I agree with the thought behind it, an official forum does need robust spam prevention. But for the proposed method itself, my vote would be “No”, if not “No with Veto”
Reasoning:
Access to the forum and posting itself should not be gatekept based on finances.
Not every user will be from a place where USD or Euros are readily avaliable, making this almost feel like redlining
Not everyone wants to have a checker constantly scanning their wallet
Does this mean having a wallet compromised also means losing access to the forum?
Some users are genuinely new and start slowly, we should be welcoming to them
This is really bad optics in general, almost reads as desperate
Alternative solutions:
Multiple criteria for access and meeting one is sufficient. 1. Holding X atoms as proposed. 2. Holding an NFT card as a membership (put stargaze to use) 3. Profile age
ATOM holdings as a way to gatekeep starting topics and threads, but not posting on the forum entirely.
Have a segmented “gated” area for this, not the entire forum.
1,000 ATOM doesn’t sound like a big amount for someone who wants to shape their investment’s future (maybe set it a bit lower maybe). As long as the forum posts refer only to posting and commenting - and everyone can still access the discussions - I’m in favor of this.
One thing’s for certain: people holding nothing should not have a say here at all. Otherwise, the door remains open to trolls and cryptobros with zero sense of responsibility.
Won’t cost anything, realistically it can only benefit the forum and the community, so it’s an interesting idea nonetheless…
I understand the intention behind this proposal. Reducing spam and improving the quality of discussion is a valid goal. However, I believe that requiring the holding of 1k in order to post or comment risks addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way. The core issue is that token balance is not a reliable indicator of insight, competence, or long term value creation. Some of the most valuable contributors to an ecosystem are new developers discovering cosmos for the first time. Others are researchers or builders coming from different ecosystems. There are also community members who read for a long time and only later share a well considered idea. A strict financial requirement excludes these people not because their ideas lack quality, but because they lack capital. The concept of skin in the game is often used as justification. In practice, it can also have the opposite effect. Large token holders are typically more inclined to defend the status quo and avoid ideas that are uncomfortable or challenge the existing direction. This may be rational from their perspective, but it is rarely how innovation actually emerges. There is also a more fundamental concern. If the direction of the hub is, in practice, already decided from the top down and key decisions are made outside of the forum, then the forum risks becoming more of an illusion of democracy and community sovereignty than a genuinely deliberative space. In such a scenario, further restricting who is allowed to speak does not improve debate quality, but instead narrows it to a small group and reduces the chance for new, uncomfortable, or genuinely transformative ideas to surface. If the real goal is to improve discussion quality, there are alternatives that do not rely on wealth based access. These could include limits on creating new threads rather than commenting, thresholds based on reputation, account age, or activity, improved moderation and categorisation, or sponsorship models where established community members vouch for newcomers. Cosmos competes for developer attention, narrative relevance, and fresh thinking. At this stage, excluding new minds is far more dangerous than tolerating a certain amount of noise. For this reason, I would strongly caution against equating financial stake with intellectual or creative value
Maybe a premium feature for those who want to connect with the wallet ? but the question I am asking for myself : what is the value added with this king of feature, we already have TG chats, discord or whatever for more selected content
So you want to filter wallets, not ideas? Then let’s be honest this isn’t about discussion quality, it’s about restricting participation to capital holders, that’s a direct hit to decentralization
Hydro has those lockup NFTs right? Can those be used as “membership cards”?
Or doesn’t specifically have to be hydro, since to my understanding that’s technically on Neutron and not the hub. It can be something NFT related from Stargaze too.
This will thus serve more as an encouragement to use onchain dAPPs, instead of as a gatekeeping tool that requires a lump sum of ATOM to lie dormant in a wallet.
Serves more function, better for optics as well.
The most immediate benefit I can think of, over things like gated TGs and discord, is the forums show up on search engines results and more easy to verify as official.
But ofc, this is under the assumption the forum itself isn’t gated, just small sections (VIP rooms are pretty normal and people are less likely to take issue with this)
I simply want to improve the overall quality of the forum nothing more. I’m asking the community to reflect on this and, hopefully, help find solutions that make the forum more professional in its overall appearance. The goal is to avoid giving the impression that this is a low-quality space filled with unnecessary, off-topic, or misaligned discussions.
If the real goal is to improve the quality of the forum, then the solution is simple. Moderation, not a wealth gate. Appoint moderators who are responsible for keeping discussions on topic, removing spam, and guiding threads into the right categories. Even better, create micro community grants for moderation work, paid in . I’m sure you’d find plenty of people willing to take responsibility and genuinely invest time into making this forum professional
This is going more into a commercial persecutive.
However, I support it
Comments perhaps a bit lower though, like 700 or 500.
Saying its against decentralization, I would argue that because anyone can have tokens (the longest they’re part of the network) which gives them equal voice as others who are also.
You’re mixing up governance voting power with forum participation. In governance, token weighted voting makes sense because it’s literally a decision making mechanism. But a forum is an idea market and the value comes from arguments, knowledge, and proposals, not from wealth.
Gating posting rights by holdings doesn’t improve decentralization, it just filters voices by capital
Open questions
in order to post or comment risks addressing the wrong problem in the wrong way. The core issue is that token balance is not a reliable indicator of insight, competence, or long term value creation. Some of the most valuable contributors to an ecosystem are new developers discovering cosmos for the first time. Others are researchers or builders coming from different ecosystems. There are also community members who read for a long time and only later share a well considered idea. A strict financial requirement excludes these people not because their ideas lack quality, but because they lack capital. The concept of skin in the game is often used as justification. In practice, it can also have the opposite effect. Large token holders are typically more inclined to defend the status quo and avoid ideas that are uncomfortable or challenge the existing direction. This may be rational from their perspective, but it is rarely how innovation actually emerges. There is also a more fundamental concern. If the direction of the hub is, in practice, already decided from the top down and key decisions are made outside of the forum, then the forum risks becoming more of an illusion of democracy and community sovereignty than a genuinely deliberative space. In such a scenario, further restricting who is allowed to speak does not improve debate quality, but instead narrows it to a small group and reduces the chance for new, uncomfortable, or genuinely transformative ideas to surface. If the real goal is to improve discussion quality, there are alternatives that do not rely on wealth based access. These could include limits on creating new threads rather than commenting, thresholds based on reputation, account age, or activity, improved moderation and categorisation, or sponsorship models where established community members vouch for newcomers. Cosmos competes for developer attention, narrative relevance, and fresh thinking. At this stage, excluding new minds is far more dangerous than tolerating a certain amount of noise. For this reason, I would strongly caution against equating financial stake with intellectual or creative value
