State of token-gated communities 2026
How 1,327 active communities on Guild gate access: the requirements, chains and social checks they use, how they combine them, and where access goes. Aggregate data from 9 November 2026.
How communities decide who gets in, measured across every guild on Guild. This report counts the requirements that 1,327 active communities have set on their roles: which tokens, chains and social accounts they check, how they combine them, and where the access goes. It is a snapshot taken on 9 November 2026 from Guild's production database. It contains aggregate counts only; no guild or member is named or identifiable.
Key findings
- Three in four gated communities check something onchain. 75.4% of active gated guilds have at least one onchain requirement: a token, an NFT, a native coin balance or wallet activity.
- NFTs are the most common gate. 46.9% of active gated guilds check an NFT balance. An X follow comes second at 40.2%, ahead of ERC-20 token balances at 25.7%.
- Most onchain gating is not on Ethereum. Of the guilds that gate on a chain, 46.1% use Ethereum, but 53.9% don't use Ethereum at all. Base (22.3%) and Polygon (21.7%) follow, then Arbitrum (15.1%) and Optimism (12.9%).
- Base-gated guilds hold the most members. Guilds with a Base requirement hold 2.73 million memberships, slightly more than those with an Ethereum requirement (2.64 million).
- Almost half combine different kinds of checks. 46.3% of active gated guilds mix at least two kinds of requirement, and 31.3% combine an onchain check with a social or community one.
- Bigger communities lean on social checks. 90.7% of gated guilds with 10,000 or more members check X, Farcaster, GitHub, Discord or Telegram, against 48.4% of those under 1,000 members. The share that checks onchain barely changes with size.
- Discord is where access goes. Of active gated guilds that give a reward, 77.2% give Discord roles and 8.5% give Telegram access. 2.7% do both.
- One NFT is usually enough. About four in five NFT requirements ask for a single NFT from the collection.
- Nearly every member connects a wallet. Of 7.05 million Guild accounts, 98.6% have connected a wallet, 54.8% Discord, 30.4% X and 7.9% Telegram.
How we counted
The counts come from Guild's production database on 9 November 2026, read in a read-only transaction.
- A gated guild has at least one role with a real requirement. Roles open to anyone are left out.
- Allowlists are left out of the shares. When older guilds moved to the current version of Guild in 2025, many of their roles were carried over as fixed address lists, so allowlist counts measure that migration more than how communities choose to gate. Every other requirement type is counted as it is configured today.
- Active means 10 or more members. Of the 2,047 guilds with a real requirement, 1,327 have 10 or more members, and the percentages below use those 1,327 unless a section says otherwise. Together, the 2,047 guilds hold 8.26 million of the 10.0 million memberships on Guild.
- A guild counts once per category. A guild with three NFT requirements on two roles counts once for "NFT balance". Shares add up to more than 100% because most guilds use several kinds of requirement.
- These are settings, not activity. The report counts what communities ask for, not how many members passed each check.
- Membership counts are the member totals Guild shows on each guild page.
What communities gate on
Share of the 1,327 active gated guilds using each kind of requirement:
| Kind of requirement | Includes | Guilds | Share |
|---|---|---|---|
| Onchain | NFT, ERC-20 and native coin balances, wallet activity, contract calls, POAPs, attestations | 1,001 | 75.4% |
| Social accounts | X, Farcaster, GitHub, email domain, World ID | 600 | 45.2% |
| Community membership | Discord server or role, Discord account age, Telegram group | 441 | 33.2% |
| Guild activity | A role in another guild, points, forms, connected accounts | 194 | 14.6% |
| Tasks | Visit a link | 152 | 11.5% |
326 active gated guilds (24.6%) don't check anything onchain. They gate only on social accounts, community membership, guild activity or tasks.
The most common requirements
| Requirement | Guilds | Share |
|---|---|---|
| NFT balance | 623 | 46.9% |
| X follow | 533 | 40.2% |
| Discord member (server or role) | 347 | 26.1% |
| ERC-20 token balance | 341 | 25.7% |
| X profile (followers, name or bio) | 215 | 16.2% |
| Visit a link | 152 | 11.5% |
| Native coin balance | 145 | 10.9% |
| Role in another guild | 129 | 9.7% |
| Discord account age | 116 | 8.7% |
| Contract call | 82 | 6.2% |
| Transaction count | 73 | 5.5% |
| X repost | 55 | 4.1% |
| X like | 52 | 3.9% |
| Connected account | 49 | 3.7% |
| POAP | 48 | 3.6% |
| First transaction date | 45 | 3.4% |
| Farcaster follow | 44 | 3.3% |
| Specific NFT token IDs | 37 | 2.8% |
Among the 1,001 guilds with an onchain requirement, 63.5% check NFTs, 34.1% ERC-20 tokens, 15.0% a native coin balance, 11.9% wallet activity such as transaction counts or the date of the first transaction, 8.2% a contract call and 7.8% a POAP, an attestation or a Galxe campaign.
Chains
978 active gated guilds have at least one requirement tied to a chain. Share of those guilds using each chain:
| Chain | Guilds | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Ethereum | 451 | 46.1% |
| Base | 218 | 22.3% |
| Polygon | 212 | 21.7% |
| Arbitrum | 148 | 15.1% |
| Optimism | 126 | 12.9% |
| BNB Chain | 104 | 10.6% |
| Avalanche | 66 | 6.7% |
| zkSync Era | 60 | 6.1% |
| Fantom | 30 | 3.1% |
| Cronos | 28 | 2.9% |
| Linea | 22 | 2.2% |
| Sonic | 21 | 2.1% |
- 53.9% don't use Ethereum at all. 527 of the 978 guilds gate only on other chains.
- 29.7% gate on more than one chain. A handful of guilds check 10 or more chains at once.
- Testnets are rare. About 1% of chain-gated guilds use Sepolia or Base Sepolia.
By members
Counting members instead of guilds changes the order. The memberships held by all gated guilds with at least one requirement on each chain:
| Chain | Memberships |
|---|---|
| Base | 2.73 million |
| Ethereum | 2.64 million |
| Polygon | 1.68 million |
| Optimism | 1.29 million |
| Arbitrum | 1.26 million |
| Avalanche | 0.92 million |
| BNB Chain | 0.83 million |
A guild with requirements on several chains counts toward each, so the column doesn't add up to a total.
Combining requirements
Most communities don't rely on a single signal.
- Across a guild: 46.3% of active gated guilds use at least two kinds of requirement, and 31.3% pair an onchain check with a social or community one. 41.3% gate only on onchain data.
- Within a role: of 7,894 gated roles, 63.7% have one requirement, 18.2% have two and 18.1% have three or more. 15.1% mix kinds within the same role, for example an NFT plus an X follow.
- Negative checks are rare: 0.9% of requirements are inverted, such as "doesn't hold this token".
How a role combines its requirements is set with All, Any one or Some; see Requirements.
Bigger communities lean on social checks
| Members | Gated guilds | Check onchain | Check social or community accounts |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10–999 | 978 | 76.9% | 48.4% |
| 1,000–9,999 | 274 | 71.5% | 69.0% |
| 10,000 or more | 75 | 70.7% | 90.7% |
The share checking onchain stays between 70% and 77% at every size. The share checking X, Farcaster, GitHub, Discord or Telegram almost doubles from the smallest group to the largest. Large communities add account checks on top of holdings rather than replacing them.
Where access goes
Of the 1,287 active gated guilds with at least one reward:
| Reward | Guilds | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Discord role | 993 | 77.2% |
| Points | 174 | 13.5% |
| Telegram group | 109 | 8.5% |
| Secret (a code or link only qualifying members see) | 67 | 5.2% |
| NFT | 42 | 3.3% |
Only 35 guilds (2.7%) give both Discord roles and Telegram access. Most communities run one chat platform and gate it.
The accounts members connect
Of 7.05 million Guild accounts:
| Account | Connected | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Wallet (EVM) | 6.95 million | 98.6% |
| Discord | 3.86 million | 54.8% |
| X | 2.15 million | 30.4% |
| 1.10 million | 15.6% | |
| GitHub | 0.67 million | 9.4% |
| Telegram | 0.55 million | 7.9% |
| Farcaster | 72 thousand | 1.0% |
A requirement can only be checked against an account the member has connected, so these shares also bound how many people can meet each kind of check.
What this means when you set up gating
- Start with what your members already hold. NFT and token balances are the most common gates because they are the simplest to explain. See Tokens and NFTs.
- Gate on the chain your community lives on. Most chain-gated guilds aren't on Ethereum. See the guides for Base, Arbitrum, Optimism and Polygon, and the full list of Supported chains.
- Add an account check as you grow. Large communities pair holdings with X, Discord or GitHub checks. See X and Discord.
- Pick one chat platform first. Discord dominates; Telegram works the same way. See Token-gate a Discord server and Token-gate a Telegram group.
Citing this report
Cite it as: Guild, "State of token-gated communities 2026", 9 November 2026, https://guild.xyz/docs/research/state-of-token-gating-2026.
The figures are updated each quarter on this page, and each update keeps its date.