Use a token for two use cases

Question

So I've created a token for my Dapp. I want to have users buy tokens to vote in my app and "elect" people. I also want to use them agin in a court like system. Essentially, I want token holders to be able to hold one token, but have 2 votes. One in the election, and one in the court. Once these both have been used, the token is burned or marked as unusable. Can I develop one ERC20 to have these two separate functionalities? I'd rather not force users to buy two tokens.

Edit** It was pointed out that tokens don't need to be tokens if they're not exchangeable. Is it possible to adjust the price of the token based on how many tokens the buyer already owns? The case here is I want to setup a n^2 model where every subsequent token costs n^2 the previous. So if a token costs $1 and I buy 5 tokens, the 5th token will cost $32

Answer 1

Based on your tag you must be using ERC20 tokens. But that causes some confusion here: you are talking about distinct (non-fungible) tokens if I'm not misunderstanding your question. All ERC20 tokens from a single token contract are equal and they are mostly not used individually for some purpose.

The problem you face is that individual ERC20 tokens (so that "I use one of these ERC20 tokens") aren't typically tracked as individuals. So it's impossible to say "this token has been used for X and that other token has been used for Y". You can't really build this kind of functionality in ERC20 because for example the transfer function simply transfers a bunch of the tokens regardless of individual token "properties". Even if you have two separate ERC20 contracts, one for voting and one for court system it might be difficult to track the tokens.

But there are other token standards. For example ERC721 might suit your needs better - it's meant for tracking individual non-fungible tokens. And of course there are other token standards out there but they are not very widely adopted; only ERC20 and ERC721 are widely adopted as far as I can tell.

** EDIT after comments **

If the tokens are not meant to be traded/transferred around then you shouldn't use any of the token standards. You can basically simply code your own tokens with whatever functionality. It won't be compatible with third parties but this is just fine for you as arbitrary third parties can't possess the tokens anyway.

There is no standard which claims what a token is. There are simply various standards that state what kind of different functionality a token has. A token is simply a smart contract which has some sort of way to keep track of token holders. So just code whatever smart contract you want and you can call it your token contract.