Holders of WLFI must now lock their tokens for at least 180 days to retain voting rights after a governance proposal passed overwhelmingly.
The measure from World Liberty Financial closed with 99.12% of around 1,800 votes cast in favour according to a Snapshot governance vote.
The project said the change aims to ensure that only participants with “long-term alignment to the protocol” are able to influence governance decisions.
The proposal also offers stakers a 2% annual percentage yield if they participate in at least two governance votes during the lock-up period.
The initiative comes as decentralised autonomous organisations continue to struggle with low voter participation, which some estimates place between 15% and 25%.
Vitalik Buterin has previously suggested that AI assistants could help improve DAO voting participation, while Stani Kulechov has proposed reducing reliance on token-holder votes.
The project, backed by members of the family of Donald Trump, is building a financial ecosystem around its stablecoin USD1 and has applied to the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency for a national trust bank charter.
At the time of reporting, World Liberty Financial price was $0.1058.