m3taversal
1d8f936726
Adds complete proposal text to all 28 MetaDAO governance records that previously had only hand-built summaries. This was the original batch from PR #1748 that was closed without merge due to rebase conflict. Records updated: - Proposals 1-15: LST vote market, Autocrat migrations (v01/v02), Saber vote market, spot market creation, AMM program, multi-option proposals, OTC trades (Ben Hawkins, Pantera, Colosseum), Dutch auction, burn 99.3% META, FaaS development, benevolent dictators, compensation - Proposals 16-36: Fundraise 2, Q3 roadmap, create Futardio, services agreement, hire Advaith, swap ISC, hire Robin Hanson, token split, release launchpad, OTC Theia, migrate META token, fund futarchy research Source: inbox/archive/internet-finance/ proposal archives from futard.io Pentagon-Agent: Rio <5551F5AF-0C5C-429F-8915-1FE74A00E019>
232 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
232 lines
13 KiB
Markdown
---
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type: decision
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entity_type: decision_market
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name: "MetaDAO: Develop Futarchy as a Service (FaaS)"
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domain: internet-finance
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status: passed
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tracked_by: rio
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created: 2026-03-11
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last_updated: 2026-03-11
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parent_entity: "[[metadao]]"
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platform: "futardio"
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proposer: "0xNallok"
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proposal_url: "https://v1.metadao.fi/metadao/trade/D9pGGmG2rCJ5BXzbDoct7EcQL6F6A57azqYHdpWJL9Cc"
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proposal_date: 2024-03-13
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resolution_date: 2024-03-19
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category: strategy
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summary: "Fund $96K to build futarchy-as-a-service platform enabling other Solana DAOs to adopt futarchic governance"
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tags: ["futarchy", "faas", "product-development", "solana-daos"]
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---
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# MetaDAO: Develop Futarchy as a Service (FaaS)
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## Summary
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Nallok proposed building a Realms-like UI enabling any Solana DAO to create and participate in futarchic governance. Budget: $96K for 2 months ($40K USDC from treasury + 342 META to convert). Team: 1 smart contract engineer, 1 auditor, 2 UI/UX, 1 data/services developer, 1 project manager. This was MetaDAO's first product expansion beyond self-governance — the pivot from "futarchy for MetaDAO" to "futarchy for everyone."
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## Market Data
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- **Outcome:** Passed (2024-03-19)
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- **Autocrat version:** 0.1
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- **Key participants:** 0xNallok (entrepreneur/PM), Proph3t (multisig), Nico (multisig)
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## Significance
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This proposal marks MetaDAO's strategic pivot from a governance experiment to a platform business. The financial projections (5-100 DAO customers, $50-$500/proposal in taker fees, $50-$1,000/month licensing) reveal early business model thinking. The explicit goal of "vertical integration" and "owning the whole stack" shows Proph3t and Nallok's approach to defensibility.
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Particularly notable: the monetization model (taker fees + licensing + consulting) anticipated the Futarchic AMM revenue model that would later become MetaDAO's primary income source. The FaaS concept directly led to Drift, Dean's List, and Future adopting futarchy.
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## Relationship to KB
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- [[metadao]] — strategic pivot to platform
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- [[MetaDAO is the futarchy launchpad on Solana where projects raise capital through unruggable ICOs governed by conditional markets creating the first platform for ownership coins at scale]] — FaaS was the first step toward this
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- [[futarchy-governed DAOs converge on traditional corporate governance scaffolding for treasury operations because market mechanisms alone cannot provide operational security and legal compliance]] — multisig custody of funds alongside futarchy approval
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- [[futarchy adoption faces friction from token price psychology proposal complexity and liquidity requirements]] — FaaS aimed to reduce adoption friction
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---
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Relevant Entities:
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- [[metadao]] — parent organization
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- [[nallok]] — project entrepreneur
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- [[proph3t]] — multisig member
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- [[deans-list]] — early FaaS adopter
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- [[drift]] — early FaaS adopter
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Topics:
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- [[internet finance and decision markets]]
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## Full Proposal Text
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*Source: futard.io, tabled 2024-03-13*
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Type: Business project
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Entrepreneur(s): 0xNallok
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*A note from 0xNallok: Special thanks are owed to the many parties who've supported the project thus far, to those who've taken massive risk on utilizing the systems and believing in a better crypto. It has been one of the most exciting things, not in attention, but seeing the "aha!" moments and expanding the understanding of what is possible with crypto.*
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See also: [A Vision for Futarchy as a Service](https://hackmd.io/@0xNallok/rJ5O9LwaT)
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## Overview
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The appetite for market-driven governance is palpable. We have a tremendous opportunity to take this labor of love and shape it into a prime-time product. Such a product would be a great boon to the Solana ecosystem and to the MetaDAO's bottom line.
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If passed, this proposal would fund two workstreams:
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- **Minimum viable product**: I would coordinate the creation of a minimum viable product: a Realms-like UI that allows people to create and participate in futarchic DAOs. This requires some modifications to the smart contract and UI to allow for more than one DAO.
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- **UI improvements**: I've already been working with engineers to add helpful functionality to the UI. This proposal would fund these features, including:
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- historical charts
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- improving UX around surfacing information (e.g., showing how much money you have deposited in each proposal)
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- showing historical trades
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- showing market volume
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The goal would be to onboard some early adopter DAOs to test alongside MetaDAO. A few teams have already expressed interest.
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## Problem
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Most people in crypto agree that the state of governance is abysmal. Teams can loot the treasury without repercussions[^1]. Decentralization theatre abounds[^2]. Even some projects that build DAO tooling don't feel comfortable keeping their money in a DAO[^3].
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The root cause of this issue is token-voting. One-token-one-vote systems have clear incentive traps[^4] that lead to uninformed and unengaged voters. Delegated voting systems ('liquid democracy') don't fare much better: most holders don't even do enough research to delegate.
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## Design
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A possible solution that MetaDAO has been testing out is futarchy. In a futarchy, it's markets that make the decisions. Given that markets are empirically better than experts at predicting things, we expect futarchies to perform better than traditional DAOs.
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Our objective is to build a product that allows DAOs in the Solana ecosystem to harness the power of the market for their decision-making. This product would look and feel like [Realms](https://realms.today/), only with futarchy instead of voting.
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Our short-term goal is to create a minimum viable iteration of this. This iteration would support the following flows:
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- I, as a DAO creator, can come to a website and create a futarchic DAO
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- I, as a futarchic trader, can trade in multiple DAOs proposals' futarchic markets
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To monetize this in the long-term, we could:
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- Collect licensing fees
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- Collect taker/maker fees in the conditional markets
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- Provide ancillary consulting services to help DAOs manage their futarchies
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The minimum viable product wouldn't support these. We would instead work with a few select DAOs and sign agreements with them to migrate to a program with fee collection within 6 months of it being released if they wish to continue to use MetaDAO's offering.
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### Objectives and Key Results
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**Release a minimum viable product by May 21st, 2024**
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- Extend the smart contract to support multiple DAOs
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- Generalize the UI to support multiple DAOs
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- Create docs for interacting with the product
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- Partner with 3 DAOs to have them use the product at launch-time
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**Improve the overall UI/UX**
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- Create an indexer and APIs for order and trade history
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- Improve the user experience for creating proposals
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- Improve the user experience for trading proposals
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### Timeline
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**Phase 1**
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Initial discussions around implementation, services and visual components
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UI design for components
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Development of components in React
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Program development
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Data services / APIs construction
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**Phase 2**
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Program deployed on devnet
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Data services / APIs linked with devnet
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UI deployed on dev branch for use with devnet
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**Phase 3**
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Audit and revisions of program
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Testing UI, feedback and revisions mainnet with limited beta testers and on devent
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**Phase 4**
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Proposal for migration of program
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UI live on mainnet
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Create documentation and videos
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**Final**
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Migrate program
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## Budget
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This project is expected to have deliverables within 30 days with full deployment within two months.
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Below is the inclusion of estimated **MAXIMUM** _costs and hours_ for the following roles[^5]. **If costs do incur beyond this estimate the cost is to be borne by the Entrepreneur.**
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A fair estimate of `$96,000`[^6] for the two months including the following:
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- 1 smart contract engineer (\$15,000) (160 hours)
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- 1 auditor (\$10,000) (40 hours)
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- 2 UI / UX (\$32,000) (400 hours)
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- 1 data/services developer (\$13,000) (140 hours)
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- 1 project manager / research / outreach (\$26,000) (320 hours)
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The Entrepreneur (0xNallok) would fill in various roles, but primarily the project manager.
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This will be funded through:
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- Transfer of \$40,000 USDC from the existing funds in the multi-sig treasury.
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- Transfer of 342 META[^7] which will be used when payment is due to convert to USDC.
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- The funds will be transferred to a 2/3 mult-sig including 0xNallok, Proph3t and Nico.
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- Payments to the parties will be done weekly.
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> The reason for overallocation of META is due to the price fluctuation of the asset and necessity for payment in USDC. This takes the cost minus the \$40k USDC (\$56k) divided by the current price of 1 META (\$818.284) multiplied by a factor of 5.
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> Any remaining META once the project is completed will be transferred back to the MetaDAO treasury.
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MetaDAO Executor (`FpMnruqVCxh3o2oBFZ9uSQmshiyfMqzeJ3YfNQfP9tHy`)
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MetaDAO Treasury (`ADCCEAbH8eixGj5t73vb4sKecSKo7ndgDSuWGvER4Loy`)
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FaaS Multi-sig (`AHwsoL97vXFdvckVZdXw9rrvnUDcPANCLVQzJan9srWy`)
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> 0xNallok (`4LpE9Lxqb4jYYh8jA8oDhsGDKPNBNkcoXobbAJTa3pWw`)
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> Proph3t (`65U66fcYuNfqN12vzateJhZ4bgDuxFWN9gMwraeQKByg`)
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> Nico (`6kDGqrP4Wwqe5KBa9zTrgUFykVsv4YhZPDEX22kUsDMP`)
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This proposal includes the transfer instruction from the MetaDAO treasury, the additional funds will be transferred from the MetaDAO Executor.
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## Business
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Ultimately, the goal of the MetaDAO is to make money. There are a few ways to monetize FaaS all dependent on what appeals most to DAOs:
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- **Taker fees on markets**: we could take 5 - 25 basis points via a taker fee on markets.
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- **Monthly licensing fees**: because the code is BSL, we could charge a monthly fee for the code and the site
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- **Support and services**: we could also provide consultation services around futarchic governance, like a Gauntlet model.
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In general, we should aim for **vertical integration**. The goal is not to build this product as a primitive and then allow anyone to build front-ends for it: it's to own the whole stack.
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### Financial Projections
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Today, 293 DAOs use Realms. Realms is a free platform, so plenty of these DAOs are inactive and wouldn't be paying customers. So we estimate that we could acquire 5 - 100 DAOs as customers.
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As for estimating ARPU (average revenue per user), we can start by looking at the volume in the MetaDAO's markets:
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Note that this only includes the volume in the finalized market, as all trades in the other market are reverted and thus wouldn't collect fees.
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So assuming that proposal 6 - 8 are an appropriate sample, we could earn ~\$50 - \$500 per proposal. If DAOs see between 1 - 2 proposals per month, that's \$100 - \$1,000 in taker fee ARPU.
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As for monthly licensing fees, Squads charges \$99 / month for SquadsX and \$399 / month for Squads Pro. I suspect that DAOs would be willing to pay a premium for governance. So we can estimate between \$50 - \$1,000 in monthly licensing fees.
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Putting these together:
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The support & services business is different enough that it deserves its own model. This is because consulting / advisory businesses have non-zero marginal costs (you can't earn $25,000,000 in revenue from one consultant) and have lower defensibility. Both cause them to receive lower valuation multiples.
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Here's what we project:
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Of course, you can use your own numbers if you'd like to come up with your own estimates.
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## Footnotes
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[^1]: DeFi Project Parrot Holds Contentious Vote on Future of $70M Treasury. Danny Nelson. Jul 21, 2023. https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2023/07/21/defi-project-parrot-puts-fate-of-over-70m-treasury-prt-token-to-vote/.
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[^2]: Crypto's Theater Is Becoming More Surreal. Camila Russo. Aug 14, 2023. https://www.coindesk.com/consensus-magazine/2023/08/14/cryptos-theater-is-becoming-more-surreal/.
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[^3]: Aragon Fires Back at Activist Investors in Early Stages of DAO Governance Fight. Danny Nelson. May 5, 2023. https://www.coindesk.com/business/2023/05/05/aragon-fires-back-at-activist-investors-in-early-stages-of-governance-fight/.
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[^4]: The Logic of Collective Action. Wikipedia. Mar 7, 2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Logic_of_Collective_Action.
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[^5]: As this is an approximation and development and integration depends on a number of factors, inclusion of roles and estimates seems appropriate but may be in flux given changes which arise, however costs would not extend beyond the estimate.
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[^6]: This breaks down to an average estimate of ~$90/hour and 1060 (wo)man hours total.
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[^7]: $$(56,000/818.284) * 5 \approx 342$$
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