the forever problem of governance is that high quality governance is hard and painful (a lot of effort, skill, and brain damage involved) and as a result is in short supply.
companies solve this by allowing concentration of ownership and financial outcomes (large shareholders are motivated to elect the right management and go through the brain damage of corporate governance b/c they get the bulk of the financial outcome).
this doesn't quite work for nouns b/c culturally we reject the idea of a single person (or a few people) controlling the nouns treasury spending decision unilaterally and their motivation overwhelmingly being driven by personal financial profit.
that's reasonable imo. we would reject such a thing for our local city governance as well (nouns is more like a city than a company imo). but for city governance there's a degree of civic duty and lock in. when governance devolves too much (SF recently where I live), living conditions becomes unbearable and while many ppl leave (many tech ppl went to miami etc) at some point ppl like garry tan (who grew up on SF) that are never going to leave b/c it's their home and where their livelihood is built just start taking ownership b/c there's no other choice. city revenue is also raised through taxes. dues are collected from everyone and spent for everyone (though applied progressively) and it's forced.
i don't quite know how nouns governance is supposed to work long term. governance is hard and painful. you can't take over enough control of the governance to substantially privatize the financial gain b/c that would nuke the project. ppl aren't locked in and revenue isn't forced. i get why nouns could be a city ppl might love to live in. but would anyone pay to be involved in governance (something that is inherently hard and painful)?
i don't know the answer to this question. but what i do know is that any answer involves creating more leverage to ppl providing the scarce good governance. maybe they like nerding out about nouns. maybe they spent enough years and benefitted from nouns in one way or another and feel a sense of civic duty. maybe they are a nouns business and have some aligned financial incentive even if not a controlling amount. we need to take that which is given to us and SOMEHOW leverage that to govern the whole system effectively. prop house (token voting, gardeners, farcaster likes) attempted that but wasn't enough of an answer on its own. AI seems to be the only plausible new frontier to create leverage. if somehow we can determine who's providing the scarce good governance and train AI models to act on those inputs with infinite patience and attention, then maybe we have a chance. this seems to be where vitalik's thinking is going with regards to open source (public goods) funding as well.
another frontier is to reintroduce market mechanisms to aid portions of the governance decisions ("futarchy" is a buzz word ppl talk about which allows you to buy and sell each prop / governance decision). TCRs? revnets? to be honest i'm generally a bit more skeptical about this direction b/c i don't know if market mechanisms are really well suited for public funding decisions (so many pitfalls) but i do think it's a genuine additional frontier that we admittedly haven't explored much
this ended up being a super long rant but all of this is to say, i don't know the ins and outs of what's going on here but directionally i think it's exploring a super important meta problem of governance for nouns and given there aren't any projects more promising in this realm (and we're lucky to have someone as talented and earnest as rocketman leading it) i just think we need to let him cook
trying to add weight on the other side and normalize voting FOR canceling a stream. have we ever cancelled a stream? (probably did but not anything remotely ambiguous or consequential is my guess). this is my criticism of the view that streams are a big fix towards accountability. we almost never cancel
them and anyone raising the possibility of doing so gets so much hate and criticism that you’d be crazy to raise the thought publicly unless the team has completely abandoned the project. i don’t know all the details here but feel comfortable voting for cancelling since i’ve always been consistently skeptical of the execution with this team. there’s always a trend of communication and engagement flaring up around proposal time and the execution and results feeling shallow or self serving from my eyes. that’s just me though and admittedly i’m not as close to the dao these days as i used to be.
+1
> Signaling support for the team trying to come up with a model that makes sense for Nouns to support.
>
> +1
>
> > Having teams ship individually seems like the best path forward for esports. The Counter-Strike community has never been more engaged with Nouns. Not just because they’re asking for funding, but because they’re now fully accountable for putting in the work to pass the proposal. This added responsibility has brought them closer to the DAO than ever before.
> >
> > On top of that, the opportunity for the DAO to generate revenue under DUNA would be groundbreaking. I think it’s definitely worth another shot.
synthesis of these views is that i’m happy to move forward with index here though in the future would favor a more wide funneled election process
+1
> Index is a great fit for this position and I have full faith in him as the Compliance Admin to take us through this initial year.
+1
> Abstaining from all Administrator props in favor of a Round for Nouns holders. It’s hard to compare proposals when they are separate props posted at different times.
>
> We should set a strong precedent for elections by having them be a well-defined field of candidates in the same election cycle.
+1
> "Are we having a North Korea style election running now?"
>
> This feels like a serious mischaracterization of the situation. If anything, the current Foundation structure represents an unelected dictatorship, while the process of dunification is a transition to something significantly more democratic. As we've explained many times during the Nouncil meetings where we've been providing regular updates, it's urgent that we make this transition, and the choice to 'hand pick' an initial administrator is a practical one that will let us accomplish dunification faster and more efficiently. Per section 2.1(b) of the DUNA Bylaws, the DAO can change out the administrator whenever it wants by simply passing a proposal to do so.
my reasons for voting against remain the same. NNS as a protocol has very little adoption and usage. the previous prop delivered little against that goal. doesn’t warrant another $400k investment imo.
this prop feels off to me. it's in name about NNS labs and the work behind NNS. a naming protocol that has very little users. the eth revenue it delivers back to the dao is also very nominal again because it has very little usage. for the last two years we've funded the team PRIMARILY to build the NNS product into something ppl adopt and use. by that gauge the execution of the past year has been very poor with most of it being distracted with launching $NOGS the memecoin.
i was a bit upset with the $NOGS launch b/c in its announcement it had tag lines like "funded by nouns dao" which felt off to me b/c we've always funded NNS. $NOGS was initially some non transferable points system then some sort of utility token to incentivize NNS adoption then now a full memecoin on its own. it has its own twitter account (https://x.com/nogglescoin) separate from NNS.
i mean, it's a permissionless system and we can't stop prop builders from launching memecoins and associating themselves with nouns so okay maybe we live with that. but somehow the memecoin is being used to justify the past year's NNS execution as a success and then the team is coming back for nouns to fund a $500k development budget for NNS, again a naming project that isn't being used much and didn't really deliver much on its adoption and usage this year despite all the speculative attention the project gained by launching a memecoin?
and somehow this prop is being framed as like this virtuous savior of nouns dao's financial sustainability as the only prop that can really deliver value back to nouns? why? because of the $150k $NOGs we have that could pump if we pass this prop? again the naming protocol itself is not delivering much any ETH to the dao.
also... like this team launched a token. 10% supply went to the team. 10% kept for ecosystem funding. it just... doesn't make sense to me. $NOGS was intended at least loosely at the beginning to have some sort of association to NNS and some incentive for its adoption and its maintenance. somehow $NOGS is most of what this NNS prop is talking about as like its success and what it delivered but somehow for the actual funding of NNS it's not used and we're asked to front the entire bill.
i'm getting worked up writing this VWR so will stop here but honestly i don't think this is where we should be funding another $500k.
one way of looking at this prop is that it's trying its best to adopt to nouns' treasury and the learnings of the nouns esports org over the years. we spent $2M on nouns esports in 2024. we ran two fairly expensive professional esports teams in dota and counter strike and while they were both valiant efforts they didn't get to a level of success where tournament winnings, in-game sales, or sponsorships generated enough income to sustain them (i consider the $250k sponsorship from matcha an impressive bit of revenue but it falls way short of the $2M spend). if they came back with a $2M budget (or $1.8M budget assuming sponsorship can continue) would we have been willing to run it back for 2025? it would have been about 14% of our total treasury (instead of 6% with this prop) and 56% of our 1Y inflow projection (instead of 24%). i haven't had the chance to catch up with the team since nounsfest in LA when they hadn't finalized some of the decisions here so i don't know exactly the thinking that went into this shift in the prop but i imagine their guess was that the $2M prop would fail. i suspect that guess isn't wrong since it just is objectively hard for us to keep funding the same dollar amount prop when the auction revenue is much lower and the prop itself can't achieve more revenue on its own over time. another aspect of thinking that likely went into the prop (which i did have the chance to hear from sam / peter / sasquatch at nounsfest) is just the feeling that the nouns esports model might work better for a more grassroots community like smash than for a professionalized esports league like dota or CS where competing teams are being funded by different financial incentives (e.g. saudi wanting an esports league in their country and can pour in money to top teams) that we can't quite compete with. they want to double down in the more real and genuine engagement they can find in more niche communities like smash and onboard them to onchain tools and unique community distribution they are building. so in some meaningful ways the above make sense and is a good adoption (cutting budget by 60%. narrowing focus to what they think is better/unique engagement).
i think the other side is like the prior year's bet (2024 prop) was more like a high risk / high return bet. there was a chance the teams could win big in these professional leagues where prizes are meaningful. in those contexts of winning big more sponsorships could have been possible too. there was a chance auction revenue could have kept being where it was or could have moved much higher too. my point here is that it was a different type of bet (could a nouns dota / cs team against all odds win big and shock the world? it already did the prior year by the dota team making 7th place in the international. it felt right to see if with another year the team could go even further). this prop is a different prop. it's not going for winning in pro leagues or getting big sponsorships. it's more like smash is an incredible esports subculture that nouns can tap into and nouns should fund us to do that. i like the idea but does the spend feel proportional to the smash subculture's weight and importance in the overall nouns network? if nouns was a country would it choose to spend 25% of its yearly tax income in supporting the smash community's gaming tournaments? it's not an obvious yes to me.
and yet i'm choosing to vote yes here. i think amongst the nouns teams, esports has likely come the furthest. it swung for one of the biggest goals with the largest viewership. got the largest sponsorship. has a team that worked together for a decently long time now with its own sense of purpose and mission. built its own tools and community engagement mechanics tailored for its community. has a strong sense of its own branding. its not big enough to survive on its own but i do think there's seeds of something unique here. ultimately, we need to figure our how to grow auction revenue independent of this one spending. in the mean time 6% of treasury is something i can stomach. i don't think we should lose the esports team chasing down the idea maze here at this point. against the things we have in our opportunity set i feel good about betting on this team again and seeing where they can take us in 2025 (and seeing how far nouns itself can grow in the next year as well).
flows is one of the most meaningfully net new and ambitious capital allocation mechanism experiments we have had in a while and i’m excited to see it continue and grow. keep it up rocketman and team!
+1
> It pains me to vote against this cause I do really miss seeing Nouns Amigos on chain, but agree with these- for 3 nouns I'd prefer a delegate system instead of just handing them out, even with the voting record already shown.
>
> If the wait for that is too long, I'd probably vote For a single noun based on the history and the people involved, prove the experiment with more recent on-chain voting (a lot can happen in 6 months) and build up to 3.
>
> +1
>
> > Until we have better sub-delegation tools (allowing the DAO to retain custody while another party can re-delegate the votes) and simultaneously a fix for the bug that allows bricking a Noun with delegation (https://mirror.xyz/verbsteam.eth/TP917T6vm6gXuVAxbQ34ZCn7dNiHabu3UW-ninwalVc) —both coming soon!— it’s best to not transfer Nouns out and instead find alternate ways to achieve the same governance experiments.
> >
> > +1
> >
> > > I think you should try getting delegations from existing holder rather than getting Nouns directly. A campaign in Farcaster to attract holders could work
>
> +1
>
> > I agree. Would love to see delegation from the treasury enabled before experiments like this. And when proven effective, reward nouns as retro maybe. I think there'd be multiple metagov groups that would be deserving of nouns too.
> >
> > +1
> >
> > > Until we have better sub-delegation tools (allowing the DAO to retain custody while another party can re-delegate the votes) and simultaneously a fix for the bug that allows bricking a Noun with delegation (https://mirror.xyz/verbsteam.eth/TP917T6vm6gXuVAxbQ34ZCn7dNiHabu3UW-ninwalVc) —both coming soon!— it’s best to not transfer Nouns out and instead find alternate ways to achieve the same governance experiments.
> > >
> > > +1
> > >
> > > > I think you should try getting delegations from existing holder rather than getting Nouns directly. A campaign in Farcaster to attract holders could work
>
> +1
>
> > Love what you guys are doing with amigos. 3mo voting record is impressive but I am left wondering how many people made up the voting block on an average vote? Is that listed somewhere? I think thats important based on how many nouns are being requested.
> >
> > I'm all for delegation to sub-groups to experiment with voting and gifting nouns to sub-groups with track records of voting responsibly, a decent amount of pre-existing participants, and are expanding their voting block over time.. It feels like thats whats going on here with Amigos. Just want to make sure its more than a handful of amigos voting if the group is getting 3 nouns- otherwise maybe re-start the experiment a bit smaller with one noun.
+1
> more governance experiments! let's utilize these nouns in the treasury for good!!! ⌐◨-◨
>
> +1
>
> > I've loved interacting with /noc and it has become a fun part of my weekly schedule.
+1
> Generally i think Nouns is better off if people feel confident doing things on their own accord and, if the work is of high quality/see usage, can expect some form of retro compensation for their contributions. This is better than a world where no one is doing anything until after they receive a check (but ofc there is a spectrum here, both extremes might be undesirable).
>
> It shouldnt be too easy to get retro comped though, and it shouldnt be a hard expectation from the proposer. I think we really want to make sure the work adds to the nouns game/mythos in some way, be it redundancy, users, smiles, capital inflow, eyeballs, etc.
>
> Im glad that Nouns Terminal exists, thanks Yukigesho and winter!
i’m honestly a bit tired of defending my integrity against some sort of conspiracy claim about $nouns. what is this “intentional subversion of the governance process”?
i’m not pushing for some new token bag of mine. i’m advocating for a fungible token backed by nouns. i’m not even saying $nouns should be the only fungible token backed by nouns. if we think they should vote then i’m down with that. if we think they should have art i’m down with that too. the reason $nouns is dead simple with no voting isn’t because i hate governance or art, it was bc ppl were so worried about regulatory risks that i was like okay let’s just try to get the most dumb simplest thing possible through. no extra features. no upgrade controls over the contract. just pure immutable code. but ppl were STILL too worried about regulatory risks that they didn’t want the dao to fund the audit or deploy the contract. but nouns isn’t just the dao. ppl can choose to deploy and extend nouns the way they want even if the dao doesn’t fund or deploy something and that’s what happened. i’m not saying “community deployed” means some special official thing. it literally means that the dao didn’t deploy it and someone from the community did.
nouns isn’t a world ruled by the majority voting of the dao. you can push for things you believe in. you can advocate for it even if you’re in the minority and that shouldn’t be criticized as some “subversion of the governance process”. it’s ironic bc i’m simultaneously criticized as being part of a cabal that gets my way AND someone that ignores voting bc i didn’t get my way. i’m just advocating for a vision of nouns i believe in and that world includes a erc20 backed by nouns.
you’re also trying to imply that the dao disapproved $nouns and approved $(noggles unicode). why do you think ppl that voted against $nouns for regulatory reasons would suddenly have no concerns for $(noggles)? they just didn’t vote for the $(noggles) audit prop rather than voting against and for that reason it didn’t hit quorum.
also this foundation director non sense… again what is the accusation? that i’m friends with krel? krel joined a foundation board meeting bc clearly he leads the development of the leading governance client and his input can be valuable. your beloved wag was also invited in all of the same meetings bc clearly one of the largest holder’s perspective is also valuable to have as input.
i’ve joined the foundation board as an independent dao member and never been paid or used the role for my own interests. it’s been a pure service role.
we can disagree on things but this type of endless public slander makes it really hard to engage with nouns with joy
+1
> I'm supportive of the Park but find it inappropriate to gift Nouns to groups who have plans to put forward props. agreed with others re: the voting record of only Fors with ⌐◨-◨ as the VWR and previous gifted Noun delegations not producing desireable results
>
> on the topic of $nouns: the narrative is pushed that it was community deployed.
>
> after being defeated in the (admittedly plutocratic) proposal process -with another token's development succeeding the proposal process- a Foundation Director encouraged it to be released anyways: https://warpcast.com/noun40/0x4d265aab
>
> then a long-term DAO member who has been invited to Foundation meetings and been visited at his home by the Foundation Director released it in an non-upgradeable form: https://warpcast.com/noun40/0xd416bc20 & tagged the Director when asked technical questions about the token: https://warpcast.com/krel/0x2cd4850a
>
> in light of the facts at hand supporting backroom engineering by individuals with significant influence over the DAO, framing this release as "community deployed" seems wholly disingenuous, and an intentional subversion of our governance process.
>
> after allowing the token to languish for months and the core thesis of "price will go up" not playing out, the Foundation Director is now encouraging Nouns projects to support the token, and despite some of them having reservations, they are considering it in the hopes it will secure votes for their proposals.
>
> soft power coercion and subversion of the governance process fundamentally undermines the view of Nouns as an experiment in society-building, unless that vision includes unaccountable tyranny by a few, which would also fundamentally undermine the core promise on nouns.wtf of Nouns as a community-owned brand
>
> I hope DAO members will recognize that while crypto is a fundamentally permission-less space, just because we can doesn't always mean we should. please consider not going along to get along, and preserving the sanctity of our governance process
@0x3Cbd...8637
imo it really is NOT about having noggles show up or not in artwork. it’s much more about the two communities cross pollinating. are nouns fans falling in love with the glitch community and the art and technology coming out of that world? are glitch fans falling in love with nouns or different pockets of nouns? (for example coming to nouns town / film festival, rooting for our esports team, testing out how to use new tech like flows.wtf or rounds.wtf and giving feedback, etc). the real test of whether there’s a fit between nouns and a subculture is if after funding you see a real bridge being built between the two communities by a contingent of ppl becoming fans of both worlds and the two worlds merging and expanding each other. i think the crux of what most ppl are feeling is that such a merging and expanding didn’t quite happen. that could just be that the right exposures didn’t happen post funding last year. it could also be that the two communities aren’t a great fit. but i think there’s a pretty low ceiling as to how much we can fund when the relationship is more of a one way funding one (that’s like pure philanthropy/ patronage) and a much higher ceiling if nouns folks felt glitch was fully part of our world and vice versa. love what glitch is doing and hope we can see a smaller funding ask where we can prove out a better fit and hope we can merge and expand our worlds together in the future!
>
>
> Hey all, the team appreciates the excellent feedback. Very helpful points in the VWRs. I always vote abstain for any prop that I am close to, and I’ll do so here as well. Here are my personal thoughts:
> How Nouns interacts with artists will look different from how Nouns interacts with other subcultures. This is because the inclusion of assets such as Noggles may fundamentally change an artist’s message in a way that is different from other subcultures, such as esports or skateboarding.
>
> We didn’t want to place constraints on the artists that we worked with via Glitch. Instead, we wanted to give them creative freedom in carrying forward their Nounish values, which is one of the most unique assets that we can offer. They came up with many incredible works, some of which won funding via Prop House: https://prop.house/0xd7744ae5e63d702e3e9f437943e530fae6c0cb4f
>
> I hear the concerns about more Nounish imagery. Taking a look at the funded works, it’s not obvious how Noggles could be included without changing the message. How do you add Noggles to an ethereal lighting array in a forest that generates abstract images of trees to highlight regenerative ecosystems? Or to performance art about privacy and the human body, or cutting-edge AI generated art where the artist has limited control over the outputs? Some of them would be able to easily support Noggles (e.g. Aminals, which has a variety of generated traits), but a number would not. This looks different from other subcultures, where the Nounish media is the message. Instead, in this case, the Nounish values are the message.
>
> We chose to prioritize giving artists the freedom to create in a way that matched their values over mandating the incorporation of Nounish imagery. Mandating specific imagery would effectively change the works from independent art to a commission with a specific goal. Commissions are wonderful, and Nouns would benefit from more interpretations of Nounish imagery, but it was not the goal of the grant.
>
> These values — privacy, regenerative ecosystems, bleeding edge technology — are undeniably Nounish. I can think of multiple Nouns props in each category that have passed resoundingly. As a result, it feels like there’s a disconnect between Nounish values and Nounish imagery. Something that has Nounish values is Nounish, whether or not it includes Noggles. We wanted to give the artists exposure to these Nounish values, and showed them Prop House and Droposals to help them see the way the DAO worked. They also participated in governance by voting on the Prop House. For many of them, it was one of the few times when they had full creative freedom in a grants process, and offered far more flexibility than a commission that mandated specific imagery. In the process, they came away with an understanding that the values that they already hold align with Nouns as well.
>
> I see that we missed the mark on cross-pollination between the artists and Nouns. Some excellent points came out of this proposal:
> 1. More art should include Nounish imagery. Nounish values are important too, but the imagery is needed to tie the values back to Nouns. Without that, it could have been funded by anyone, and doesn't feel uniquely Nouns.
> 2. Glitch should be more involved in Nouns governance. That will help the DAO see Glitch’s perspective on Nounish values.
> 3. Glitch shouldn’t interact with Nouns in once-a-year prop cycles and some Propdates. Glitch should be present in the conversation day-to-day as a subculture that represents values important to Nouns.
>
> We’re talking about ways to address this and help link Glitch’s Nounish values to Nouns in a deeper way. Thank you for the excellent feedback — it’s very helpful and gives us great points to work with!
>
(continued from the previous vwr...)
i also just want to say that outside of the nothing nowhere entityless approach, DUNA is in my view one of the most cypherpunk legal entities we can choose. it allows the members to be anonymous (privacy for token holders). this alone already most legal entities where members have explicit rights are ruled out on. c-crops, LLCs, traditional non profits, etc all don't work. i would have personally rejected a legal entity where all DAO members would have to dox themselves. it also allows every token holder to have explicit voting rights as members of the nonprofit unincorporated association and their voting explicitly mean something that is incorporated in the bylaws of the entity. most other entity ideas i've heard reduce voting into a signaling exercise. the legal entity is not legally required honor the results of the vote. in DUNA token holders have explicit legally binding voting rights. if DUNA like many other legal entities reduced token voting to a snapshot like signaling exercise then i would have rejected that idea as well. DUNA allows our members to continue to be anonymous while their votes have explicit legal strength. it's pretty onchain maxi of us to insist on these properties. also this is one of the main answers to the "why now?" question. DUNA is something that just this year became possible.
of course it's not cypherpunk to introduce KYC to grant recipients. but this aspect is not even really related to the DUNA. it's not a DUNA specific thing or a US specific thing either. we're likely overdue on having this process in place and DUNA's explicit requirement around it is accelerating its introduction. the Ethereum Foundation has a KYC process. Arbitrum DAO has a KYC process. Optimism's token house grants have a KYC process. we just live in a world where giving out tens of millions of dollars in grant funding without collecting information about the recipients is not quite acceptable from a global financial regulation perspective. automatic payouts like bitcoin mining rewards, ethereum staking rewards, uniswap LP rewards are different. with those the protocol designer can credibly say that they are not directing funds in any particular way besides how it was transparently designed in the code. but a grant approval process where a small number of ppl can direct funds to specific recipients (like in the case of nouns where a small number of large voting bodies can pass a prop for someone to get funding) is different. there is legitimately more money laundering concerns associated with that type of activity and at our scale (we've given our $50m+) it's not quite tenable to say we're small and just haven't put together a process yet. i agree it's a hit to our cypherpunk ethos and a burden / overhead that we need to take on (i imagine us having something similar to [this](https://kyc.optimism.io/) that optimism has) but to me this one i don't really blame on DUNA b/c it's not really a unique to DUNA requirement and more of us catching up to the requirements of our scale of ambition and funding. however this is an aspect that gives me the most amount of heartburn in this proposed transition and i'd love to explore more nuances to our approach. can we only KYC grantees for certain sizes of funding rather than all recipients? can we take other social / onchain proofs instead of traditional KYC docs? we don't have good answers to these questions yet but i'd be very much in support of exploring them more thoroughly.
also there's a sense that this is all rushed and has been poorly communicated and i regret that. there's some efficiencies to having this all transition before year end but it's not a hard requirement imo and we could have taken it more slowly. also i was probably the best person to be the most communicative on farcaster and i've just been a bit drained... bitwise work being high demand + most of my nouns energy going to the foundation meetings / calls around DUNA considerations. i try to bring my best energy to nouns but it's been a bit tough last few months and i haven't had the energy/time to write out the above in full or reply to individual casts. 4156 tried his best (blog post, nouncil call, nouns town Q&A, TNS podcast interview, etc) but he's never been a strong reply guy and this community feeling likely moreso falls on me for not being a active communicator the past few months. happy to field more questions tho even after this prop passes. thanks for reading all of this!
lilfrog had [this cast](https://warpcast.com/frog/0xb079c3bd) the other day saying that wag, me, and 4156 voting in favor would push this prop through and i've been mulling on it since. there's an underlying tone of resentment around the fact that the three largest voting bodies are all supporting this prop. in the vwrs there's also a lot of similar resentment and added speculation around our motives, so let me try to lay out the situation as i see it in more plain english.
why on earth is the largest holder, the largest delegate, and the most prominent founder the ones that are the most worried about liability from the project? you don't need an elaborate theory to understand why. it's because OBVIOUSLY we're the most likely ppl that would be served. the IRS can think we haven't paid taxes for NFTs we sold. the SEC can think we have issued unregistered securities. FINCEN can think that we are in violation of of the AML laws by not KYC-ing grantees that we're paying out millions of dollars. Any disgruntled DAO member(s) that's not happy about a protocol change can sue us for negligence or harm (we've experienced threats of this btw).
is it really that crazy that we are the ones most motivated and interested in creating a stronger legal entity that is capable of handling those inquiries and having the legal/jurisdictional basis of responses to be more solid what we have with the cayman foundation? (i explained a bit more about why i think some of our current arguments around these issues are tenuous [here]( https://warpcast.com/noun40/0x6eb6498b))
there is often a desire to say "well, the DAO is just software and it's entityless so it can't be sued. so why the worry?" i think of wilson's cast here as expressing a [similar view](https://warpcast.com/wilsoncusack/0x79df5a9f)("Bitcoin doesn’t need a legal entity. Why do we?"). i think this is misinformed. first off, maintiners of bitcoin core have actually been sued (most notably by CSW) and many stepped away from their maintainer role for this reason (b/c the lawsuits were hell and they couldn't handle the brain damage and potential personal financial ruin). secondly, in the case of a completely automated protocol like bitcoin then the liability is more limited for node runners. they didn't really make any concrete decisions besides deciding to run the code someone else wrote. which is why the lawsuits have centered around open source devs that write and have the ability to merge in code. nouns voters don't have that luxury. we are actively making concrete manual decisions on each prop. if a regulatory body or a member of the dao is not happy with the actions or consequences of the dao then they could absolutely pursue an enforcement or law suit and you don't get to say i don't think i have any responsibility here as far as i understand it.
when nouns started DAOs were so new and at the time a fair amount of this was open to debate. but it's become more apparent that daos will be held liable (and their members individually in the absence of an entity that provides limited liability). a notable case is the [california district court ruling](https://www.blockchainandthelaw.com/2023/04/dao-deemed-general-partnership-in-negligence-suit-over-crypto-hack-prompting-decentralized-orgs-to-rethink-corporate-formation/) that the bZx DAO could be deemed a general partnership and that the members were jointly and severally liable for losses related to a hack. [CFTC's enforcement action](https://www.proskauer.com/blog/from-code-to-consequence-cftc-obtains-default-judgment-against-ooki-dao-for-commodity-exchange-act-violations) landed for the same DAO arguing that the Ookie DAO (renaming from bZx DAO) was in violation of the commodity exchange act.
you might say the existing cayman foundation could handle these lawsuits and enforcement actions. can it? how could the foundation assume full responsibility? just b/c it was funded by the DAO for setup and because it has veto power? it's quite easy to argue that the DAO is a separate entity from the foundation (wilson is literally arguing this) and that the DAO and its members should be responsible for its own actions.
if we get a class action law suit from members or an enforcement action from a regulatory agency and i am named as one of the defendants i want certainty that i can say "this is wrong. i am a member of this entity. the entity is responsible and you should bring the matter to the entity" and know with reasonable certainty that most courts would honor that redirection b/c it is a claim that's well substantiated. in other words the DAO needs to be something somewhere. nothing nowhere is not tenable imo for providing limited liability protection to its members.
of course you can disagree with me on if the current setup is tenable or not. i also want to recognize that the incentives are also likely not the same. as i said at the top, the largest known holder, the largest delegate, the most prominent founder are likely the ppl to be sued or held liable of any responsibility that the foundation cannot assume, not every individual voter (practically speaking). you might think i'm selfish or braindead. but personally i have to advocate for a version of nouns that i can continue to be an active participant in. i also think this is a the good thing for the DAO. i hold only two nouns (rest of voting power delegated is from zora and others). i'm an independent board member on the foundation. if i thought this was the founders' risk aversion being overly expressed i would speak up and disagree. if i thought this was just large holder bag holding financial self-interest then i would speak up and disagree. i don't think this is that.
(continued in the next signal vote comment since i ran out of vwr space)
if this doesn't pass i hope we can pass a smaller USDC amount prop that doesn't anchor on the amount that has been spent out of pocket but on the out performance and dedication that klim has had in executing his props over the years
also thank you chris for putting this prop up. retro props are good imo. ppl should be able to do great things for nouns and get rewarded for it (ofc it shouldn't be like the person is OWED retro funding but we should have a culture where it's possible). for that retro culture to work there has to be ppl that put in the energy and effort to recognize the great selfless work of others. it's a lot of work to put up a prop like this (the prop writing, dealing with questions and criticisms, etc) with nothing in return. i personally thought of writing a retro prop for klim multiple times and shied away for those reasons.
a struggle i've had in my communication with klim over the years have been that klim would message me about a thing he thinks we should do (e.g. we should be at designercon) and i would say "put up a prop for it and it will likely pass!" and for one reason or another it wouldn't happen and klim would still go do the thing self-funded and i've felt a bit torn about that.
the yes vote here is not to indicate that we'll pay back whatever expense someone incurred in their own volition in support of nouns. but rather a yes vote recognizing the ways klim has gone above and beyond in ways i've followed over the years and wanting to highlight that
if this prop doesn’t pass i would focus on what is needed to keep the tabletop community going (i imagine the events and tournaments portion is what’s critical?) and see if there’s a version of this that could work without the big software / admin costs. i’m supportive of onchain elos and stuff but what’s more important to me is that there’s growing and sustaining community that are playing and competing even if some of the software stuff is sub optimal. if the community grows and the overlap of community with existing nouns fan base grows and we feel good about nouns sponsoring all of this then i’d imagine there’d be more appetite by the community to fund the platform at a larger scale as well
+1
> I appreciate ISpeakNerd taking in feedback from his first proposal and making significant changes to this current proposal. I think its important that Nouns continues to fund subcultures that exist even without Nouns financial support, allowing Nouns to be a complimentary pairing vs just a source of funding. Also, while I wasn't able to play the camel game at Nouns Town, it was great seeing the table have a constant rotation of players.
+1
> https://warpcast.com/krel/0x5c789b1a
retro funding building tools that actually extended nouns gov and were used and maintained for a prolonged period of time feels natural and good to me.
also clarifying that “sunset” is just a meme by the proposer and not literal it seems (appreciate the jest but maybe prop titles shouldn’t include incorrect information… 😅) so excited to see where index continues to take either ZW or any other experiments he’s cooking up in nouns
+1
> index started this after seeing people vote with zero weight (literally no vote signals), and he started to "throw" weight behind us and our votes... Thank you index. He was also the first person to delegate to me to let me experience nouns governance, when I thought I'd never be able to afford a noun... He's selfless and seems like he will never propose for himself, so run it~ 100% a FOR. Index will likely keep creating positive externalities for nouns, forever. Thanks for all you do for nouns, index <3
+1
> This was a useful experiment that brought additional attention from outside nouns and should be rewarded. BUT I’m annoyed that Index didn’t put a prop up himself as he knows from the many “wen prop?” messages over the past year.
+1
> I generally agree with peters view here but also feel ok backing tagawa regardless. If this doesnt pass, i would consider taking peters advice to heart more directly in order to find a path forward where the dao can continue to fund your wonderful output. Thank you!
>
> +1
>
> > i don't understand why this prop and others before it include trips to the United States. I'd prefer you define success and pursue it within your local communities at a decreased cost.
> >
> > reduce workshop logistic costs, remove farcaster interactive digital gallery, reduce marketing & distribution, reduce travel & accomodation.
seems like ppl are using probe given the vwrs and auction wins. don’t know if dream will be used a lot but in general supportive of funding a team a modest amount to build upon an art exploration / auction client that ppl use
+1
> Excited to finally correct the backpack and fax errors. Thanks for making it possible dot!
>
> +1
>
> > @0xC7CC...7d87
> >
> > Thanks zebra.
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > Asking a voting majority to change purchased art on the buyer isn’t the way.
> > >
> > > Fix the mistaken art by artists in recent additions but leave alone the history.
> > >
> > >
> >
> > No super strong opinion here, but i think the first 3 (backpack, fax, film) are more clearly unintended mistakes that we should fix (and we've patched similar mistakes in the past).
> >
> > The text trait however is not as obviously a flaw (even if originally unintended) and i can see people being upset about this change.
+1
> @0xC7CC...7d87
>
> I could be mistaken but it doesn't seem trivial to only upgrade future nouns, I think you'd need a second art contract? Also, I think theres a valid framing where you consider a noun not as a static piece of art, but as something capable of changing. Imo this is cool but could see others disagreeing
>
> >
> >
> > Asking a voting majority to change purchased art on the buyer isn’t the way.
> >
> > Fix the mistaken art by artists in recent additions but leave alone the history.
> >
> >
>
> thanks dot
i'm struggling a little bit here. david had the trust of the dao and a real engagement with nouns for a while (last updates here: https://discourse.nouns.wtf/t/david-horvath-nouns-studio-1-extension/1113) but i'm not sure what happened of nouns studio 1. there was a lot of effort put into the sofubi, what happened there? why didn't we continue with the momentum we had back in 2022?
but still, where i shake out on the prop is similar to lilfrog. if we want to explore this category, there's probably no one better suited than david. he's is a long time hard core fan of nouns and an expert in the field of character brand development. excited to see where this can go.
+1
> Since joining this community I've struggled to articulate _what_ nouns should be aiming for as a vision for the future. What _is_ nouns? What are the goals? What does success look like? I still don't have any answers.
>
> At first, I was a bit put off by this prop. I don't think I'm the consumer segment that is typically interested in character brands, and I'm typically not a big fan of nounish consumer goods as an investment category.
>
> That said, I've been following everything David has put out regarding this prop on nouncil discord, warpcast, twitter. I'm convinced that he knows this industry extremely well, understands nouns, and would be our best bet at succeeding in making nouns a character brand if this is something we wanted to pursue.
>
> So, what should nouns be aiming to become? What would success look like? I'm not sure. But it's a special opportunity to have someone like David with proven experience in a certain vertical taking a shot at bringing his version of nouns to life.
>
> This is a yes from me for the same reason nounish is a yes from me. When we have good opportunities to back great people, we should do it, especially when we are at this experimental phase where the goals are not yet so clear.
>
> Thanks David
love the passion and commitment from the nounspace team but personally i find it hard to justify investing another $250k into a farcaster client that i don't see much nouns ppl using. there's just not enough usage evidence for us to double down here imo. i'm sorry!
there's something really genuine and grassroots about the esports community that feels very nounish to me. share krel's sentiment here in wanting to pull on this string further. excited to see what comes from this LAN party! have fun all!
+1
> Not a big fan of sponsorships like these (putting noggles on things), but --
>
> Its interesting how nouns is starting to have a real presence in gaming that is almost completely separate from the nouns _crypto_ community. And its even more intriguing to see how, by nature of doing good things in gaming, nouns is also turning some of the anti-nft hivemend to be more positive or at least ok about nouns crypto origins.
>
> There is an element of 'what if we probe and pull on this a little harder -- what will happen?', and that alone might be reason enough to fund props like this one.
i too share a bit of the sentiment that this prop might be better split up a bit to validate the thesis and execution a bit more (we don’t often go from 0 to $200k esp in the current mkt environment) but i’m voting yes bc i think this prop has the important higher order bit right which is that network society community / popup cities <> nouns is a direction we should strongly encourage and foster and that those spaces are INCREDIBLY rich environments for future nouners, builders, and fans.
that fact is evidenced by the fact that carlos is willing to put down a list of nouners that he onboarded (net new buyers) and is willing to be judged on that metric for his current proposed prop as well. what other IRL activation prop has proposed to be judged in that way? but it makes sense. if you walk into like a edge city / zuzalu type context then the density of ppl that are already living an ethereum / onchain life is 100x an average nft conference. also it’s just not the eth exposure, it’s the particular blend of appreciation for sovereignty, experimentation, fringe communities that make them a perfect environment to find future nouns citizens.
what i hoped to see more from this prop actually (and maybe carlos can still weave it in) is to try to drive more existing nouns fans and builders to come to and meet at these pop up cities and live and work together. a lot of nouns ppl have deep connections and are willing to travel to meet and spend time together. they will likely very much love these environments naturally. also what better way to convince ppl nouns is special and awesome than for there to be actual nouns sub communities present at these places? so my hope is carlos can play a role in trying to drive nouns folks to all come to one or two of these places and then use some of the budge to create a shared space or coordinate events like dinners and happy hours type things for those ppl to feel like they aren’t going into these spaces blind and rather have a nouns community there that’s excited for them to join. i’ll probably be at a few of these as well! thinking of popping in sometime at the edge city one in thailand, zugarden after devcon also in thailand, and possibly network school as well to support balaji and the network state movement.
(also side note the line items are big so i don’t know if totally right from ROI perspective but there is something that i like about nouns subsidizing something tangible and really beneficial to the resident of these popup cities like childcare and saunas rather than like some sponsorship package where your logo just appears on many marketing material)
anyways, excited and supportive!
this aversion to treasury swap thing is odd to me. we do recognize that they get almost unanimous yes votes and have gone through seven times. so it facilitated seven actions that the dao explicitly voted saying yes that would be a good thing for the dao. i’m consistently a fan of allowing the later ID half of the treasury nouns to be permissionlessly swapped bc i can’t think of a situation i would vote against someone getting a noun they like more. i don’t buy the argument that this is leading to less auction revenue for the dao. yeah maybe on some preferred heads ppl feel there’s less competition? (not sure if that’s really right or we’re just low on auction demand rn). but then what about all the days there is more auction demand for a less in demand head noun bc they think they could ask for a swap? it would be raising auction prices for the average day and make competition more stable and steady. not clear to me that that leads to less overall auction revenue (my guess is more). my hope if that we just make the later half of the treasury nouns permossionlessly swappable to reduce the voting fatigue. making it easier for ppl to get their favorite noun heads is a good thing imo.
outside of all that i think the paperlabs team has been contributing consistently at a high caliber against a lot of setbacks and it shows their love and commitment for nouns and don’t feel this retro is excessive. thank you for building in nouns!
maybe we can incentivize the good prop scouts (who is consistently minting candidate props before others where it ends up getting proposed onchain and passing; and have low false positives). could have some good futarchy like dynamics if done well. interesting idea! supportive.
thank you for the prop facu! appreciate your artwork with nouns over the years and really you'd be one of the few ppl to really be in the position to do something like this (celebrate nouns pixel art for the art that it is). however i feel similarly with krel that in the current treasury environment it might be best to aim for something more smaller scale and iterative.
+1
> I think this is a project the dao should do and that will serve Nouns well. A lot of us came to love Nouns because the pixels are just so insanely good, and a project that celebrates onchain pixels as art in its own right is something ive been waiting for. I feel like theres a lot of parallels to draw to Cryptopunks with the way Facu wants to present Nouns in this project, and im excited about that.
>
> That said, I also think the 160k funding ask is somewhat high in the current financial state of nouns. My suggestion would be to keep the overall goal — "to expand the current meaning of the collection from PFP to digital fine art" — but decouple the website from the book, and begin with the website/video as the first deliverable.
>
> PS. Thanks again for taking this on Facu, i love the teasers and overall presentation/structure of this prop.
oh wow, i'm a little surprised by the discourse here. this is a hell yes prop for me. let me explain what i see as the nounish team's journey.
- goldy & dan were nouns super fans and nouners since basically day 1. they were ever present in the discord and did goofy and impactful stuff like the nounish meme factory (https://www.nouns.camp/proposals/90)
- they also ran a world class award winning studio (pixel) as their day jobs and we were always hoping for them to take the big leap and just go full-time nouns and take on bigger nounish dreams. one day they did!
- initially they focused on making videos about all the nounish projects happening in the nouniverse (gnars, glases for kids, dustin yellen, etc) and the best nouns explainer videos ever created (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oa79nN4gMPs). to be clear at this time monetization wasn't even a goal. they were essentially tasked to be a world class storytelling / marketing video creating arm for nouns.
- then after a year or so of doing this at an exceptional caliber the dao felt that we had good explainer videos and project highlight videos but it didn't matter much b/c not enough ppl were watching them. we wanted the nounish team to take their incredible artistic abilities and love of nouns and find a way (create original content) that could go viral and build an organic audience that would get more ppl to not just see noggles but fall in love with nouns and be inspired in nounish way.
- the nounish team did some soul searching and a lot of experimentation and then found some sort of PMF with the three artists one noun concept. had some early numbers that were promising. they then asked the dao last year if we would double down on this direction and fund them trying to 10x their audience. we said yes to that and they've effectively delivered on that promise (or are pretty much on track to do so soon). that's incredible! in a world of cheap clicks and views they've been able to achieve both quality and scale.
imo the "oh how did you not focus on monetization until now?" reactions are misplaced. in the first year we didn't task them to build their own audience (we asked for the videos to be made). the the second year we did task them to build their own audience but the priority was on building a large audience while keeping the quality high (it wasn't all that AND monetizing that audience). you need to find your own style and a certain scale of audience to really consider that in the first place. anyways, they are now at that step and taking in feedback about the realities of the treasury size and the need to start monetizing for this project to be more sustainable long term and are setting aggressive monetization goals for themselves. they had an initial prop with a larger ask with a longer prop timeline (18 mo vs 9 mo) with a higher burn and took in the initial feedback (personally i messaged them i would vote against b/c the funding ask was too big) and made some hard decisions to cut down the ask significantly.
i too like PPD feel that the monetization goals are possibly too aggressive and the dao shouldn't go from never asking about monetization to asking for full financial sustainability in a single prop. (even if in 9 mo nounish team is half of the way there and clearly on the trajectory of growing revenue and we just need to fund half of this prop's ask one more time to get to full sustainability i would still be supportive). but i also appreciate aggressive goals and the nounish team holding themselves to a high standard and always aiming meet their prop targets before the next prop and if they want to aim for this i'm all for it.
i'm grateful for the love and care and incredible output the nounish team has had so far and feel excited for them to take control over their own financial destiny in this prop and inspire a generation of nounish artists on the internet!
ugh apologies for missing voting for this prop. after voting in favor of 100% of these swap props i feel more convicted that we should set a certain range (maybe treasury nouns under ID 500 is excluded) and let ppl permissionlessly swap. if someone WANTS a certain treasury noun b/c they want it to be their forever noun, i just don't see an issue with it. the argument that it cheapens the non-fungible appreciation of nouns i understand theoretically but just doesn't ring true to me in practice.
i'm supportive of a nounish tabletop board game community but i feel like this prop is asking for WAY too much. we rarely fund $150k+ props for a new project in a new vertical. also not clear to me that something like this should be started top down with a lot of funding in this way and not more grassroots slowly bottoms up.
i would be supportive of nouns streaming a 32 eth validator amount of yield indefinitely (i'm generally opposed to indefinite streams b/c we never cancel them but for a ~ 1 ETH per year amount of a "maintenance cost" type stream open to it). this type of "endowment" style funding of projects i just don't think it's feasible for us. if you assume 4% yield the dao has to send out 25x the annual spend in lump sum. we couldn't fund anything close to the amount of things we fund and i also find it a hard decision for the dao to make. we're always learning. we might be sure we want to fund something for 1 year. MAYBE 2-3 years. but if you force a question about if we want to fund something forever i think the answer for most things is likely we're not sure and we're probably not incentive aligned with the recipient to fund it in that way (even if we really trust the builder which is this case i do believe pipe has the best intentions and has been a valuable community member for a long time but the point still holds).
we funded noundry explicitly to break out of the norm of only considering new traits on the nouniversary bc that felt a bit too limiting. i say this to just remind ourselves that while the ad hoc process might feel less coordinated the standardized process wasn’t a panacea either (too many traits need to be reviewed at once, needs a review committee, who’s on the committee, how much are they being paid, why are they being paid, etc). personally i feel like the new ad hoc process we have where anyone can submit traits once they feel they have something that got enough review and support from the noundry artist community has been working surprisingly well (tho it’s disappointing that we haven’t seen much net new artists, for example like jack butcher submitting a trait)
also artists asking for nouns feels better to me than asking for eth? in general i’m pro builders of all kinds that ask for nouns as compensation bc they love nouns and want to stack nouns. maybe ppl are sensitive to the whole noun and think we’re overpaying but i think ppl might be underestimating / undervaluing the art work over dev work. if anything i want the bar for art being permanently added to nouns onchain art to be high. we should feel some amount of pain in the compensation so that we don’t take it lightly. getting a nouns trait approved by the dao is a big achievement with a high bar and we should treat and compensate it as such.
majority voting as a gating factor for all amounts of spending isn't great b/c while for some one-time projects that makes sense (e.g. nouns movie) there are many spending categories where we'd rather fund in a more evergreen and open competition type way. funding governance clients is an example of such category which is why i was supportive of client incentives and this streaming grants approach generalizes that into more into any spending category that we can imagine and i'm excited to see what comes out of this experiment. the vrbs team is also great.
love the lively discussion on this prop! i feel the closest to krel's vwr that i was a bit torn but ultimately leaned in the direction of supporting. chris' report on there having been nouners and nouns props that were generated from nounish encounters on last year's FWB Fest also contributed to my decision. i do feel lilfrog's views though as well.
a few thoughts on things that could be improved for next year:
- i agree with lilfrog that there's a lot of value that FWB is also getting by nouns fronting the bill on this event and performance that adds value to the FWB Fest. i wonder if it could have been structured as a bit more as a partnership where FWB wants nouns to put on this event as much as we're willing to fund creativity such that $12k FWB housing items and maybe the $15k main stage performance costs have been covered by them? i don't know the norms of FWB Fest but theoretically it does seem reasonable that they would court nouns to spend ~$50k for IRL experiences and creativity at FWB Fest by subsidizing something like $30k or so.
- i'm slightly torn by $10k community guest speaker fees. on one hand maybe it's reasonable to pay ppl to come so that we have the best representatives possible. on the other hand it's kind of a festival that ppl would normally go to to enjoy and maybe the ppl that would normally go anyways would be the right ppl to represent the cross section of nouns x FWB?
as seen in my comments above i think the main issue i feel with the prop is that it feels a bit loose on the budget. i think nouns is increasingly getting into a world we need to be tight on prop budgets to be able to keep funding the depth and breath of things that we fund!
anyways, having said all that i really recognize the nouns love and passion the park ppl have and have no doubt that this will be amongst the most nounish IRL activations. hope it passes and best of luck to everyone involved!
+1
> Tbc, this is not a homerun prop for me and the outcome is not super clear, but i have a strong conviction in Nouns enabling its biggest fans to do their thing. Provide them the runway needed to spread nouns organically in their (creative) circles.
>
> Nouns thrives when people do things with great passion (and struggles when we fund people to do checkbox exercises), and in that department i trust The Park to deliver.
>
> +1
>
> > I want to preface my vote on this proposal by acknowledging a potential bias: I'm good friends with Derek, and we're collaborating on Prop 450. However, I'm not affiliated with The Park, and I consider this proposal separate from our ongoing work. Additionally, while I used to work with FWB, I haven't done so professionally for about a year and will be attending this year's event as a participant.
> >
> > Derek played a pivotal role in introducing me to Nouns and sparking my interest in contributing. His commitment to the Nouns ecosystem is evident: He constantly rocks a noggle earring, dedicates time and energy to Nounish projects, and showcases Nouns when talking about his work onchain. A Lil Nouns Coffee event a couple of years ago, which Derek organized, was my first 'nounish' IRL experience.
> >
> > Derek played a pivotal role in introducing me to Nouns and sparking my interest in contributing. His commitment to the Nouns ecosystem is evident in the way he constantly rocks a noggle earring, the way he dedicates time and energy to Nounish projects (the Lil Nouns Coffee event a couple of years ago, which Derek organized, was my first 'nounish' IRL experience) and the way he showcases Nouns when talking about his work onchain.
> >
> > Last year, The Park's activation at FWB Fest was a significant success. They brought Nounish builders to the event and effectively showcased the heart of Nouns to a crowd of onchain natives and curious individuals. This audience, gathered to discuss building a better future internet, was perfectly primed to engage with Nouns' approach to decentralized creativity and governance. The Park's presence not only increased visibility for Nouns but also fostered meaningful conversations about the project's potential future impact.
> >
> > Regarding Lilfrog's comment about community members repping Nouns voluntarily rather than for payment, I understand the sentiment but believe it misses the mark here. Derek and the collective of The Park have consistently represented Nouns at various events, including Coachella - all unpaid. There's a clear distinction between casually repping Nouns at events (which Derek already does) and executing a structured, comprehensive representation strategy as outlined in this proposal.
> >
> > Lilfrog also asked if the money would be better served creating our own Nouns event. That’s an admirable desire (and something I know others in our community are very much working on), but that would be on a budgetary scale vastly different from what this proposal is scoped for.
> >
> > This prop offers an immediate and concrete plan for representation at a major event happening in the near future. It allows us to seize a timely opportunity to showcase Nouns alongside other major players in the ecosystem via a nounish DAO that represents the community well. The Park's track record demonstrates that they have the ability to create meaningful, impactful activations.
> >
> > It’s a yes from me ☻
+1
> FWB Fest has an outsized impact on the creative crypto community. Last year, I attended as an emissary of Builder DAO, and it was a top event for generating awareness and interest in Builder. I also spoke to many people about Nouns, cleared up their misconceptions, and discussed bringing their creative projects to Nouns, culminating in Nouns Coffeeshop. As a result, I can count at least six new Nouns since the event (Valerie x 2, the Park, Drew, Will, and myself) who were either awarded for impact or purchased a Noun after the event. Fest is focused on creative technologists and longtime crypto practitioners who are ready to become Nouns contributors and members.
>
> One thing I've learned in more intimate settings like Fest is that would be contributors, even and maybe especially experienced crypto practitioners, are still intimidated by Nouns, think it's an exclusive club, not for them or find it difficult to onboard and get started. It is easy to overcome but the most effective way to do it is to meet people IRL, show them a friendly face, introduce them to other Nouns and make them more comfortable engaging deeper. We have a lot to talk about this year, including the ability to join by earning $Nouns. Having an official presence at Fest lets them know that Nouns is here to support and collaborate with them and the creative community.
+1
> @0x38D8...1bc0
>
> Hey, this is very cool, thanks for sharing. I'd love to see more of this!
>
> Re: comments from the other thread
>
> > It aligns perfectly with Nouns' goals of community engagement and creative expression (a.k.a proliferation)
>
> I love that you called out your vision for nouns here. One of the challenges for nouns is that there isn't really an agreed upon goal or vision for the org. Folks like you who are taking a stance and saying "this is what I believe nouns should be about" are important to helping the dao find it's vision so it can start working more cohesively towards those goals. "Proliferating the meme" gets thrown around a bunch, but I've never found that goal compelling because it is not specific. "Funding creative expression" is specific and something we can take actionable strides towards.
>
> My biggest concern about this prop is that FWB gets the "brand capital" (not sure how to phrase this). For example, I watched Toby Shorin's "life after lifestyle" talk the other day, and thought it was cool that fest was able to create a culture and festival that produces such knowledge artifacts. In my mind it is FWB that is capable of creating a culture that allowed Toby's talk to flourish, and FWB gets the brand capital. If nouns funds this proposal, I don't doubt that it would be well executed and a huge success, I just think it would be more of a benefit to the culture and reputation of fest than it would be to nouns. It doesn't feel symbiotic in the way basecamp + fest are co-creating.
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> I respect the commitment to funding creative expression but wouldn't we rather nouns become the red bull music academy? In order to get there I think we need to be spending effort + capital on doing our own thing rather than contributing elsewhere.
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> > @0x65A3...1D63
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> > Here is a mint by The Park that shows more insight on all the non paid proliferation they've been doing: Fest 2023, ETH LATAM Honduras, NFT NYC, Coachella 2024, Capitol Hill for the voting of the FIT21 bill: https://bit.ly/3VXqlkt
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> > > > Bring amazing Nounish energy, awareness, and visibility to FWB FEST
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> > > It would be cool if folks in our community repped nouns at these events because they wanted to, not because they were getting paid to do so.
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i wonder if ppl would have mostly voted yes if there was no tip at all. the “pricing” of the premium is leading to disagreement with the price but idk this feels like a pretty nounish swap request and we would be better off with another nouner with a forever noun
i continue to find the "let's just make 1000+ units of a physical product and hope it sells" approach very unconvincing and wasteful. yes, some nouns fans will definitely rock it. i also appreciate the proposer coming back with an iteration. but we've banged our head against this wall many times (our last attempt being funding $69k + $100k milestone payments for physical watches: nouns.camp/proposals/480). at least in the watches case the proposer put their own money on the line for production and argued hard that the watches would appeal to a market outside of nouns fans. i've been skeptical of this approach and continue to be so
i met will at a dinner, talked about nouns for hours, thought “what a nounish human”, and delegated the next day. it has been incredible to see will become further nouns pilled by engaging in our governance and i agree that this noun is very much deserving. thanks for all the energy and love you’ve put into nouns!
sorry i missed the vote on this prop. i would have also likely voted against though as well. $1M prop over time is a big bet for nouns at our current treasury size and while i love you thinking of ways to make nouns and your project collaborare i can’t help but feel similarly to krel’s vwr
i just don’t think big budget conference stuff has really paid off for us over the years and the voters have consistently expressed that over the recent year or so and while i appreciate the detailed prop there’s nothing about it in particular that persuades me to think we should give it another try with $100k prop. as far as conferences go i would much much rather fund a very small budget for someone who’s already going to just host like a nouns dinner or happy hour so that nouns folks can meet IRL and invite their friends. so something really funky and weird in a low budget way. this type of big budget traditional conference stuff i just don’t feel is how we spread nouns.
sharing one more small note (that i originally just dm’ed to 87bones but thinking it can be helpful for other prop writers too):
the first nouns value i might phrase it in the future as “doing good” rather than “public good” since that can be confused with “public goods” which is more of an economic term referring to a good that is available to the public at no cost. it ties more to cc0 and open source stuff that you already have as the second value.