teleo-codex/decisions/internet-finance/metadao-develop-multi-option-proposals.md

type	entity_type	name	domain	status	parent_entity	platform	proposer	proposal_url	proposal_date	resolution_date	category	summary	key_metrics	tags	tracked_by	created	last_updated
decision	decision_market	MetaDAO: Develop Multi-Option Proposals?	internet-finance	passed	metadao	metadao	agrippa	https://v1.metadao.fi/metadao/trade/J7dWFgSSuMg3BNZBAKYp3AD5D2yuaaLUmyKqvxBZgHht	2024-02-20	2024-02-25	mechanism	Proposal 9 — Build multi-modal proposals (multiple mutually exclusive outcomes beyond pass/fail). 200 META across 4 milestones. By agrippa (ex-Realms lead dev, Cornell crypto research). Estimated +12.1% DAO value.	proposal_number proposal_account autocrat_version budget 9 J7dWFgSSuMg3BNZBAKYp3AD5D2yuaaLUmyKqvxBZgHht 0.1 200 META across 4 milestones	metadao multi-option mechanism-design conditional-vault passed	rio	2026-03-11	2026-03-24

MetaDAO: Develop Multi-Option Proposals?

Summary & Connections

Proposal 9 — multi-modal proposals by agrippa. Extend futarchy from binary (pass/fail) to multiple mutually exclusive outcomes. 200 META across 4 milestones (50 each). Proposer: agrippa — former lead dev of Realms frontend at Solana Labs, Cornell crypto research, built the first conditional tokens vault on Solana.

Outcome: Passed (2024-02-25).

Connections:

• This is the mechanism upgrade that enables futarchy to make selection decisions (choose among N options) not just approval decisions (yes/no). The example given — choosing a hackathon winner via conditional markets on each applicant — shows the expanded design space.
• agrippa's insight on pork barrel: "Multi-modal proposals with a draft stage are the best solution to the deeply real game-theoretic problem of pork barrel" — anyone can add alternatives before the conditional vault goes live, forcing proposers to compete on merit
• "Conditional markets do not compete with each other over liquidity" — this is a key technical insight that makes multi-modal proposals feasible without fragmenting liquidity
• The self-valuation methodology is notable: agrippa estimates +12.1% DAO value from the feature (5% decision bandwidth + 5% anti-pork + 2% innovation hype + 0.1% fee revenue), then calculates the META dilution that would be worth paying. Transparent pricing of governance improvements.
• agrippa's backstory: met Proph3t in Greece, walked 3 hours in the rain discussing futarchy. "I told him what Hanson tells people: futarchy isn't used because organizations don't actually want it." But he changed his mind — "I've realized just how fun futarchy is."
• Related to optimal governance requires mixing mechanisms because different decisions have different manipulation risk profiles — multi-option extends the mechanism's applicability to selection problems

---

Full Proposal Text

This is a proposal to pay me (agrippa) in META to create multi-modal proposal functionality.

As it stands proposals have two outcomes: Pass or Fail. A multi-modal proposal is one with multiple mutually-exclusive outcomes, one of which is Fail and the rest of which are other things.

For example, you can imagine a proposal to choose the first place prize of the Solana Scribes contest, where there's a conditional market on each applicant! Without multi-modal proposals, a futarchic DAO has basically no mechanism for making choices like this, but multi-modal proposals solve it quite well.

Architecturally speaking there is no need to hard-limit the number of conditions in a conditional vault / number of outcomes in a proposal.

I believe even in the medium term it will prove to be a crucial feature that provides a huge amount of value to the DAO, and I believe the futarchic DAO software is currently far and away the DAO's most important asset and worth investing in.

Protocol complexity and risk

Unlike other potential expansions of DAO complexity, multi-modal proposals do not particularly introduce any new security / mechanism design considerations. If you can maliciously get through "proposal option 12", you could have also gotten through Pass in a binary proposal because conditional markets do not compete with each other over liquidity.

About me

I have been leading development on the Realms frontend (aka the governance-ui) for Solana Labs for the past year. Aside from smart contract dev, I'm an expert at making web3 frontends performant and developer-ergonomic. I started what was probably the very first high-school blockchain club in the world in 2014, with my then-Physics-teacher Jed who now works at Jito. In my undergrad I did research at Cornell's Initiative for Cryptocurrency and Contracts and in 2017 I was invited to a smart contract summit in China because of some Sybil resistance work I was doing at the time (Vitalik was there!).

I developed the first conditional tokens vault on Solana as part of a prediction market reference implementation (grant-funded by FTX of all people, rest in peace). This has influenced changes to the existing metadao conditional vault, which I've been asked to help test and review.

I met Proph3t in Greece this past December and we spent about 3 hours walking and talking in the pouring rain about the Meta-DAO and futarchy. During our conversation I told him what Hanson tells people: futarchy isn't used because organizations don't actually want it, they'd rather continue to get fat on organizational inefficiencies. But my thinking has changed!

1. I've now seen how excited talented builders and teams are about implementing futarchy (as opposed to wanting to cling to control)
2. I've realized just how fun futarchy is and I want it for myself regardless of anything else

Value

Main points of value with subjective estimates on DAO value increase:

• Ability to weigh multiple exclusive alternatives at once literally exponentially increases the DAO's decision-making bandwidth in relevant cases (+5%)
• Multi-modal proposals with a draft stage are the best solution to the deeply real game-theoretic problem of pork barrel (+5%)
• Multi-modal proposals are cool and elegant. Selection among multiple alternatives is a very challenging problem in voting mechanism design, usually solved poorly (see: elections). Multi-modal futarchic proposals are innovative and exciting not just in the context of futarchy, but all of governance! (+2%)
• A really kickass conditional vault implementation is useful for other protocols and could collect very modest fees (+0.1%)

Total: +12.1% value to the Meta-DAO.

Circulating supply is 14,416 META. 14416 * 112.1% = 16160, so this feature set would be worth a dilution of +1744 META. I am proposing much less than that.

Compensation and Milestones

200 META disbursed in 50 META intervals across 4 milestones:

1. Immediately upon passage of this proposal
2. Upon completing the (new from scratch) multi-modal conditional vault program
3. Upon making futarch work with multi-modal conditional vaults
4. Upon integrating all related features into the frontend

Milestone completion assessed by a 3/5 Squads multisig: Proph3t, DeanMachine, 0xNallok, LegalizeOnionFutures, sapphire.

Each council member paid 2.5 META upon passage.

---

Raw Data

• Proposal account: J7dWFgSSuMg3BNZBAKYp3AD5D2yuaaLUmyKqvxBZgHht
• Proposal number: 9
• DAO account: 7J5yieabpMoiN3LrdfJnRjQiXHgi7f47UuMnyMyR78yy
• Proposer: 99dZcXhrYgEmHeMKAb9ezPaBqgMdg1RjCGSfHa7BeQEX
• Autocrat version: 0.1
• Completed: 2024-02-25

Relationship to KB

• metadao — parent entity, mechanism upgrade
• optimal governance requires mixing mechanisms because different decisions have different manipulation risk profiles — multi-option extends futarchy to selection problems
• MetaDAOs Autocrat program implements futarchy through conditional token markets where proposals create parallel pass and fail universes settled by time-weighted average price over a three-day window — extends from binary to multi-modal