How to moderate a group chat in a crypto community

Sooner or later someone in your room starts posting a contract address every ninety seconds, and two members reply before anyone with a mod badge wakes up. This is how to moderate a group chat in crypto: which role holds which power, which action fits the behaviour in front of you, and what to do when thirty accounts arrive in the same minute. The mechanics here are Cherry’s (cherry.fun), a wallet-to-wallet messenger and community app for crypto where you sign in with a wallet, DM any wallet address, and join or create token-gated, NFT-gated and paid group chats, with no phone number, email or KYC. One detail changes the job: an account is a wallet, so a ban has a price the banned person pays.

Before you start

• You need to be the owner of the group, or hold an admin or moderator role in it. A plain member can report a message and nothing else.
• Write the room rules as a single message you can paste. Step 4 pins it.
• Recruit a second moderator whose waking hours do not match yours.
• Know the honest limit: group chats on Cherry are not end-to-end encrypted, which is what lets a moderator or a bot act on what is posted. DMs are end-to-end encrypted and nobody moderates them.

Step 1: Hand out roles before you need them

Cherry gives a group four roles and ranks them: owner, admin, moderator, member. Rank decides who can act on whom.

Open the group settings, find the member in the list, and pick the role from their row. The sheet spells each one out as you choose: an admin “Manages members, settings and content”, a moderator “Deletes messages, mutes and kicks members”, a member is a “Regular participant”. In a broadcast channel the row reads “Subscriber” instead. You know it worked when that row carries the new label the next time you open the list.

Step 2: Match the action to the behaviour

Three actions cover almost everything, and they differ in what the member finds out.

Mute is the quiet one. It carries the hint “Can read, can’t write”: the muted member keeps typing, keeps seeing their own messages, and the room never receives a word of it. No notice goes out. That silence is the point during a raid: a crew cannot tell which of its accounts got caught.

Kick is the reversible one, labelled “Kick” with the hint “Can rejoin later”. Their row leaves the list, but nothing stops them from walking back into a public room they still qualify for. Use it on someone who needs a cooling-off period, not on a scammer.

Ban is the durable one, with the hint “Can’t rejoin until unbanned”. The wallet is blocked from rejoining and from being invited back, and the member’s row then reads “Banned from this group.” A moderator can ban but cannot reverse it: lifting a ban is the owner’s or an admin’s call. Once lifted, the wallet can rejoin if it still passes the room’s requirements.

Reports run on a different track. Any member can press a message, choose “Report” and pick a reason from “Spam”, “Scam or fraud”, “Harassment” or “Bot”. That goes to Cherry for review, not to your mod team, so it never substitutes for someone in the room acting on it.

Step 3: Take the messages with the member

Removing the person leaves the posts behind, the mistake that makes a raid look like it worked. Press the message and choose “Delete”: the sheet offers “Delete 1 message from” that sender and “Delete all from” that sender, and underneath it, “Kick user”, “Ban user” and “Mute user”. One pass clears the post, the backlog and the poster.

Deletion is not reversible, and the sheet says so: “This action cannot be undone.” Any member can delete their own messages; an owner, admin or moderator can delete anyone’s below them in rank. You know it worked when the sender’s messages are gone for everyone in the room, not only for you.

Step 4: Pin the rules where a moderator can point at them

Press any message and choose “Pin”. A room holds up to 20 pinned messages, and the pinned banner sits above the conversation: collapsed it shows the most recent pin, expanded it lists all of them, newest first. Only an owner, admin or moderator can pin or unpin.

Pin the rules message and the official contract address. Half of moderation is having something to point at.

Step 5: Run the raid playbook

A raid is thirty accounts posting the same link, often at the hour your team is asleep. The aim is to make the room boring for them fast.

1. Mute the loudest accounts first, which buys you time to see how many there are.
2. Add or tighten a holdings requirement while the room is still public, then switch on “Apply to existing members now” so the room re-checks everyone at once rather than on its background cycle. A room can carry up to five requirements, combined as “All of these” or “Any one”.
3. Turn the group private while you clean up. Requirements are held while a group is private: they are saved, not applied, and no new wallet can join or pay until you go public again.
4. Ban the accounts you catalogued, with the delete option ticked so their messages go with them.
5. Pin a short note about what happened, then go public again.

Some of this runs without you. A brand-new wallet cannot post in a public group or leave a review, and a message carrying a blocked word is dropped without an error, visible only on the sender’s own screen. Those layers drop and limit; every durable ban is a decision a person makes. The anti-spam layers page has the full set.

Why a gate changes how to moderate a group chat

On a chat app where signing up is free, a ban costs the banned person a new handle and five minutes. On Cherry the room checks the chain itself, so coming back means holding the token, the NFT or the domain again, or paying entry again, from a wallet that is no longer brand new. A token-gated room does moderation work before any moderator is awake.

The sharpest version is a requirement nobody can buy second-hand. Seeker Club is gated by a .skr domain, which is non-transferable and verified once, so a banned wallet cannot pick one up on a marketplace and try again. It held 8,640 members and 58,270 messages in September 2026.

When to hand the job to a bot

Judgement calls stay with people. A bot is for the offence that arrives daily with the same answer: promote it to a moderator role and it can act on messages and members the same way that role can, against a rule you write. The walkthrough is in build a moderation bot .

Create a group at chat.cherry.fun and set the roles and the gate before the room is big enough to need them.

Troubleshooting

• The action is refused. Only an owner, admin or moderator can moderate, and rank is checked every time: a moderator acting on an admin, or an admin acting on another admin, gets nowhere.
• You cannot lift a ban. Moderators cannot. Ask the owner or an admin; once the ban is lifted the wallet can rejoin the public room on its own.
• A kicked member came straight back. That is what a kick is. Ban the wallet to make the removal hold.
• Your announcements room offers no mute. In a channel only the owner and admins can post, so there is nobody to mute.

Related guides

• Create a token-gated group chat to put a holdings requirement on the room.
• Sell access to an alpha group to put a payment in front of it.
• Move a community off Telegram for the migration runbook.

FAQ

What can a group chat moderator do? A moderator deletes messages, mutes, kicks and bans members, and pins messages. A moderator cannot undo a ban, cannot change anyone’s role, and cannot act on an admin or the owner.

What is the difference between muting and banning someone? A mute is silent and reversible: the member still reads the room and still sees their own messages, while nobody else does. A ban removes the member and blocks the wallet from rejoining or being invited until an owner or admin lifts it.

How do I ban someone from a group chat? Open the member’s row in the group settings, or press their message and choose Delete, and pick Ban. Ticking the delete option in the same sheet removes their backlog at the same time, which is what you want during a raid.

Can a banned member come back with a new wallet? They have to buy their way back in. A new wallet holds none of the token, NFT or domain the room checks, and a brand-new wallet cannot post in a public group at all.

How do I stop spam in a crypto group chat? Put a holdings or payment requirement on the room so posting costs something, keep two moderators with different waking hours, and mute first and ban second so a spam crew cannot tell which accounts you have spotted.

Sources

• Seeker Club on Cherry
• Cherry web app