The August Finals are settled by the WaveWarZ-Base prediction-market protocol. Each finalist build becomes a battle entry. Wallets trade on which build wins. The smart contract settles placement on-chain at T+72h. Respect-holders get pre-funded baseline positions so the community has real market weight.
The original plan was a one-person-one-vote Respect ballot. Clean but abstract - a click is a low-commitment signal. A wallet putting money on a build is a different commitment entirely, and the market price aggregates a lot more information than a poll.
Switching to WaveWarZ-Base gives the Finals four things at once: a real economic signal for "would I actually use this build", mass participation (anyone with a Base wallet can trade, not just Respect-holders), built-in revenue for builders (1% trade cut flows forever), and a real launch event for the WaveWarZ-Base agentic build Sam (candytoybox) is shipping with Arthur (Neynar).
Full architectural decision in Doc 720. Cross-linked from Doc 701 Part 12.
Respect-eligible voter set snapshotted (~30-80 long-tenure DAO members). Finalist entries minted on WaveWarZ-Base - one battle per build, metadata = URL + repo + demo + handle. Respect-holders get pre-funded positions: each wakes up at T+0 with ~$2 USDC equivalent of shares, split evenly across all finalists.
Sealed prompt fires to every finalist. The WaveWarZ-Base battle entries open for trading. Respect-holders start with their baseline. Anyone with a Base wallet can buy in. Market trades on the build signal so far (early demos, public commits, stream quality).
Mentor embedded, finalists building in public, market trading on the unfolding builds. Streamers stream, watchers watch, traders position. The market is live the whole time.
The four submission requirements lock. Autonomous judge agents start running - they read each finalist's artifacts and emit scores via x402 micropayments. Their scores feed the market as a public signal.
ZAO accounts amplify each finalist on Farcaster, X, Telegram, the newsletter. Market trades on the combined signal of the builds + the judge-agent scores + the amplification reception.
No new builds, no new shipping. Just trading. Final 24h is where the market settles. Position prices reflect the market's best estimate of placement.
WaveWarZ-Base reads final volume + win rates. Distributes prize per protocol economics: 1% of total volume to each builder (artist cut, ongoing), losing-pool partial split feeds winning-pool, the $500 USDC pool maps to placement tiers (Doc 701 Part 5), Hats Protocol Finisher NFTs minted to every finalist, Champion NFTs to top 3. All on-chain in one settlement transaction. Live reveal stream announces the readout.
The market is open to anyone with a Base wallet, but Respect-holders are not just spectators. At T+0 every Respect-eligible address receives a pre-funded position - a baseline ~$2 USDC equivalent of shares split across all finalists. They can hold, redeploy, buy more, sell. This means the community vote has real market weight, not just rhetorical weight.
The tradeoff: the protocol is token-weighted by definition. A whale buying a big position skews more than a small one. The Respect baseline is the mitigation - the community has real (not just symbolic) presence in the market. If whale capture becomes a problem in practice, v2 adds a soft per-wallet cap.
Sam + Arthur lock the WaveWarZ-Base testnet contracts to a security-reviewed state. Arthur records a June workshop session on the smart contracts. The snapshot + airdrop mechanism for Respect-holder pre-funding gets spec'd with Iman + the ORDAO team.
WaveWarZ-Base on Base mainnet (post-audit). Smoke-test battle runs - one of the 8 adoptable projects becomes a fake finalist for end-to-end testing. Project #09 (Wire WaveWarZ-Base into the Finals surface) gets adopted by a July builder.
5-8 finalists, 30-80 Respect-holder pre-funded voters, market open for 72h, settlement on-chain at T+72h. The Finals becomes the V1 launch event for WaveWarZ-Base.
If WaveWarZ-Base is not mainnet-ready by August, the Finals revert to the original framing: Respect-earning members vote 1-person-1-vote (Snapshot or onchain), WaveWarZ on Solana runs as a parallel viewer-signal a la Doc 646's Clanker mechanic. Same prize tier, same collectibles, same recognition - just a different judging instrument.