Strategies for passing adversarial futarchy proposals

Asset futarchy is attractive because it lets markets compare a proposal's expected effect on token value. That comparison is only reliable when conditional prices track the proposal's causal effect rather than strategic behavior around the decision rule.The attacks below describe ways a proposer can make PASS-ASSET trade above FAIL-ASSET without creating commensurate value for ASSET holders. They are defensive mechanism-design examples: each one identifies a coupling failure between the conditional market price and the proposal's true expected effect.The mitigations also imply a current limitation: robust asset futarchy cannot be fully permissionless and autonomous. Manual gating requires reviewers, and some penalties require them to judge whether proposal terms were abusive. That review layer becomes a trusted governance surface: reviewers can allow their own malicious proposals to pass while blocking counter-proposals. The defenses below therefore replace some market attacks with a centralisation assumption rather than removing governance risk.Asset futarchy here means a governance system where a proposal passes if conditional markets predict ASSET will be worth more if the proposal passes than if it fails. PASS-ASSET is ASSET in the world where the proposal passes. FAIL-ASSET is ASSET in the world where it fails. The important feature here is that relative conditional prices decide execution. +EV means a proposal increases expected ASSET value, and -EV means it decreases expected ASSET value. The examples below assume a 2% passage hurdle: PASS-ASSET must trade at least 2% above FAIL-ASSET for the proposal to pass.Resistance-Contingent DeliveryA proposer promises value-creating work, but treats delivery as the backup plan. Their first choice is to pass the proposal by defending the PASS/FAIL spread, collect the proposal payout, and skip the work.Example: a proposer asks the DAO to pay $300k for a wallet distribution partnership. The partnership is +EV to the DAO i