Staking rewards as venture capital, governed by futarchy

Дата публикации: 17-09-2026 18:56:10

TL;DR: An ETH-native VC DAO that turns staking rewards into venture capital, with investments chosen by futarchy and judged against real outcomes. Think Lido-style staking: principal stays staked, chosen rewards buy venture-vault shares. Shareholders risk those shares in prediction markets that choose investments. Funded projects’ results move shares from wrong forecasts to right ones and build a public reputation for judgement. The ambition is to outperform conventional VC by drawing on Ethereum’s builders and operators to find, judge and support ventures, while changing the risk-reward profile of staking and growing the value and use of ETH.
RawVentures is the working name. This is an early proposal.
Turn staking rewards into venture capital
The starting point is Lido-style staking, with a proposed integration that routes a chosen share of future rewards into an Ethereum venture vault. Those rewards buy portfolio shares as they arrive. Your staking principal stays staked, outside the venture vault.
Suppose 100 ETH is staked and earns 3 ETH in net rewards. Its holder routes half the rewards to RawVentures. The holder keeps or compounds 1.5 ETH, and the other 1.5 ETH buys vault shares. Those shares represent ownership of the venture portfolio and a claim on its returns.
This changes the chosen rewards’ risk–reward profile. Instead of keeping or compounding all the income from staking, the holder uses part of it to pursue venture returns. That capital could remain illiquid for years or be lost; vault shares would not offer redemption on demand. The underlying staking position retains its own risks.
For the vault, voluntary reward routing could provide recurring investment capital. Routing 1% of Ethereum’s estimated annual staking rewards would supply roughly 10,800 ETH—about $27 million a year at the 17 September 2026 snapshot.
Direct ETH contributions could buy the same portfolio shares. The aim is to earn strong returns for the vault while backing ventures that increase the value and use of ETH.
Futarchy chooses investments. Outcomes build reputation
Vault shareholders use prediction markets to choose what RawVentures funds. Their own vault shares are at risk if they are wrong. We call this Reputational Futarchy: the market chooses the investment, then actual outcomes settle the forecasts and build a record of who was right.
MetaDAO is a useful reference: its decision markets compare conditional token prices. RawVentures instead proposes markets settled against declared project outcomes after funding.
Consider an Ethereum settlement business seeking 100 ETH and help reaching customers, offering the vault a revenue share in return. Shareholders forecast the return on that investment and milestones that would help assess the business’s prospects. For example:
If funded on these terms, will three independent enterprise customers use the product in production for 90 consecutive days within the next year?
The proposal sets the deal terms, forecast questions, deadlines and evidence before trading. Forecasts could also examine the ETH demand generated by customer activity: the business could earn revenue for the vault while its customers create recurring economic use for ETH.
Shareholders back their forecasts with existing vault shares. A selection rule uses those positions to choose between proposals: fund Project A, Project B, both or neither, subject to available capital and portfolio limits. Larger holdings matter only when more shares are risked; passive ownership carries no vote. The exact market format and selection rule still need to be designed.
If the business is funded, the committed shares remain locked until the agreed outcomes can be checked. An illustrative settlement for the customer forecast:
Your position
Customer target met
Customer target missed
YES
Gain shares from incorrect NO positions
Lose committed shares
NO
Lose committed shares
Gain shares from incorrect YES positions
Payouts follow the agreed rule and redistribute existing committed shares; they create no new shares or dilution for passive holders.
Separately, revenue paid by the business accrues to the vault and benefits the portfolio. Forecast winnings and investment returns are distinct: a correct customer forecast can earn shares even if the investment ultimately loses money.
The same evidence builds a public record of who forecast what and how it turned out. Across funded investments, that could help people recognise useful judgement and decide whose analysis deserves attention. Reputation starts as a track record, without extra market weight or authority. Getting a forecast right is evidence about that judgement, not proof that the investment was the best available choice.
Positions on proposals that are not funded unlock without outcome payouts or accuracy records. We have not observed what those projects would have achieved with the proposed funding.
Why this could be a better investor
The opportunity is to build an investor owned by people who know and use the ecosystem it invests in.
Builders and operators close to Ethereum can recognise promising work, introduce teams and judge what founders need. The vault gives contributors shared ownership of the portfolio they help source and support. They have a financial interest in bringing good opportunities to the network and helping those ventures succeed.
RawVentures competes as an Ethereum specialist: capital plus technical review and practical help from people who understand the protocol. That could include protocol introductions and help reaching customers. The ambition is to become a preferred source of capital for strong founders. Earning that preference could give the vault access to investments it would otherwise miss. Successful founders could then introduce further projects, talent and operating knowledge.
Recurring rewards could give that network a continuing source of capital to invest. Within it, futarchy puts additional financial consequences behind individual investment judgements, and public forecasting records make those judgements easier to assess. The bet is that this combination can improve both which investments the vault secures and what it does with them.
The investment-performance test is better risk-adjusted ETH-denominated returns after costs than conventional VC. The wider ambition is to back ventures that strengthen ETH’s economic use. Good forecasting alone would not establish an investment advantage.
Developing the idea
The next work is to design and test the reward route, markets and evidence process. Open questions include pricing new contributions into an illiquid portfolio, making informed forecasting worthwhile while resisting manipulation, and verifying project outcomes independently of those with money riding on them.
The combination also has to justify its costs and long forecast lock-ups against a simpler fund with expert allocation and advisory forecasts. We need to learn whether stakers want this exposure and whether founders value the capital and support enough to choose it.
I’d like to hear what you make of the idea, and from anyone interested in helping develop it. Useful introductions welcome.

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