---
type: claim
domain: internet-finance
description: Community approved treasury migration despite inability to verify program builds, revealing governance tradeoffs
confidence: experimental
source: MetaDAO Autocrat v0.1 proposal risk disclosure, December 2023
created: 2026-03-15
---

# MetaDAO Autocrat migration accepted counterparty risk from unverifiable builds prioritizing iteration speed over security guarantees

The proposal explicitly disclosed that the new Autocrat program "was unable to build with solana-verifiable-build" and required "placing trust in me that I didn't introduce a backdoor." Despite this counterparty risk affecting 990,000 META, 10,025 USDC, and 5.5 SOL, the proposal passed. The proposer acknowledged this as a temporary compromise, stating "for future versions, I should always be able to use verifiable builds." This reveals a critical governance tradeoff: the MetaDAO community valued faster iteration and improved functionality (configurable proposal slots, 3-day default) over the security guarantee of verifiable builds. The decision suggests early-stage futarchy DAOs prioritize mechanism refinement over security hardening, accepting elevated trust assumptions to compress development cycles. This pattern may not generalize to mature DAOs or larger treasuries, but demonstrates that governance communities will accept temporary centralization when the alternative is slower evolution of the governance mechanism itself.

---

### Additional Evidence (confirm)
*Source: [[metadao-proposals-1-15]] | Added: 2026-03-23*

Proposal 2 explicitly acknowledged: 'Unfortunately, for reasons I can't get into, I was unable to build this new program with solana-verifiable-build. You'd be placing trust in me that I didn't introduce a backdoor, not on the GitHub repo, that allows me to steal the funds.' The proposal passed anyway, migrating 990,000 META, 10,025 USDC, and 5.5 SOL to the unverifiable program. This demonstrates MetaDAO prioritized iteration velocity over security guarantees in early stages.


Relevant Notes:
- futarchy implementations must simplify theoretical mechanisms for production adoption because original designs include impractical elements that academics tolerate but users reject.md
- futarchy adoption faces friction from token price psychology proposal complexity and liquidity requirements.md

Topics:
- [[_map]]
