What Is a ‘Governance Attack’ and How Can Token Weight Schemes Defend against It?

A governance attack, or 'hostile takeover,' occurs when an attacker accumulates enough tokens to pass malicious proposals that drain the treasury or change core protocol parameters. Token weight schemes defend by making the attack prohibitively expensive. veToken models, for example, require the attacker to lock up tokens for a long time, increasing the cost and risk.

Quadratic voting dilutes the impact of a single large holding, making it harder to gain a majority.