Purpose of the experiments is to verify the theories of prediction markets and futarchy. Ethereum Dev Grant attributed to Gnosis.pm. See Gnosis announcement.
Launch a prediction market on "what will the output of this smart contract be on Mar 30, 2016?". The contract will be simply and verifiably coded to output 5. Launch a separate smart contract where some specific set of users is rewarded if the average market price exceeds 5; the more it exceeds 5 the higher their reward. This encourages them to try to manipulate the market upwards. See how well the market manages to keep the price close to 5.