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Howdy!

Once every roughly four days I consider making a Bluesky account — but then I’m crushed by the thought of having yet another platform to post from. Can we just go back to the Twitter days?

Today, we’ve got a MetaDAO update and a World Liberty Financial scoop.

Futarchy needs ‘one great success’ to become Solana’s go-to governance model

MetaDAO, the group pioneering markets-based governance via “futarchy” on Solana, is one of those things that lots of Solana people have heard of but has seen limited actual adoption.

Things could be changing though, as the liquid staking startup Sanctum just became the first Solana project to fully adopt MetaDAO for its platform governance. Its first decision market has drawn over 200 trades in three hours. When I recently called to catch up with MetaDAO’s pseudonymous founder metaproph3t, they portrayed the Sanctum launch as a potential means to build trust that futarchy can actually work, kicking off a potential adoption flywheel effect.

Futarchy is a term coined by George Mason University economics professor Robin Hanson for a governance system where markets, rather than voters or leaders, make decisions. MetaDAO brings futarchy to Solana governance. 

The experiment is generally well thought of in crypto, especially since traditional token-voting DAO systems have their warts — and can sometimes be accused of being a little too trigger-happy with treasury funds.

Realms, which allows for traditional DAO models with token-based voting, is the more popular governance platform on Solana. Well-known projects like Jito and Drift have launched some form of governance on MetaDAO, but they have Realms pages, too.

Metaproph3t said they think MetaDAO can become the default governance platform for Solana — like, say, what Snapshot is to Ethereum — within six to 18 months. Still, they added, “I don't think I foresaw just how much friction there is involved in someone learning how futarchy works.”

MetaDAO creates pass and fail markets for governance proposals. Anyone can trade in the pass and fail market by placing options-like bets on whether they think the proposal succeeding or failing will cause the token’s price to rise or fall. The market that predicts a more positive outcome for the token’s price succeeds, and only users who traded on the winning market see their trades executed at the market-determined price. Sellers, who are bearish on the proposal, buy with the native token and get paid out in USDC, while buyers, who are bullish, do the reverse.

This is all a bit convoluted at first, and metaproph3t is a fitting overseer for the wonkish project. At one point in our conversation, they summarized Geoffrey Moore’s book, Crossing the Chasm, at length to make a point.

When I asked if the futarchy project was just too nerdy to catch on broadly, metaproph3t replied that there are plenty of technologies people use without fully understanding.

“Who actually understands how a car engine works?” they asked.

I asked Sanctum co-founder FP Lee what it would take for MetaDAO to become the real default DAO platform for Solana projects.

“One great success,” he replied. “If we embrace it full-throatedly, and people see that it works, it will be embraced fully.”

— Jack Kubinec

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Here’s a visualization for how MetaDAO’s futarchy works:

Sanctum is currently holding a futarchic vote on whether it should change its logo. Sanctum’s CLOUD token currently trades at a little under $0.12. The pass market prices CLOUD at a little over $0.12, while the fail market prices it closer to $0.10.

So for the moment, the market is saying it would be better for the CLOUD price to change Sanctum’s logo than not, and the proposal is primed to pass. Pass market buyers would receive payouts in CLOUD at the “a little over $0.12” price, while pass market sellers would get USDC.

— Jack Kubinec

World Liberty Financial, the as-yet unlaunched crypto platform from real estate mogul Steve Witkoff and various allies of President Trump, has allegedly been contacting blockchain teams with an offer for a high-stakes token swap deal. The pitch? Buy at least $10 million in unlaunched WLFI tokens (with a 10% fee, of course), and World Liberty Financial will buy the same amount of the project’s native token in return. At $15 million, partners receive “priority treatment,” Blockworks reported exclusively this morning. Public wallet data shows the company has around $378 million in crypto holdings, with ETH as the dominant asset.

Following Blockworks’ coverage, WLFI posted on social media stating that recent movements of its crypto holdings were “routine treasury management” and that “no tokens are being sold” — only reallocated for operational needs. The platform framed the activity as standard practice to maintain a “strong, secure and efficient treasury.”

Takeaway: WLF is straddling two narratives — actively courting blockchain teams with aggressive swap deals while insisting its treasury activity is routine business. If the swap offer is legitimate, it’s as much about influence as investment. By leveraging deep pockets and political connections, WLF appears to be stacking its cap table with major blockchain teams ahead of launch, likely betting that early institutional buy-in will create momentum and legitimacy in a crowded market.

— Jeffrey Albus

Permissionless IV is where ideas get stress-tested and shipped. No fluff, no filler — just code, collaboration, and pushing the limits of what’s possible. Whether you’re deep in the weeds of protocol design, launching something new, or breaking shit to make it better, Brooklyn is where it all goes down…

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Get in the room.

📅 June 22–26 | Brooklyn, NY

A message from Ryan Connor, research manager at Blockworks Research: