Proposal: Build Sanctum’s Deliberation Layer

[CryptoShroom]

Mockup: https://t.co/jIiu8SU5Fb

Quick note/ apology: I’ve been moving countries to start my PhD and juggling too many plates at once, so I haven’t always kept up with every Discord and forum thread. If I’m duplicating prior ideas or misrepresenting any detail, that’s on me… happy to correct and fold things in. I wanted to take more time for getting into the gov discussion in here, but I guess I am slow, and sanctum moves fast. If I don’t bring this in now, I will be too late.

TL;DR

• Futarchy could be useful as a signal, not as the spine of governance. It can’t deliver legitimacy, fairness, or real causal attribution; it collapses plural values into a single metric and invites manipulation.

• The real missing piece is structured deliberation: agenda → argument map → synthesis → decision → post-mortem. A visible process where reasons are surfaced, challenged, synthesized, and only then voted/ratified.

• Let’s pilot a lightweight Deliberation Layer that plugs into a potential Loyalty Layer so we reward quality contributions, not just trading activity.

• I’m a PhD researcher in political theory/governance; happy to contribute research, facilitation, and the mockup I built. I’m sharing ConvoCity (Sanctum Edition), a lightweight deliberation tool mockup I made in another context and adapted for Sanctum. It rewards quality arguments and evidence, not trading activity.

Why not futarchy at the core?

Markets do not carry legitimacy or attribution on their own. I am actually working on a paper that goes into depth regarding the argument, which I am hoping to share soon. But regarding the ongoing changes, I thought now is the time to already make an entrace. So whats so bad about futarchy?

1. Attribution problem (not necessarily a sanctum problem, but a scalability one)
   When multiple variables move (macro, Solana flows, product releases, narrative cycles), prediction markets price correlations, not causation. You can end up “crediting” the policy that happened to coincide with a price move. That breeds overfitting and story-time governance.

2. Participation bias.
   If voice requires trading, you self-select for voices who like risk and mechanics not necessarily those closest to ethics and values of the team. Furthermore, the more token, the more money, Market Maker and wealthy individuals can “capture” the vote. This undermines inclusion and “enlightened understanding,” two basic democratic criteria (Dahl 1989).

3. metric capture.
   What gets measured gets gamed. Metrics displace judgement. If a market-priced KPI becomes the target, it gets circular. Thin/steerable markets let sophisticated players shape the signal that later justifies their preferred policy: finance is performative, not just reflective (MacKenzie, 2006).

4. Legitimacy & contestability
   People accept decisions they can contest and understand. That’s a norms question, not a price-discovery question (Habermas 1996; Pettit 2012).

The missing layer: deliberation

In academia, norms like peer review, open critique, and transparent methods push arguments to compete on evidence and reasoning rather than status. Through replication and falsification, weaker claims are discarded and stronger explanations persist, which nudges the community toward provisional consensus. In that sense, letting the better argument win is our best practical engine for getting closer to truth. Legitimacy doesn’t come from price movements; it comes from ideas the people have shaped using reasons, they can inspect and challenge.

• Habermas: legitimacy emerges from open, public reasoning (Habermas 1996).

• Dahl: inclusion + “enlightened understanding” are basic democratic criteria (Dahl 1989).

• Pettit: decisions must be contestable by those affected (Pettit 2012).

• Ostrom: durable collective governance needs clear rules, monitoring, and graduated accountability—i.e., process, not vibes (Ostrom 1990).

• Landemore/Mansbridge: wider participation can raise the epistemic quality of outcomes, if the conversation is structured.

Right now, crypto is under-tooled for that layer. Sanctum can lead by making decisions based on the merit of the better argument, build together by the community.

What the Deliberation Layer should look like

A thin protocol + product that turns discussion into decisions:

1. Agenda & scoping.

   • Standard proposal template: problem → constraints → options → risks → success metrics.

2. Argument maps.

   • Pro/Con trees with evidence links.

   • Lightweight tagging (risk class, stakeholder impact, time horizon).

3. Reasoned summaries.

   • An AI delivers a summary of the arguments and discussion

4. Decision stage (vote/ratify).

   • Bring in advisory signals (mix between community karma and token wheighed voting) alongside the arguments.

   • Record the decision with rationale + expected KPIs.

5. Post-mortem & learning.

   • After the timebox, compare expected vs. actual; update playbooks.

Recognition: Plug this into the Loyalty Layer so contributors earn credit for useful work; clear arguments, good evidence, high-quality synthesis - not just for holding or trading. While at the same time having an opportunity to highlight if someone is a good contributor.

Mockup

I’ve built a mockup of the deliberation tool (argument maps, reasoned summaries, contributor scoring):
Link: https://t.co/jIiu8SU5Fb

The displayed labels could also show the staked amount of token, to underline, how much stake someone would give on a decision.

Happy to do a quick live pitch/walkthrough and adapt it to Sanctum’s stack.

Who I am & why I’m offering this

I’m a PhD researcher in political theory / political science focused on governance, how cryptocurrencies affect society, and DAO design. I’ve studied how foundation-led, token-weighted, and futarchy-style systems stack up against democratic norms and real outcomes. You can find me on X as CryptoShroomOG

The CLOUD airdrop made it possible for me to pursue this PhD. I’d like to give back, by helping formalize a deliberation layer that matches Sanctum’s ambition.

PS: In the next days I will try to translate a presentation I made on the deliberation tool and post it here as well. I will also expand the literature recommendations with some more quality stuff.

Good reads:
Christian Fuchs: Introduction to social media

Habermas: The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Strukturwandel der Öffentlichkeit)

Sources:

Dahl, R.A., 1989. Democracy and Its Critics. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Habermas, J., 1996. Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Landemore, H., 2013. Democratic Reason: Politics, Collective Intelligence, and the Rule of the Many. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

MacKenzie, D. (2006) An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Mansbridge, J., 1983. Beyond Adversary Democracy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

[Sowetoddid]

At the top line I think the question is — what is the right balance between centralization vs decentralization. I think there’s a widespread assumption in crypto that decentralized decision making will be the answer.

In my own ignorance — I haven’t seen evidence of that working consistently or efficiently. I see teams pulling back from it.

First, IMO high level goals should be made clear — eg minimalist, streamlined decision making that only involves more individuals (ie. time + bureaucracy) if there’s clear value added. That instantly limits what goes beyond the founder level. Another threshold is what goes beyond the engineer level. And yet another threshold at what goes beyond the team level.

I think it’s the founder/team’s duty to define which decisions would truly benefit from community involvement, if any. IMO we’ve witnessed teams (eg JUP, CLOUD, etc) struggle to delegate decisions outside of the team because there’s likely a weak case for value, beyond claiming “partnership”.

So, in short — I personally don’t think the community should invest time on governance system proposals right now. The team needs to make critical, central decisions about what, if anything, might actually be delegated for community decision making.

I don’t claim expertise in this… just sharing another perspective.

[CryptoShroom]

thanks for taking the time to read and consider my article. I do believe that decentralization is key to making fair and ethical decisions. Crypto projects stepping back from this are betraying the ethos, their users and their values for monetary egoistic gains.

The problem in the current state is indeed implementations of governance mechanisms based not off of political science/theory research of the past 2k years, but rather on discussions in online forums with participants that have never engaged with actual already existing theories and critiques on governance. Dangerous partial knowledge or wrong assumptions can unfortunately lead to the wrong conclusions etc. This means, you having seen consistent or efficient good results, or them maybe not even existing, does not exclude the possibility of them to exist. They can exist, if expertise and knowledge is allowed to shape processes.

Secondly, to your first point, I agree. Scope and thressholds should be made clear. Sanctum did this by highly advertizing community participation, fairness and earnestness. Another example would be JupiterDAO where according to the newest decision, the DAO is absolutely worthless and just a marketing scheme. A proper DAO replaces the Board and Works Council and Union in one entity. It is not sufficient to remove only one, or other features or functions. A proper DAO is above the team, not below it. In a democracy, the people are the ones controlling the government, not the other way around (yes that point is contentious and I guess, what makes many countries, starting with the United States, a flawed democracy). Sanctum was on a great way there, and they should stay, if they are serious about their values.

To your second point, while it is the founders/teams duty to define this, for sanctum it had already been done, with a wide scope. It is time for crypto communities to decide: do they want earnest democratic fair governance, or do they want to have a dictatorship of the team without giving community participation any meaning. It is a binary choice and teams like JUP already made their decision.

Free fair and open, means not the team, but the community makes the decisions, including those about agenda, scope, and practicalities of decision making.

PS: the best decisions are made by those knowledgeable, fair ones by all those who are affected by the decision. My proposal would bring both together. And the process, of consensus building through discussions, will, based on the merit of the better argument, make it transparent, “while taking everyone through the process” thus creating acceptance and legitimacy.

[Sowetoddid]

I agree with your ideals but struggle to mesh it with my own reality — crowd decision making is heavily flawed IMO.

Many times the most vocal and active are also the most bored and ill-equipped. The quiet and withdrawn are often the most capable but are also consumed with their own ventures (possibly yourself, for example). All get equal votes in consensus decision making.

In my own experience, I don’t see masses of people withdrawal themselves from participation when they lack the necessarily strategic skills or info. When highly competent people do withdrawal because they’re heavily (time) invested in other areas, the remains are an ill-equipped, highly opinionated crowd.

Granted, this is anecdotal. That said, the many trolls on the internet are a fairly large crowd with very strong opinions… and yet they add no value. They actually extract value from the process of social media life.

Despite all of this, each vote is equal. In the case of futarchy, each dollar is equal. Ideally, facts and reality rise to the surface… but how? Voting by crowds?

[CryptoShroom]

I totally agree, you’re touching upon important points - the tyranny of the majority, the problem of misinformed publics, and the dominance of loud but poorly equipped voices are real concerns (as well is plebiscitary rhetorics). That’s exactly why I’m not advocating for flat crowd-voting, but for structured deliberation flows where arguments are filtered, summarized, and collaboratively improved. The idea is to let better reasoning surface, not louder voices. And to support the quiet experts by giving them context-aware entry points and recognition through collective intelligence signals (like karma). It’s not voting by the crowd: it’s collaboration with guidance.

[n8tr0n]

Really appreciate the depth here, and the way you framed Futarchy as a signal rather than the core. That resonates a lot. Governance should be more than just numbers on a chart, it should surface reasoning, weigh tradeoffs, and make clear why decisions are made. That’s what gives people confidence, even if they don’t agree with every outcome.

The truth is, no one in crypto has nailed this yet. Most DAOs stop at forums and token-weighted voting. It’s clunky, easy to game, and adds little beyond optics. If Sanctum were to build a lightweight governance product, it could be a real differentiator, not just for Sanctum and CLOUD, but for Solana and beyond.

Such a product could include:

• Structured templates → every proposal is clear and comparable.

• Argument mapping tools → reasoning made visible, not buried in walls of text.

• Evidence highlighting → ensures facts get proper attention.

• Contribution scoring → plugs into the Loyalty Layer so thoughtful members are recognized and rewarded.

• Post-mortems → track whether decisions delivered what they promised, closing the feedback loop.

If done right, Sanctum could export this model. Other DAOs and protocols could adopt the same toolset, making it an ecosystem product, just like Infinity and Gateway.

[nimbusNoob]

So academia has very different foundations. When deliberating, everyone is, or thriving to be, an academic each with their domains of expertise.

The issue with implementing this here is the community is not made up of academics. No offense to the fam, but token go up tunnel vision make for a poor ability to deliberate effectively on things that matter.

At the core, I think what I highlighted here is also the reason why governance just doesn’t work in this space. Where you need domain expertise, governance lead by community effort is extremely lacking.

Unfortunately governance just doesn’t work, hence I’m in favor of throwing it out the window all together here

[luciotamino]

Hey @CryptoShroom, good to see you here!
That’s a good discussion! About your argument:

“Legitimacy doesn’t come from price movements; it comes from ideas the people have shaped using reasons, they can inspect and challenge.”

This really clashes with the idea of Futarchy, because it basically argues the opposite: that markets can make better financial decisions than we can. Some of the justifications for this are precisely what you mentioned - the tyranny of the majority and the problem of misinformed publics. Futarchy claims that markets, in these contexts, are far more efficient at quantifying outcomes. Some examples cited are:

• Election markets: Outperform polls in predicting election outcomes.
• Commodity futures: Show higher accuracy than government weather forecasts.
• Corporate use cases: Companies like Google and HP successfully predicted launch dates and sales using prediction markets.
• The Challenger disaster: Markets identified the cause within 14 minutes, while the US government took months.
  From Meta-DAO: Redefining Governance Through Futarchy

In theory, this system, even if it seems vulnerable to personal bias at first glance, is actually meant to be more unbiased. That’s because market logic isn’t the same as personal logic. Even if someone felt inclined to push a personal agenda, their personal opinion would have less weight than the financial view-point. In the end, the financial incentive tends to outweigh individual opinions.

That said, my biggest critique of markets has always been their tendency to overlook ethics. As an example, if profit is the only metric, then environmental damage or harmful social consequences can easily be overlooked and justified, as long as they drive financial gains.

Maybe the key is context. Maybe you shouldn’t use money to measure the impact of an environmental disaster or social crisis, but you could apply financial logic in purely economic scenarios, where moral dilemmas aren’t directly at stake.

Anyway, Futarchy is still very new to me, and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around it. I’ve seen Sanctum’s experiments with it as tests, and from what I understand, the founders have been interested in it for a while, since they recognize how flawed traditional governance is and wanted something different. What most people call “democracy” just doesn’t work.

We’re still trying to find the balance between decisions that should stay with the Core Team and those that can benefit from community input. They’ve mentioned recently that all decisions regarding CLOUD would be community-driven, while those related to core products will remain at their discretion.

Bottom line is, this is still evolving. I guess it won’t be easy to decide which choices belong to the team and which to the community, especially when debating things that get the community heated up. Personally, I still trust the Core Team’s judgment, they’ve done an amazing job taking Sanctum this far. Even if the token doesn’t yet reflect that success, I believe it eventually will. Over time, the balance will emerge naturally, with the protocol’s growth as the guiding force, always anchored by ethical values.

[nimbusNoob]

Pretty sure futarchy is getting the axe by the team bud. @fplee last post gave me the impression that it’s just not worth it for the team to continue that system anymore.

[CryptoShroom]

I understand this critique regarding a difference in argumentation online and within academia. But I think it would be paternalistic to say that that would keep them from meaningful participation. In fact, theory has come up with several solutions to these issues in grassroot movements. There are sides to this argument and many directions it can take (which really would jump the forum here). Additionally, governance is researched in many other domains as well (even in the free market by corporations). For my App, which was initially designed as a political participation tool for small cities and communes, I aim to solve the problem with AI. It matters the argument, not the way it is presented. A multi-phase/stage process can help take weaker members to the next level. A group is as strong as the weakest link some people say, others say the true strength is how they are carrying this link with them.

[CryptoShroom]

Hey Lucio!

Yes, finally getting more involved. Thanks for your feedback

This really clashes with the idea of Futarchy, because it basically argues the opposite: that markets can make better financial decisions than we can. Some of the justifications for this are precisely what you mentioned - the tyranny of the majority and the problem of misinformed publics. Futarchy claims that markets, in these contexts, are far more efficient at quantifying outcomes

Yes. Exactly. This is, because many ideas in Futarchy are not working out in practice. The way it is presented by Merkle has many flaws (which I will expose in a paper which I can hopefully finish this or next week). The one from Hanson has some flaws as well. This is why there is very little engagement within academic journals around their ideas, while alternative systems to capitalist democracy is basically its own field within political theory and there are many ideas and approaches around that are avidly discussed. Futarchy did not really make the cut.

• Election markets: Outperform polls in predicting election outcomes.

They are measuring not what people want, but what they think the most average would be due to the specific profit incentive. This is my critique of metric capture. Once the outcome is linked to the poll, they will get gamed. Merkle for example is aware of this, for which reason he crafts the DCW as index. However, due to the available data, this creates an attribution problem.

• Commodity futures: Show higher accuracy than government weather forecasts.

What exactly is the accuracy here? Majority of future traders is at a loss.

• Corporate use cases: Companies like Google and HP successfully predicted launch dates and sales using prediction markets.

Of their own products? I mean… that is highly manufacturable by them, of other companies products and such? Okay, but how did this work, who did the trading here?

One important thing to look at, if they want to do regression analysis etc, what data is available and which is used. I will look into this, as well as the challenger disaster point, but I do have my doubts regarding the applicability. These use cases are very much different than trying to determine the “will of the people”.

is actually meant to be more unbiased.

unbiased is not necessarily possible when people are involved, what is necessary is to recognize the bias, reflect on them, and take them into consideration. Pretending they are not there anymore, or will be hidden, is harmful.

my biggest critique of markets has always been their tendency to overlook ethics. As an example, if profit is the only metric, then environmental damage or harmful social consequences can easily be overlooked and justified, as long as they drive financial gains.

this is a very good point as well.

but you could apply financial logic in purely economic scenarios, where moral dilemmas aren’t directly at stake.

Purely economic scenarios, yes, but then, which scenario is purely economic? The interconnectedness, might make that difficult in reality.

since they recognize how flawed traditional governance is and wanted something different. What most people call “democracy” just doesn’t work.

Yes, this is also very accepted within political theory, there are many reasons for this and many long books have been written about this (including e.g. das Kapital from Marx, State and Revolution from Lenin) but also many contemporaries with less of a negative connotation. Challenging Governance Theory: From Networks to Hegemony from Jonathan S Davies is quite work and Envisioning Real Utopias by Erik Olin Wright influenced me as well. In any case, I get distracted haha.

Bottom line is, this is still evolving. I guess it won’t be easy to decide which choices belong to the team and which to the community, especially when debating things that get the community heated up. Personally, I still trust the Core Team’s judgment, they’ve done an amazing job taking Sanctum this far. Even if the token doesn’t yet reflect that success, I believe it eventually will. Over time, the balance will emerge naturally, with the protocol’s growth as the guiding force, always anchored by ethical values.

I agree! They did do an amazing job so far. The idea is that a government/core team/vanguard would lead the revolution until it can safely wither away. Only then, a collective can be truly autonomous and decentralized. That time definitely is not now. And yes, I trust the team as well. They are doing great work. Earnestness and honesty are the most important values in the sphere, and if they stick to them will get them further than any other cryptoproject will get. Our job is it to challenge and support them along the way, so they keep doing this great important work. Making sure the compass and anchor stays on the right values.

[nimbusNoob]

If you can develop an LLM that adequately addresses the gap in ability to meaningfully contribute for the average community member, then go for it.

I don’t think what I said is paternalistic at all. It is rooted in experience as a community member in several projects and in academia. Theory has to meet the real world and be put to the test. AI is an incredible tool, but you have to prove it can do what you want it to in this context for me to believe it.

I’m all for you getting your idea off the ground honestly. Put it to the test and I’d love to see the results. But you can’t just assert something works without putting it to the test first.

[CryptoShroom]

regarding the point on the LLMs, I think it is already there. Users contribute the way they can, AI translates it in something meaningful. The discussion takes it into consideration for the second round. Screenshot as an example of how a low effort comment is transformed into meaningful critique. The loyalty layer or some kind of karma system can be used to incentivize meaningful participation.

I don’t think what I said is paternalistic at all.

I didn’t mean to say you are. But the argument can be seen in a paternalistic or elitist light. If we think more in a direction of being able to empower the weaker links, it would not be earnest to not do so. At the same time, indeed, not everyone has the time or energy to follow. This is why I also propose to have summaries between the discussion rounds, to make it easier to participate without following it all.

I am totally with you,

But you can’t just assert something works without putting it to the test first.

I’m not saying it will 100% work in practice, but I am saying it is on a more solid theoretical standing than futarchy. But yes indeed, it needs to be tested in practice.

I’m all for you getting your idea off the ground honestly. Put it to the test and I’d love to see the results.

Thanks, would love to see the results as well. What I need, I guess, is a demos that is willing to participate.

[nimbusNoob]

If you can pull the threads from this forum and parse that text, you should have a decent training set already.

[n8tr0n]

1. Election markets / prediction accuracy:
   These don’t prove legitimacy, only accuracy in forecasting outcomes. Predicting an election is not the same as deciding what should happen in a protocol. Sanctum governance isn’t about forecasting, it’s about shaping direction.

2. Commodity futures / weather forecasts:
   Same issue: forecasting is not governance. Futures work when there’s clear data and lots of liquidity. In small token communities (like CLOUD), markets are thin, easily manipulated, and often wrong.

3. Corporate prediction markets (Google, HP):
   These worked only in closed environments with aligned incentives. Google engineers betting on release dates is not the same as anonymous token holders trading for short-term profit. Very different incentive landscape.

4. Challenger disaster example:
   Markets “identifying” the cause was speculation after the fact. And even if true, predicting a cause ≠ solving governance tradeoffs (like emissions, treasury allocation, or ethical priorities). It’s apples to oranges.

@luciotamino

What most people call “democracy” just doesn’t work.

It’s not that democracy itself “doesn’t work”, it’s the corruption of people that undermines it. In theory, democracy, like any framework, can work in the right environment and application. But in practice people can be misinformed, self-serving, or easily manipulated. And the ones that are elected to represent the people are mostly just pure evil. That’s the real failure point, not the concept itself. But that’s all okay because sanctum isn’t going for a democracy. And I don’t think they ever were or would.

[CryptoShroom]

Thanks for the feedback!

I don’t think I would need to train a new model, I think even a distilled model might be sufficient for the task, although I will be running into issues since I can’t run one myself and with free APIs probably going to be too limited. The crux will be implementing the AI for the round based discussion within the app and „live updates“. I am not sure I can do that all by myself, it would take it’s time for sure since I obviously can’t do volunteer work full time while doing an unpaid PhD.

If you have a look at my mockup (you can even click around a bit, on the bubble of a thread or the argument flows fold open) maybe you like the idea more.

I do think you might have a valuable point, I could start with making a dashboard for this forum as some kind of proof of concept or mvp. Although probably even here, I would reach rate limits quite quickly

[CryptoShroom]

really good arguments in regards to futarchy!

However, imo a decentralized autonomous organization would in fact always be what many people call a democracy. Otherwise it will neither be decentralized nor autonomous.

[n8tr0n]

Fair point. However, my definition of a democracy includes elected officials, and some other minor differences. But we can view it from a more broad scope.

[CryptoShroom]

I think a good analogy for the elected officials would be the team. Obviously electing the team at this point does not make sense. And the analogy does not work fully. But on the other hand, democracy, rule of the demos, would not necessarily necessitate elected officials depending on definition.

[nimbusNoob]

I think governance is misunderstood for reasons that you just said.

The team is not like an elected official. They are the ones who make the call on direction and what will be done.

Governance here only concerns what initiatives the community reserve will be used for. What the team does with Sanctum itself is not up to the community or futarchy.