# kaal:claim:5254152-027

**Claim.** Requiring users to purchase governance tokens in order to vote both centralizes power in majority token holders and leaves the DAO highly vulnerable to 51 percent and sock puppet attacks, as illustrated by Gelato DAO which scored 1 on both decentralization and attack resistance.

**Type.** failure  **Support.** evidenced

**Holds when.**

- DAOs where voting requires purchasing fungible governance tokens

**Source quote.**

> It is highly centralized as users must purchase governance tokens to vote, limiting power to majority token holders (D: 1). The platform is highly vulnerable to 51% and sock puppet attacks due to the purchasable governance tokens (A: 1).

**From.** Wulf A. Kaal, *DAO Market Meta Analysis 2024* (2024), APPENDIX A: DAO Dataset, Gelato DAO, page 34

**Cite as.** Wulf A. Kaal, DAO Market Meta Analysis 2024 (2024). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=5254152

**Verify.** sha256 of source PDF `bb2052d809a4615f0f3e2526ba6416293c40d00260149ba4fe6f38addf052796` at https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wulfkaal/Academic-Papers/main/papers/pdf/Kaal%20-%202024%20-%20DAO%20Market%20Meta%20Analysis%202024.pdf

**Failure mode.** pay to vote centralization and attack exposure  (family: plutocratic-capture)

**Topics.** governance-design, tokenomics, consensus-and-security, decentralization, dao

**Keywords.** governance-tokens, 51-percent-attack, sock-puppet-attack, centralization, dao-scoring

**Related claims.**

- supports: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/4529715-036
- restates: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/4529715-037
- extends: https://wulfkaal.github.io/claims/4529715-030

**Canonical form.** This markdown file is the canonical hashed representation of the claim. Its sha256 is the content hash used for attestation.