Nouns DAO
Project/Token Dive
Conclusion: This is currently the strongest CC0 brand in the market, the distribution of quality: noun holders, derivative projects, and broader market adoption set the tone for CC0 and NFT-based DAOs.
🧵 Thread for those new to nouns or peripherally aware of the project 🧵 Happy birthday @nouns 365 days young.
Overview of the Project: Nouns / Nouns DAO
Nouns is a generative NFT project on the ETH blockchain that mints/auctions one ’Noun’ a day. The project is an experimental attempt to “improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities”.
Nouns have collectively attempted to bootstrap identity, community, governance, and a treasury that can be used by the Noun holders. This intersection of NFTs, DAOs, CC0, and DeFi (through treasury voting) pushes the boundaries of modern NFT application/utility.
Art/NFTs
Nouns are 32x32 pixel images of people, places, and things (hence the name), each with one unifying factor, square glasses. A broad and diverse collection of apes, sharks, skateboards, planets, cows, and a multitude of PPTs.
Nouns artwork is in the public domain via CC0 (Creative Commons) which means, the project waves all rights to the work (art) under copyright law.
Artwork is generative and stored directly on-chain (not IPFS). Which at first glance seems trivial, however, the technical complexity of listing individual traits on-chain, that assemble in an algorithmic (not randomly) format is deserving of a mini-thread.
No explicit rules exist for attribution of scarcity; all Nouns are all equally rare. A notion that is countercultural when comped to the traditional/hierarchical NFT world, with few contemporaries like FFF achieving a similar community decided rarity system, think @monstertrainer as a community determined popular trait.
Nouns are currently made up of the following traits:
1. accessories (137)
2. backgrounds (2)
3. bodies (30)
4. glasses (21)
5. heads (234)
Auction
Each (forever) day one Noun is minted and sold in a trustlessly auction via nouns.wtf. The sale feeds 100% into the DAOs treasury, which is owned, operated, and distributed by the community itself.
The auction works in such a way that users are able to place as many bids as they’d like (within a 24 hr period) with each bid requiring a fixed % increase over the last.
At the end of the 24 hr period the highest bid wins (if someone makes a bid in the last 10 minutes the clock resets).
The auction settlement transaction does three things: 1. it sends the current Noun ERC-721 token to the winner of the auction, 2. generates the next Noun, and 3. begins the next 24-hour Noun auction.
Lastly, the founding team “Nounders” (to be discussed) only get compensated through every 10th Noun for the first 5 years of the project (Noun ids #0, #10, #20 and so on). Nounder distributions don't interfere with the cadence of 24 hour auctions.
DAO
The Nouns DAO treasury receives 100% of ETH proceeds from daily noun auctions. A treasury which others have termed a “golden goose egg” due to the fact that only Noun holders can draft proposals which will utilize the DAO treasury. Nouns DAO uses a fork of Compound Governance (https://compound.finance/governance).
Proposals/Treasury
Each Noun, regardless of their place in line (i.e Noun 6 or 332) has two main abilities, 1. Proposing (https://nouns.wtf/vote) 2. Voting: gated NFT access
The latter (2) is a system by which the Noun acts as a member of the governance board, who can vote (1. For or 2. Against) the proposal. Nouns also have the ability to: 3. abstain. Ultimately the quasi-tribunal’s decision is a based on a majority vote.
Fringe cases can take place: https://nouns.wtf/vote/86 where a majority abstain, however, this result defers to the For/Against (18 Against & 2 For = Defeated).
Lastly, a majority of the discussion takes place in a multitude of locations, from 1 on 1 chats to twitter threads to discord channels: https://discourse.nouns.wtf/c/nounsdao/5
Once a proposal is passed, the Nounders (founding council) are responsible to help the proposal drafter implement the executed treasury allocation.
Nounders have given themselves a special veto right to ensure that no malicious proposals can be passed while the Noun supply is low. This veto right will only be used if an obviously harmful governance proposal has been passed, and is intended as a last resort.
Nounders will proveably revoke this veto right when they deem it safe to do so. This decision will be based on a healthy Noun distribution and a community that is engaged in the governance process.
Founding Team/Community
• Nounders receive rewards in the form of Nouns (10% of supply for thr first 5 years).
• solimander
• @dhof
The Nouns DAO prominence stems from the word of mouth of who’s a noun, if someone has a noun PFP it’s very likely they are 1. Builder 2. Investor(s) or 3. Evangelist for the ecosystem.
One example of a high-quality member who joined the Nouns DAO is Budlight. Noun 179 was acquired https://nouns.wtf/noun/179 on 1/18/22.
Derivatives
There are countless derivatives in the works, more detail in another thread, for now here are some interesting ones:
@nounsvision
@nouncil
@NounsDAOJAPAN
Conclusion:
To conclude, I think @sabrinaxdoll @punk4156 and @cdt.eth summarize the project well: “Nouns has the potential to be as pervasive and permanent as the iconic figures Mickey Mouse and Goofy. Characters that carry a rich history of happiness and appeal, recognizable by toddlers and adults alike. These characters are timeless and remain fixtures in popular culture, saturating film, literature, music, media, toys, merchandise, and ideologies”.
But the project has barely scratched the surface...of what is possible. As the treasury scales, and the collective body of noun experiences continues so will the DAO/Community Funds/Ambition of Derivative projects.
Lastly, an easy way to think of the current state of Nouns one year in: “As Blequity put it ‘Nouns offer a childlike state of play, but with big kid capital.” And big kid impact – me.
Research Material:
Noun.wtf
lilnouns.wtf
Compound Governance
and more via https://nouns.notion.site/Explore-Nouns-a2a9dceeb1d54e10b9cbf3f931c2266f - DM if curious.
🧵Concluded🧵