Futarchy Governance Experiment

This 21-day social experiment not only tested the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem

Optimism launched a very novel Futarchy governance experiment in March. Futarchy literally means prediction experiment. In blockchain, Futarchy is a governance model that guides decision-making through prediction markets, using the prediction power of financial markets and the real money input of participants to encourage more accurate predictions and analysis. In this experiment, Optimism used Futarchy to distribute a total of 500k OP (100k * 5) incentives to explore a new incentive distribution model for public chain parties to stimulate ecological development. Most of the progress of the experiment has been completed. As one of the participants in the experiment, LXDAO member Loxia expressed cautious optimism about the future of this governance method.

Optimism launched a landmark on-chain governance experiment in March 2025. Through the Futarchy mechanism, 500,000 OP tokens were distributed as incentives. This 21-day social experiment not only tested the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but also revealed the complex tension in the evolution of decentralized decision-making mechanisms.

At the same time, in order to make the experiment more open and to obtain more data for testing the experiment, the experimenter has opened up participation rights. Anyone with a Telegram account or a Farcaster account can participate. All predictors will receive 50 OP-PLAY entry chips (OP-PLAY, the token has no actual value and is a fake chip for experiments only), and the actual participants in OP governance will receive more OP-PLAY chips.

So what is the prediction problem that this round of Futarchy revolves around?

If a project gets 100k OP incentives, which protocol(s) will get the biggest TVL growth after three months?

There are 23 projects participating in Futarchy this time. Each participant in the experiment needs to predict the TVL increment of these 23 projects after "getting 100k OP incentives". At the beginning of the experiment, the initial predicted TVL of all projects is the same (the same starting line, as a reference in the project selection of the test experiment). As time goes on, users pledge OP-PLAY and buy call options (UP token) and put options (DOWN token) for different projects to start the game. The five projects with the highest prediction results will each receive 100k OP incentives.

After the experiment, participants selected five projects through OP-PLAY prediction market. For comparison, the Grants Council also selected five funded projects:

The top five 100K OP funding projects selected by Futarchy during the 21-day ups and downs game are:

At the same time, the Grants Council selected five funded projects (if there is overlap, only one grant is issued):

The experiment is over, and the results of the two funding directions are not exactly the same. Among them, two projects selected by Futarchy are also covered by the Grants Council. Among the five projects selected by the Grants Council, two projects focused on the Web3 game sector, and two projects focused on middleware and infrastructure. Among the five projects selected by Futarchy, three projects are related to middleware and infrastructure, and one project is related to the Web3 game sector.

This experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but it also encountered difficulties in implementation. For example, the angle from which the indicators of the prediction experiment are set is also very important.

The experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but it also encountered difficulties in implementation. For example, the angle from which the indicators of the prediction experiment are set is also very important.

The experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but it also encountered difficulties in implementation. For example, the angle from which the indicators of the prediction experiment are set is also very important.

The experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but it also encountered difficulties in implementation. For example, the angle from which the indicators of the prediction experiment are set is also very important.

The experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but it also encountered difficulties in implementation. For example, the angle from which the indicators of the prediction experiment are set is also very important.

The experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market in the governance of the public chain ecosystem, but it also encountered difficulties in implementation. For example, the angle from which the indicators of the prediction experiment are set is also very important.

The experiment focused on testing the feasibility of the prediction market