Token gated chat on Base: ERC-20 and NFT rooms
Gate a Base group chat by an ERC-20 balance or an ERC-721 collection, with real Base contracts, no verify bot, and honest notes on paid rooms.
Token gated chat on Base is a group chat a wallet can enter, and stay in, only while it holds a Base asset: a minimum balance of an ERC-20 token, or an NFT from an ERC-721 collection. Base is Coinbase’s Ethereum L2, so the thing you gate by is a contract address rather than a Solana mint. Cherry (cherry.fun) is a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto: you sign in with a wallet, DM any address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated, and paid group chats, with no phone number, email, or KYC. This page is for Base community owners and token teams whose holders room lives in Telegram or Discord today.
What token gated chat on Base does
Cherry checks the chain itself at two moments: when a wallet asks to join a public group, and in the background for as long as that wallet is a member. Two rule types cover almost every Base room:
- Token balance: the wallet holds at least N of one contract. On Base that contract is an ERC-20.
- NFT ownership: the wallet holds an NFT from a named collection. On Base that is an ERC-721.
A group combines up to five rules under “All of these” (every rule must pass) or “Any one” (one is enough), as of 10 September 2026. Each rule carries a plain requirement line that shows on the group’s public page at chat.cherry.fun/@<handle>, so a visitor reads the same condition Cherry checks. Nobody sends a verify link, because the wallet signature that signs you in is the same wallet the rule reads. The full mechanism, including all seven rule types and how re-checks work, is on the token-gated chat
page.
Base recipes: which contract goes in which rule
Pick the token or collection your community already argues about, then pick the rule that reads it.
| What you want to gate | Rule | What the owner enters | Base example |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holders of a memecoin | Token balance | ERC-20 contract plus a minimum in token units | Brett (BRETT), 0x532f27101965dd16442e59d40670faf5ebb142e4 |
| Holders of a Farcaster-native token | Token balance | ERC-20 contract plus a minimum | Degen (DEGEN), 0x4ed4e862860bed51a9570b96d89af5e1b0efefed |
| Owners of a collection | NFT ownership | the collection’s ERC-721 contract | the collection page on BaseScan |
| Anyone with a Base name | NFT ownership | the Basenames contract, 0x03c4738ee98ae44591e1a4a4f3cab6641d95dd9a | a .base.eth name |
As of 11 September 2026, Brett is an ERC-20 on Base with a market cap of $47,499,058, and Degen is an ERC-20 on Base with a market cap of $38,280,749, filed by CoinGecko under Farcaster with a link to its Farcaster channel. The Basenames row is the Base answer to a name gate: a .base.eth name is minted as an ERC-721, so the rule that reads it is an NFT rule, not a domain rule.
One habit saves a broken room: copy the contract from the project’s own site and confirm it on BaseScan before you paste it. Tickers repeat. CoinGecko showed Brett with a second deployment on BNB Smart Chain at 0xa7440029eca41deabd8775ef1d6086b37d4df8d6, and a separate BRETT on Solana on its own CoinGecko page, mint DxtssVdyYe4wWE5f5zEgx2NqtDFbVL3ABGY62WCycHWg, with a market cap of $122,977, both on 11 September 2026. A minimum is entered in token units, so 1,000,000 means a million whole tokens, and it is read against the wallet that signed in.
Paid group chat on Base
A payment rule turns the same room into a paid community: one-time entry priced in SOL from 0.0001 to 100, one-time USDC, or a recurring USDC membership billed daily, weekly, or monthly from 1 USDC to 10,000 USDC per period. Entry splits 70% to the owner’s wallet and 30% to Cherry as of 10 September 2026, membership activates only when the payment confirms on-chain, and recurring plans run through the official Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program. A paid group stays public, because its page is where it sells, and an invite from a regular member lands the invitee on the paywall.
Read this part before you price a Base room: paid entry and subscriptions are priced and settled in SOL or USDC on Solana as of 10 September 2026, so a Base room’s members pay on Solana while the holdings rule reads your Base contract. Paid communities and channels covers the billing mechanics, reviews, and the guest-pass rule.
What is different from a Discord verify bot
Base projects usually gate through Collab.Land or Guild.xyz on Discord or Telegram. Collab.Land’s documentation describes the shape: a token gating rule assigns roles “only accessible to users who meet certain token-related criteria”, and its balance check “means that members who no longer hold a community’s tokens will lose their roles in that community automatically,” as of 11 September 2026. It works. The cost is the wiring: a bot invites you to a separate site, you connect a second identity there, a role lands back in the chat app, and every part of that chain is a place for a lookalike link.
On Cherry there is no second identity to connect. The wallet you signed in with is the wallet the rule reads, the check happens at the moment you join, and a member who drops below the minimum keeps their seat behind a paywall: the room stays in their list, message content is withheld, and pressing Re-check restores it the moment the balance is back.
Where Base communities live today
Four places, and each one handles holder verification differently.
Farcaster channels hold the culture: DEGEN’s channel is linked straight from its CoinGecko page. A Farcaster channel is an open feed, so there is no on-chain holder check on the way in.
Base App is Coinbase’s app on Base, and its chat runs on XMTP. As of 10 September 2026, its App Store listing names “DMs, group chats, and AI agents”. Its public material does not mention token gating at the room level, paid memberships, or owner and moderator roles, so treat those as open questions. The Cherry and Base App comparison puts the two side by side, and Base App alternatives covers the wider field.
Towns is a Base-native group-chat product, and the one that overlaps Cherry on gated and paid rooms. On 11 September 2026 towns.com headlined “Discover the best money making group chats” and described itself as “an open messaging protocol built on Base that powers private groups and decentralized finance”. Every Town is minted on-chain and every membership is an NFT, which gives members a resale market Cherry does not have. The trade is that a minted membership is an asset to manage, while a Cherry rule is a line the owner can edit on a Tuesday afternoon.
Telegram is where the deals and the scam DMs both happen, with a gating bot bolted on.
Who uses it and for what
A memecoin holders room is the common first build: a token-balance rule on the ERC-20 at a floor that filters throwaway wallets, plus a second rule for the project’s ERC-721 collection under “Any one”, so both audiences land in one place.
A collection or creator room uses the NFT rule alone. Zora creators, a Base PFP collection, or a Basenames holders room all gate on a single contract, and holders can DM any wallet they meet there even if that wallet has never opened Cherry. The NFT-gated chat page goes deeper on collection rules.
A protocol room sets a balance floor on the project’s own ERC-20 and keeps the announcements in a broadcast-only channel beside it.
The live proof that a name gate holds up is on Solana, where SNS Club runs one rule, “Hold a .sol domain”:
As of 11 September 2026 it has 1,455 members and 3,872 messages, with 5 stars from 2 reviews. On Base the same room is built from the Basenames contract instead, because a .base.eth name is an ERC-721.
Limits and honest caveats
- Group chats are not end-to-end encrypted, by design, so moderation and bots can work. DMs are end-to-end encrypted with keys derived from your wallet.
- The two rules on this page read ERC-20 balances and ERC-721 ownership. A semi-fungible ERC-1155 pass is outside both recipes.
- Paid entry and subscriptions settle on Solana, as the paid section says.
- In-chat swaps are a Solana flow, so a Base token discussed in the room is not a one-tap buy inside the chat.
- Background re-verification runs on public groups. An asset-gated group can be private, and while it is private members are not re-checked in the background. A paid group cannot be private at all.
- A rule is evaluated against the wallet that signed in.
How to start
- Get the contract. Open the project’s official site, copy the Base address, and confirm the token or collection page on BaseScan.
- Open chat.cherry.fun , connect your wallet, and sign the sign-in message.
- Create a group, keep its visibility public, and write the description a visitor will read on the public page.
- Open “Access requirements” and add the rule: a token-balance rule with the contract and a minimum in token units, or an NFT rule with the collection contract. If you add a second rule, set “To join, members need” to “All of these” or “Any one”. Five rules is the cap.
- Add a payment rule if the room is paid, then re-read the settlement note above.
- Claim a handle and share
chat.cherry.fun/@<yourhandle>. That page lists the requirements, the member count, and the reviews, and it is the link you drop in the Farcaster channel or the Telegram group you are moving people out of.
Running the same community on more than one chain? Multichain token-gated chat covers rooms that span chains, and token-gated chat on Ethereum covers the L1 side.
FAQ
Does token gating on Base need a verify bot?
No. On Cherry the wallet signature is the sign-in, so there is no bot DM, no separate connect site, and no role to assign. Cherry reads the chain when a wallet asks to join a gated group and re-reads it in the background while the wallet stays a member.
Which Base token standards can I gate by?
The two recipes on this page are ERC-20 for a balance rule and ERC-721 for a collection rule, the standards almost every Base token and collection uses. Base also carries ERC-1155 contracts; a semi-fungible ERC-1155 pass is outside both recipes.
Where do I get the right Base contract address?
Take it from the project’s own site and confirm it on BaseScan before you paste it. Tickers repeat across chains: as of 11 September 2026, CoinGecko lists Brett as an ERC-20 on Base at 0x532f27101965dd16442e59d40670faf5ebb142e4, a second deployment on BNB Smart Chain, and a separate BRETT on Solana.
Can I charge for a Base community?
Yes, with one caveat worth reading. Paid entry is priced in SOL or USDC and recurring memberships are billed in USDC through the official Solana Subscriptions and Allowances program, with a 70/30 split in the owner’s favour as of 10 September 2026, so the money leg settles on Solana while the holdings rule reads Base.
How is this different from Base App or Towns?
As of 10 September 2026, Base App’s chat runs on XMTP and its public material lists DMs, group chats, and AI agents, with no mention of token gating or paid memberships. Towns mints every membership as an NFT on Base, which creates a resale market; a Cherry rule is a setting the owner edits, and joining mints nothing.
Sources
Try Cherry
Sign in with a wallet, DM any address, and join token-gated and paid communities. No phone number, email, or KYC.