futarchy

Futarchy Module

The futarchy module provides a straightforward, "no bells and whistles" implementation of the futarchy governance system.

Overview

The futarchy module is essentially an oracle based governance system: When a proposal is submitted, an oracle is specified which evaluates whether the proposal should be executed. The type of the oracle is configured using the associated type Oracle, which must implement FutarchyOracle.

The typical oracle implementation for futarchy is the DecisionMarketOracle implementation exposed by the neo-swaps module, which allows making decisions based on prices in prediction markets. A DecisionMarketOracle is defined by providing a pool ID and two outcomes, the positive and negative outcome. The oracle evaluates positively (meaning that it will allow the proposal to pass) if and only if the positive outcome is more valuable than the negative outcome over a period of time for a certain absolute and relative threshold determined by a DecisionMarketOracleScoreboard.

The standard governance flow is the following:

• The root origin submits a proposal to be approved or rejected via futarchy by running a governance proposal through pallet-democracy and calling into this pallet's sole extrinsic submit_proposal. Assuming that the thesis of futarchy is correct and the market used to evaluate the proposal is well-configured and sufficiently liquid, submitting a proposal to futarchy rather than pallet-democracy gives a stronger guarantee on the efficacy of the proposal.
• Wait until the duration specified in submit_proposal has passed. The oracle will be automatically evaluated and will either schedule proposal.call at proposal.when where proposal is the proposal specified in submit_proposal.

Terminology

• Call: Refers to an on-chain extrinsic call.
• Oracle: A means of making a decision about a proposal. At any block, an oracle evaluates to true (proposal is accepted) or false (proposal is rejected).
• Proposal: Consists of a call, an oracle and a time of execution. If and only if the proposal is accepted, the call is scheduled for the specified time of execution.