Announcing: The Agora Novo Origo Prize

Cannes, France — April 1st, 2026

A blank canvas. No pre-existing DAO, committees, elected humans. $15K USD for the best governance design. You submit, you critique, you judge.

What If a Truly Decentralized Network Emerged Now?

Forget legacy governance. Forget token-vote theater. Forget the instinct to recreate familiar political structures onchain.

The question behind this prize is simple:

If a truly decentralized network emerged now, what would ideal governance look like?

Not a better DAO. Not a more credible committee. Not a cleaner election mechanism for human representatives. A new generation of governance: durable, legible, participatory, and capable of steering protocol change without collapsing into plutocracy, capture, or apathy.

This prize is about designing that system from first principles.

Starting Assumptions

To keep the challenge concrete, assume the network has the following properties. These are constraints for the governance problem, not an invitation to redesign the network itself:

• Practical sybil resistance baked into the account structure. The mechanism isn't perfect, no sybil resistance is, but it can be approximated for practical governance. Your design should leverage that approximation without pretending it is flawless.
• An algorithmic emission curve that declines algebraically at the start, then flatlines to a constant rate in perpetuity.
• A treasury funded by a steady stream of protocol revenue, whose ideal sole purpose is to buy and burn the native token.
• Reasonable bootstrap funding for pre-launch development and operational tooling, but an immaculate conception like Bitcoin is being attempted — the chain should be set free with some form of codified, built-in constitution.
• Protocol upgrades are completely handled through governance.
• A quasi-UBI-like property users benefit from embracing the protocol, scaled to local economies.
• Validators as agents who in aggregate are incentivized to operate the network reliably.
• Price context is embedded in the chain. That is, the protocol is aware of a critical KPI: it's own price level.

The Ask

Submit a written plan, optionally linking to mixed-media design. What primitives are needed? Why will it work? Why is it competitive, sustainable or even regenerative?

React to other written plans by commenting. Be harsh — this is your competition. Point out the problems. Feedback is critical. Tear them down. What are their weaknesses? Where do they fail?

Judge the best submission. We're counting on the integrity of the submitters to vote inline with the spirit of the competition.

Win $15K USD. The highest voted submission wins the prize. The community, wins ideas. Win-win.

Submission & Judging Guidance

Your design must solve protocol changes reliably.

Your design must be sustainable.

Your design should comprehensively avoid or mitigate issues associated with prior and popular art — token-weight-based governance, committees of experts, and the known failure modes that come with them.

Your design should attempt code-is-law techniques, handling protocol upgrades, but with nuance. Over-reliance on code-is-law creates barriers for non-technical stakeholders.

Why This Matters

If you've ever complained about governance for any reason, such as low turnout, plutocratic dynamics, committee capture, or proposal fatigue, here is your shot at declaring something better. No legacy constraints. No politics. Just a blank slate and a community of people who care enough to possibly build. Your design could heavily influence the launch of a new L1.

On the other side of this contest, we iterate on governance, together.

Instructions

Read about the contest at novo-origo.agora.xyz/info.

When

The contest will open April 8th 2026. It ends shortly after the 25th submission or April 29th 2026, which ever comes first.

How to Submit

You can submit and see other submissions here. Be sure to follow the rules.

How to Critique

Every qualified submission becomes a top-level forum, and submitters become critics first, then judges after. You can leave feedback in the forum on every idea. Be polite, but harsh. Feedback is a gift, and in the spirit of gov/acc.

How to Judge

Every participant becomes a judge too. Each submission earns 1 VP. Take a look at the info page for guidance, spirit & intent.

Follow @AgoraGovernance for announcement of when judging (voting) starts. Voting will happen on the Optimism chain.

Rules

Full contest rules can be found rules.