New Proof: Anti-Plutocratic DAO Voting Fails via Sybil Attacks on Permissionless Chains

A new paper from researchers at arXiv (Bennett et al., 2026) mathematically proves that no voting rule deriving power solely from wallet balance can prevent plutocratic control on permissionless blockchains. The study models realistic on-chain frictions—per-wallet splitting costs, fixed setup costs, and minimum balances—and shows that for any concave (sublinear) voting rule proposed to dampen governance power, Sybil attackers can split tokens across many wallets to achieve asymptotically linear voting power relative to their holdings. The optimal strategy yields power that grows at least linearly, regardless of cost schemes.

Empirically, the team replayed the ten most recent finalized proposals from five major DAOs (ENS, Compound, Uniswap, Arbitrum, and ZKsync) under linear, quadratic, logarithmic, and power (β=0.25) voting. Results show Sybil amplification factors between 1,172× and 4,039× for Quadratic Voting, and exceeding 229,000× under more aggressive power rules. The attack costs are orders of magnitude below the value at stake, making such attacks economically trivial for large holders. This effectively nullifies the anti-plutocratic intent of mechanisms like Quadratic Voting, which were designed to equalize influence but instead become linear in practice. The findings suggest that current DAO governance models are fundamentally fragile and may require entirely new design paradigms beyond token-based voting.