Introduction

The problem

Voting doesn't work. In theory, voting should be a rational process where voters select the best option. In practice, voting systems suffer three big issues:

• Low participation: it's hard to get people to vote.

• Uninformed voters: even when you can get people to vote, they often very limited understanding of the decision at hand.

• Whale and insider influence: insiders can have huge sway on the vote outcome. Crypto abounds with "governance theater."

Over the last 7 millennia, many attempts have been made to fix voting. So far, none of these have delivered substantial improvements.

Futarchy

It's long been said that people buy with their head but vote with their heart. What if we could flip that on its head and use market processes to make decisions? That is the central idea behind futarchy.

In a futarchy, decisions don't go to votes: they get traded. Proposals pass when the market speculates that they're good. Proposals fail when the market speculates that they're bad.

MetaDAO

Even though futarchy was invented by economist Robin Hanson in 2000, MetaDAO is the first project to put it into practice. It provides a platform to create, manage, and participate in futarchies, and is itself governed by a futarchy.