Fake Crypto Votes: How Vote Farms Work, How We Fight Them

In 12 days, Coinvote banned 180 accounts, cancelled 1,900 votes and removed 124 boosts. How vote farms work, what we did next, and where we got it wrong.

Those numbers aren't there to impress anyone. A voting site has only one thing to sell: the belief that its ranking means something. If votes can be bought or faked, everything built on top of them is worthless, including the visibility projects pay for.

So here is what really happened, including the part we got wrong, along with how the system works and how to read any crypto ranking with a colder eye.

How votes, Nuggets and Boosts work on Coinvote

You can't judge a fake vote without knowing what a real one does, so here are the public rules.

• Votes. A member can cast one vote per project, for up to 3 different projects a day. The vote day resets at 12:00 UTC. Votes feed the rankings, and rankings bring visibility.
• Nuggets. Nuggets are our in-site points. A vote for a project earns 6, before any streak bonus. Voting for the same project day after day builds a streak that can multiply what you earn, up to 3x. Earnings from repeatable actions such as votes, posts and likes stop at a daily cap of 80 Nuggets, or 160 with an active Double Nuggets booster from the shop. Rewards and milestones sit outside that cap.
• Boosts. A Boost can be bought in a pack on the advertising page or in the Nuggets Shop, from 100 Nuggets. Each Boost stays active for seven days. During that time it counts as 15 votes in today's ranking on the homepage, and it counts toward the separate Boosts ranking.

Buying a Boost is allowed, and its effect is limited and written down. Buying votes is not. Our terms forbid automated votes, bought votes and paying or rewarding people to vote, as well as farming votes, Nuggets or Boosts.

What a vote farm is, and why anyone runs one

A vote farm is a group of accounts run to look like separate people, voting because someone wants a result rather than because anyone believes in a project.

The first motive is obvious. Votes move a project up the rankings, and rankings bring visibility. That alone is enough to make fake votes attractive.

The second motive is less obvious. Voting also earns Nuggets, and Nuggets can buy Boosts. A fake account that votes every day isn't just adding one vote. It's also collecting currency that can be spent to push a project higher.

The published rules show why that changes the math. Three votes a day earn 18 Nuggets before streak bonuses and other rewards, so reaching 100 takes days rather than weeks. A Boost bought that way then counts as 15 votes in today's ranking for seven days. One fake account doesn't matter much. A few dozen, running every day, start to matter a lot.

Who pays for fake votes

The damage goes beyond one wrong position on one list.

• Real voters. Every fake vote makes a real one count for less.
• Honest projects. A project with a real community can be pushed down by one that simply has more accounts.
• Readers. Someone looking at a ranking assumes it reflects real interest. If it doesn't, the signal they rely on is false.
• Advertisers. Paid visibility is only worth something on a site people trust.

Three waves in 12 days

The October 25 votes were spread across 166 projects. The November 1 votes were spread across 101 projects, and that wave also led to 35 shop purchases being revoked. The October 20 figures are the ones we announced at the time.

Banning an account isn't the point. If the votes stayed, the ranking would still be wrong. So when we ban, we go back and undo what the account did: its votes stop counting, its boosts come off, and what it bought in the shop is revoked.

Where we got it wrong

On November 1, we publicly announced 53 banned accounts. That number no longer stands.

When we went back through the list, some cases were less clear than we first thought. So we reinstated the accounts where we had a doubt, and gave them back their votes.

Today, 27 accounts from that wave remain banned.

That's an awkward correction to publish. We're publishing it anyway, because a site that asks you to trust its ranking should tell you when its own numbers change.

It also reflects a choice. Between letting one doubtful account through and punishing a real user, we'd rather let it through. A farm can always be caught in the next wave. A real user who gets banned for nothing may never come back.

What we won't tell you

We won't name projects. Those votes landed on more than 100 different projects. Anyone can vote for any project, and we don't know who was behind these accounts. A project receiving fake votes hasn't necessarily done anything wrong. It could even be the target.

We won't explain how we detect this. Every detail we publish becomes a checklist for the next farm. Our checks combine automatic signals, AI analysis and a human decision, and that's as far as we'll go.

We won't claim we caught everything. No voting site can honestly say that, and you should be suspicious of any that does.

How to read a crypto ranking

A ranking is a starting point, on Coinvote or anywhere else. It tells you where attention is going. It doesn't tell you whether a project is any good, and it doesn't tell you what a token will do next. These habits work on any listing site.

1. Find out what the list measures. Votes today, votes all time and paid Boosts are three different things. Read the description above the table before you compare two positions.
2. Separate paid placement from the ranking. Promoted slots and banners are advertising. They tell you who bought visibility, which says nothing about quality.
3. Compare votes with visible life. Thousands of votes next to an empty Telegram, a silent X account and almost no trading deserve a second look. That proves nothing alone, but it is a question worth asking.
4. Look at more than one day. Attention that builds over weeks tells you something different from a sudden jump that fades.
5. Check the token itself. Votes say nothing about the contract. A token scanner can flag some contract risks, though a clean result is not a guarantee either.
6. Don't treat a high rank as a reason to buy. Rank is not a price target and not investment advice. Real communities can back projects that fail.

What changes for you

If you vote: your vote counts for more when the fake ones are gone.

If you run a project: don't buy votes. Votes that get cancelled are money burned, and the rank you gain with them disappears the day they're removed. If someone offers you a vote package, it breaks our terms whatever they call it.

If you think you were banned by mistake: contact us. We've already reversed bans after a second look, and we'll do it again.

Frequently asked questions

What is a crypto vote farm?

A set of accounts run to look like independent users so they can push votes toward chosen projects, often while collecting whatever rewards voting pays.

Can I vote more than once for the same project?

Not within a vote day. Each member gets one vote per project, for up to 3 different projects a day, and the day resets at 12:00 UTC.

Are Boosts the same as buying votes?

No. A Boost is an official product with a published effect and a seven-day limit, and it never becomes a permanent vote. Bought votes pretend to be real support from real people.

What happens to a project's rank when fake votes are cancelled?

Cancelled votes stop counting, so any rank that depended on them goes with them.

Does receiving fake votes mean a project is guilty?

No. Anyone can vote for any project, so fake votes alone don't tell you who ordered them. That is why we don't name projects.

Are Coinvote's rankings free of fake votes now?

No, and we won't claim that. We find what we can, undo the damage and publish the numbers.

Are Nuggets worth money?

Nuggets are in-site points you spend on Coinvote. They aren't a cash payout or a return on anything.

Farms will come back

They always do, because the incentive doesn't go away. So we'll keep doing the same thing: find them, undo the damage, and publish the numbers, even when the numbers make us look imperfect.