According to God of Prompt on X (citing a MIPT experiment), the coordination protocol in multi‑agent systems explains 44% of outcome quality versus 14% for model choice across 25,000 tasks and 20,810 configurations, with Sequential coordination outperforming role‑based setups by up to 44% in quality (Cohen's d = 1.86). As reported by the X thread, the best protocol gives agents a mission and fixed processing order without predefined roles; agents self‑assign, abstain when unhelpful, and form shallow hierarchies, improving resilience and specialization. According to the same source, Sequential coordination delivered +44% quality vs Shared and +14% vs Coordinator across Claude Sonnet 4.6, DeepSeek v3.2, and GLM‑5, while scaling from 64 to 256 agents showed no significant quality change (p = 0.61) and low cost growth from 8 to 64 agents (11.8%). As reported by the thread, DeepSeek v3.2 achieved ~95% of Claude’s quality at ~24x lower API cost, and capability thresholds matter: stronger models benefit from self‑organization (Claude Sonnet 4.6), while weaker ones (GLM‑5) perform better with rigid roles. Business takeaway: prioritize protocol design (Sequential) and cost‑effective capable models to maximize multi‑agent ROI, enable dynamic specialization, and improve shock resilience.