0xa8688227…9e63sent to0xf790a5f5…1365·#22,223,820·view on Etherscan
# Things worth fixing
I've become increasingly convinced that the way for us to solve our capital inflow concerns is to improve Nouns as a 'product'. I believe a well-functioning, efficient 'cash distribution platform' where anyone can insert a dollar and see it turned into meaningful positive-sum outcomes is bound to attract capital. Such a system is inherently valuable; it's worth owning and maintaining.
It seems to me that a mature product facilitating efficient day-to-day operations is a necessary ingredient for Nouns growth. Granted, it might not be sufficient for us to succeed, but its hard to see how a dysfunctional product could ever reach any notable heights or attract capital at scale.
Is Nouns really dysfunctional in its current form? I think by most metrics, yes. Many of the things I loved about early-stage Nouns, like our vote-with-reason culture, are now looking more like liabilities and our product and operations has failed to keep up with the continuously changing texture of Nouns.
To be fair, I think there is a parallel path where we treat Nouns more literally as an art project with a shelf-life. Instead of making any major overhauls we ride out the treasury into the sunset. I'm not entirely opposed to this idea, but my feeling is that most people who tune into Nouns on warpcast, discord, or camp on a daily basis want more. Going to great lengths to transform Nouns into a DUNA seems like a clear indication that we as a community want to see Nouns truly succeed, grow, and be relevant.
I cant claim to have concrete solutions for how to improve our product, but I can provide a few intuitions as to the direction we should take in search of answers.
**Streamline and automate day-to-day operations**
I believe our ad-hoc approach to governance had a sweet spot during the NFT hype cycle when attention, brainpower, curiosity, and overall energy levels were abundant. For the past 1-2 years I think it has become mostly clear that our critical day-to-day operations are running on life-support and won't scale unless addressed. Together with the Camp team, I've spent a lot of my time trying to patch these issues via better UI, better tooling, and better ways to funnel our collective energy (recently via Topics).
But my lasting impression is that there is something inherently wrong with the ad-hoc approach to proposing and voting. I adore it, but I don't think it works for the type of project Nouns has become. Nouns changed from an NFT project with an incidental group-owned treasury to make the NFT project better, to a collectively owned make-a-wish program with an experimental brand-building exercise attached. Our tools and operations were made to suit the former.
How do we address this? I'm not sure, but I think we should make big swings to try things like proposal application forms, pre-defined grant funding amounts, and deploy AI to help summarize and sense-make. At some point, AI is likely to provide a path to full or semi-automation, but my hunch is that we are better off improving the time-intensive parts of governance rather than outsourcing the entire voting process. At least to start. Trying to automate a fundamentally flawed process seems like a path to disaster and we need to be more selective and clever with our use of AI.
**Outcome-based sub-communities and resource allocation**
I'm also interested in the idea of voting pools or 'delegation guilds' that have a specific goal and agenda rather than trying to replicate the brokenness of Nouns governance on a smaller scale. To paint a picture, instead of Nouncil being a microcosm of mainNouns with all its disagreements, fragmented visions, and social constructs, it would be better if Nouncil split into 3-4 smaller highly coherent and efficient entities with unified ideas about the meaning of Nouns, what to fund, etc. The political multi-party system is probably a decent shorthand for how this would function, and I argue a better state than everyone trying to control and ideologically steer a single party.
Another idea that I think is worth exploring is allocating a percentage of treasury funds to a specific cause. For example, we could earmark a flat $200k, or a fraction of recurring inflow to spend on 'art projects' for the next 6 months. The intention would be to agree up-front on high-level funding decisions rather than having to retrace arguments and disagreements on a per-proposal basis.
Zooming back out, one of my strongest intuitions is that we should make those changes in order to free up voters' time and attention and refocus our efforts on meta-governance. 90% of our energy should go to strategy and long-term problem solving as well as the odd turning point proposal or large investment bet.
**Onboarding of new token holders**
In addition to direct changes in how we operate, I think we have much to gain from better onboarding of new token holders. At the moment of purchase, we should provide new members with easy ways to a) stay up to date (via email?), b) make their voting power count, and c) find their enclave within the larger ecosystem. The aforementioned voting pools could perhaps play a big role here.
**Peer support networks**
Lastly, I think we should make strides to create better peer support networks. The most direct impact here might be to support grant recipients mentally and operationally to increase project success rates. Over time, however, I imagine Nouns will gain from creating intangible benefits to being a grant recipient that goes beyond access to hard cash. Receiving a grant from Nouns should be prestigious in and of itself.
Making headway on some of these issues would be reason for me to stay optimistic about the future of Nouns.things-worth-fixingnull