TL;DR Doxamarket is the first platform to incentivize decentralized governance through information markets, built by @privacypasta @lucacs @Sator and @yupuday. The launch of the V1 market Didomi on Base provides users the opportunity to speculate $DEGEN on Optimism’s Mission Request Round 2, specifically targeting the mission request related to farcaster social graph, via Farcaster frames.
The Problem with DeGov
Coordinating the decisions behind a decentralized protocol comes ripe with numerous challenges. Selecting the right ecosystem projects to fund, which tokens to list in a lending market, and the outcome of a protocol fee switch are valuable propositions that affect all community stakeholders. Once the combined value at stake reaches a critical mass, the founding team is unable to make decisions by themselves without running the risk of centralization. As a result, many aspects of the decentralized protocol model make governance unavoidable.
But token voting as a mechanism for decentralized governance has introduced its own set of problems. An inherent conflict of interest arises when voting power is disproportionately concentrated among a small group of wealthy token holders. As an example, venture funds or whales involved in external projects might be incentivized to pursue agendas that benefit their broader portfolio at the expense of the protocol’s long-term success. In addition, the over-reliance on token voting not only entrenches the power of a wealthy few but also undermines the collective action taken by smaller stakeholders. Smaller delegates within the Optimism ecosystem often refrain from voting due to their individual decisions “not mattering much”. The situation creates a paradox where the promise of decentralization leads to a quasi-centralization of power and an absence of true preferences.
Doxamarket aims to address these gaps by offering a novel approach to incentivize voter participation and mitigate the inefficiencies associated with governance.
Information Markets
Onchain information markets have gained immense popularity recently with the rise of Polymarket and liquidity-backed Kalshi. Their success confirms the financial value that assigning probabilities to future outcomes and sub outcomes can generate. Most importantly, we believe information markets carry an element of chaos that could be directly applied to form consensus in decentralized governance. The crypto space will always prefer chaotic and decisive action over stasis debates between two protocol researchers. Integrating information markets into the onchain decision-making process introduces a novel way to financially incentivize token-voting, increase voter participation, and force true preferences from broader ecosystem participants.
For the implementation of this idea, Doxamarket (formerly BetCaster) has received a grant of 50,000 OP from Optimism’s Mission Request Round 1.
Didomi as Doxamarket’s First Experiment
As the first experimental information market on Doxa, Didomi will grant users the ability to speculate $DEGEN on the winners of Optimism’s Mission Request Round 2. Didomi will open today as a multi-option contract market within Farcaster frames and will close on April 24th 7pm UTC. The market close is scheduled one day before the OP grant council releases final scores. Full details on the market mechanics behind Didomi can be found here.
Screenshot of Optimism Mission Request Schedule
Both the decision to use Farcaster frames and $DEGEN as the market currency are a testament to our belief in the strength of Farcaster and Base as the industry leaders in consumer crypto.
V1 is certainly not perfect and much will be improved on for Doxa’s V2 markets, but we intend for Didomi to be an experimental showcasing of information markets’ value for ecosystem funding initiatives.
‍Follow us on X and Warpcast to learn more about what Doxa is building. If you would like to partake in Doxa’s V1 market Didomi, check out live results here.
