder to manipulate via fake accounts. Acquiring a meaningful stake (e.g., 1% of $UNI supply) is cost-prohibitive for attackers. This matters for high-value ecosystems like Uniswap or Aave, where a coordinated spam or governance attack could result in millions in losses. It leverages the underlying blockchain's security.

Specific advantage: One-person, one-vote (1p1v) ensures every verified user has equal say. This fosters a sense of community ownership and legitimacy, as moderation reflects the median user's view, not just capital. This matters for social platforms and DAOs focused on community sentiment, like early-stage Friends with Benefits (FWB) or forum moderation on Discourse-based platforms.

Specific advantage: Lower barrier to participation allows for faster, more responsive moderation cycles. Decisions can reflect current community norms rather than entrenched capital interests. This matters for high-velocity content environments like Reddit communities or NFT project Discords, where timely action on spam or harassment is critical to user experience.

Aligned Economic Incentives: Voters with significant token holdings (e.g., $UNI, $AAVE) have a direct financial stake in the platform's health. This reduces frivolous or malicious proposals, as seen in major DAOs like Uniswap and Compound, where large proposals require significant stake to pass.

Centralization & Plutocracy: Voting power concentrates with whales and VCs, marginalizing small users. For example, in early Aragon votes, a handful of addresses could decide outcomes. This is poor for community-driven platforms like social networks where user sentiment, not capital, should guide moderation.

Democratic & Sybil-Resistant: One-person-one-vote systems, often using proof-of-personhood (e.g., Worldcoin) or non-transferable soulbound tokens (SBTs), ensure broad community representation. This is critical for moderation on platforms like Lens Protocol or Farcaster, where spam and abuse affect all users equally.

Voter Apathy & Low-Quality Signals: Without skin in the game, users may vote randomly or not at all, leading to low participation. This can allow motivated minority groups to sway decisions, as seen in some Snapshot polls with <1% turnout. It lacks the economic gravity to secure high-value decisions.

Strong Sybil Resistance: Voting power is tied to a scarce, costly-to-acquire asset (e.g., a protocol's native token). This makes large-scale vote manipulation economically prohibitive, as seen in systems like Compound Governance or Uniswap. This matters for high-stakes moderation decisions where protocol security is paramount.

Centralizes Power & Low Participation: Governance becomes plutocratic, concentrating influence with large token holders (whales, VCs). This can alienate the broader community and lead to low voter turnout (e.g., many DAOs see <10% participation). This matters for fostering a diverse, engaged community and avoiding governance capture.

Maximizes Participation & Fairness: Every verified user gets one equal vote, aligning with democratic ideals. This lowers the barrier to entry and can drive higher engagement, as seen in platforms like Snapshot with easy-to-use interfaces. This matters for building broad community consensus and legitimacy on subjective content decisions.

Vulnerable to Sybil Attacks: Without a cost to identity creation, malicious actors can create countless fake accounts to sway votes. Mitigations like Proof-of-Personhood (Worldcoin, BrightID) or social graph analysis add complexity. This matters for protecting against coordinated spam, brigading, or low-quality decision-making.