I agree that having the splitter fund mechanisms rather than final recipients makes the design much clearer. For the asset-futarchy option, I think the cleanest implementation is to keep the validator signaling mechanism as the base funding layer while delegating allocation to a futarchy contract. This also implements @nay’s distinction between deciding how much to fund and deciding what to fund: validators would determine the redirect rate and recipient contract, while futarchy would allocate the funds subject to a narrow moderator veto.
All futarchy, allocation, grace-period, and moderator logic would remain inside the delegated contract, so replacing moderators would only require redirecting funds to a new contract instance.
I agree with @nay that validators are best positioned to set the funding rate rather than evaluate specialized work. But equal budgets for accredited institutions can reward institutional status and task completion without establishing value, reinforcing @LefterisJP’s concern that “Ethereum has a problem of overarching technical complexity and a serious case of the NIH syndrome”. Futarchy instead incentivizes informed traders to compare proposals’ expected value.
Futarchy still appears to require trusted gatekeepers to mitigate proposals designed to exploit strategies described here. After each market observation, the contract would provide a grace period during which moderators could veto a proposal based on its design or observed market behavior.
This creates a hierarchy of watchmen: moderators supervise proposal creators, while validators supervise the moderators. Validators would not review individual proposals or continuously assess moderator performance. They would only redirect funding to a replacement contract when clear evidence showed that the moderators admitted an exploitative proposal or unjustifiably vetoed a legitimate one, keeping the validator role narrow and minimizing its capture surface.
Initially, one funding proposal could remain incumbent until a challenger defeats it in a head-to-head futarchy market. This avoids complex allocation across many small proposals and ensures each proposal’s impact is economically material.