0xae65e700…46c0sent to0x6f3e6272…223d·#21,326,786·view on Etherscan
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).