Token-weighted voting

In token-weighted voting, an ERC-20 governance token, often under ERC20Votes, records balances with delegation capability and checkpoints. For a vote to count, the holder delegates their power, even to themselves, and weight is measured at the proposal's snapshot. The GovernorBravo framework adds typical parameters: proposal threshold, quorum, voting period and timelock. Compound, for example, requires a quorum of 400,000 votes and a majority to queue a proposal in the timelock before executing it.

It is the practical starting point for almost every DAO: simple, cheap to implement and Sybil-resistant, since creating accounts grants no extra tokens. Its known limitation is that it is plutocratic, power concentrates in large holders, and the vote is "rentable" through borrowing or the market. That concentration or rentability is precisely the vector that enables a governance attack, and what motivates alternatives such as quadratic voting or vote-escrow.

Compound is the archetype of the GovernorBravo plus Timelock framework. Uniswap and Aave run token-weighted governance with delegation, and MakerDAO combines it with its own voting machinery of governance polls and executive votes. Token-weighted voting depends on the snapshot to fix weights and on proposal execution to enact decisions. In practice, progressive decentralization usually culminates with the broad distribution of this token across the community.