Three weeks ago, a Discord “PING!!” got me all excited. You see, I was working on this unnamed project, and was expecting a DM back from one of my co-workers…

Only to realize that someone had me tagged in the Nouns Discord.

Okay, weird.

A few frantic clicks later, I stumbled upon this message.

Which led to this…

So at this point, I was like: “WTF is Prop 63?”, “WTF is Impact Rewards?” and most importantly…

Why was I involved in a project, that I hadn’t even known of previously?

Today, I share with you all things about Nouns DAO Prop 63, some saucy findings I made from this Nounish experiment, and you’re welcome Nouns for the PR.

To skip straight to the results, feel free to click the anchor below. (Link opens in new tab)

Raw Data; Juicy Conclusions

Nouns Prop #63 - Pilot Collectivized Nounish Allocation

So here’s where it first began, way back in March…

Oops, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. For those new to Nouns and collective governance in DAOs, allow me to explain what “Prop” means.

What Is A Proposal in Nouns DAO?

A “prop”, as its name implies, is an idea pitched to others.

And since we’re in Nouns DAO, a proposal made here would be pitched to the Nouns community, made up of the Nounders (or people/robots who hold Nouns).

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Seriously, Nouns DAO is an inclusive community for all to participate and propose. This will make sense soon.

Prop 63: Origins

Alright, back to the story.

Officially, Prop 63 passed on 5th May 2022.

Unofficially, several Nounish builders have already been working on the project… discussions were underway and a Notion doc had been built too.

Prop 63: Finding THE Most Nounish Way

Of course, delegating the 100ETH was the main challenge.

Some concerns included:

• Who would drive the project forward?
• Do we need to hit some sort of participation threshold?
• Should there be any gatekeeping whatsoever?

It wasn’t before long that the admin team had come to a consensus… democratizing fund allocation to any Nounish builder.

Or as Joel (one of the guys who made this possible, thanks!) put it better,

An experiment in rewarding the entire Nounish ecosystem.

And after 2.5 months of “official” building, Prop 63 had finally been finalized.

Prop 63: How It’s Looking

Allow me to break down Prop 63 into three stages. Namely, the application, voting, and results phase.

Application Phase

CC0 culture is all about making your art open-source, and free for anyone to use (or abuse). As a pioneer of CC0, Nouns DAO aims to stay inclusive.

And that’s why the application phase was open to everyone.

Applicants were encouraged to share how they have contributed to Nouns DAO.

At first, this seemed a little intimidating to me…

Just look at how much work some buildors put in!

In comparison, I just have one contribution to Nouns DAO; Nouns Blog, a blog dedicated to the Nounish ecosystem.

But the FOMO kicked in, and I couldn’t help but submit my application. Fingers crossed.🤞

Voting Phase

After a couple of weeks, Joel spoke once again.

After filtering through the spam, 105 buildors had been amassed to take part in this voting phase. In truth, anyone who had contributed to Nouns DAO in one way or another was let in.

Participants were then directed to vote on a platform called Coordinape.

Coordinape is a popular web3 tool for decentralized allocation of funds. In this context, participants would be able to award “GIVE” (a placeholder token) to various builders, and at the end of it, all the amount of “GIVE” you had would decide your reward in ETH.

$$ (Give you receive / total Give sent) * 100 ETH $$

Upon registering for a Coordinape account and joining the “Circle”, participants would choose their “team”, or people they wished to award.

And thereafter, distribute GIVE accordingly.

Finally, we’ve come to the juicy part… how should one allocate their GIVE?

Let’s save the hypotheticals, and dive straight into how some people “GIVE-d”, or didn’t.

Results Phase

Right off the bat, “How much should I GIVE, and to whom?” comes to mind.

Some ideas include…

Truly, this list is non-exhaustive.

And in a bit, we’ll look at the data and draw some brow-raising conclusions. But first, let’s craft a hypothesis.

Jokes aside, feel free to refer to this spreadsheet for the final ETH allocation and results. I’ll be referencing some of this in the following section, but not to worry, screenshots will be taken.

*Disclaimer: Anything said in the following section is not out of ill-intent. All for fun and digesting the data.

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Raw Data; Juicy Conclusions

As an amateur data-digger but a natural on-chain stalker, my initial idea was to trace ETH amounts from the multi-sig to every Ethereum address, and work it out from there.

But no, thanks to Coordinape’s awesome CIRCLE MAP!

While explicit “GIVE” amounts aren’t stated, the links between giver and recipient are more than enough for me to work with… enjoy!

Thy Honorable Nounders

First and foremost, I would like to salute these two Nounders:

• Devcarrot 🥕
• Solimander🦎

Although these Nounders joined the Coordinape round, they decided to opt out of the “GIVE” allocation.

Essentially, not accepting any ETH rewards! But… why?

Perhaps the answer lies in what makes one a “Nounder”.

Who Are The Nounders?

The Nounders are the 10 founders of Nouns DAO.

And they don’t get paid. Well, not directly at least.

You see, Nouns DAO has a unique auction contract in which every 10th Noun goes back to the Nounders. So yes, Nounders get paid in Nouns!

I opted out on this one because I feel I am being paid sufficiently via other channels (nounder reward) and didn't want to take away from other deserving contributors.

~Solimander 🦎

I’m sure Devcarrot shares similar thoughts, so big up to both of them!

While they opted out, the Nounders still participated in distributing GIVE to worthy buildors!

With that, we’re down to 100 ETH split between 101 buildors.

The “No-Shows”

This one is a little controversial.

In total, there were about 10 applicants who did not allocate their “GIVE” to anybody.

Considering this is about 10% of the applicants, it came as quite a surprise to me. But eh, people have bigger things to worry about aside from voting… right?

Given the fact that there were around 6 Reminders to vote in the Prop 63 Discord channel alone, the fact that these people had applied to be in Prop 63 in the first place, along with some ferocious “do or die” threats by none other than HONK DIDDLY…

… my takeaway is that inaction is kinda sus.

At the end of the day, this just leaves me guessing:

Was it simply a slip of the mind, or a deliberate strategy to… (I won’t complete the sentence!)

Sharing Is Caring/Everyone A Winner

On a more positive note, we have a group of buildors who decided:

“Hey, why not share with everyone?”. And so they did.

In no particular order, they are:

0xFloyd, Andrew Laddusaw, Badu Blanc, Blowned (me!), Count Boanez, Dom, Doowop, Greta Gremplin, Joel Cares, Ryan Mac, Sam Ellis, SideNoun, SuperTightWoody, Aubtoshi, Derio, Dot, n g, Profwerder, Ripe, and Waterdrops.

With so many people in this group (Exactly 20!), I’m heartened to see the effort put in to recognize each and every builder, no matter how big or small.

So basically, I thought if someone had done enough to get on the list, they deserved something. I started with roughly 5 for each and then adjusted up or down based on what I’ve seen them do in the community. But mostly up :)

~ Andrew Laddusaw 🐐

Everyone who’s on that list has contributed to the ecosystem in some way — even if I haven’t worked with them directly. I then gave 10 or 20 to those I’ve worked with or whose work I’ve seen directly impact proliferation. And 30 to Joel & Toady because they are really putting in overtime!

~ Profwerder 👩‍🏫

Personally, I’d like to think that even the smallest actions influence the wider populace. Maybe this Tweet inspired everything?

I got my priorities straight!

Next up, we have applicants who allocated “GIVE” only to a select few builders.

In fact, this group is pretty huge — 20+ people followed this allocation model.

Interestingly, common names popped up among the “select few” of different voters, which gives me a sense that these “few” truly deserve a higher allocation.

After vigorously questioning fellow builders, here are some shared perspectives:

• The face of the community; with obvious efforts to proliferate Nouns DAO
• Spent most time with them, often around them in the Nouniverse
• Helped me the most throughout my journey

I allocated my GIVE to the people I know who take an active role in the DAO… I mostly nominated people who contribute to running DAO operations…

~ Fiveoceans_dev 🧙

This method of distribution is by far the most pragmatic, but does everyone share the same view?

Recognizing Underrated Buildors (Secret Admirer LOL, jk)

While the faces of the community have made an undeniably positive and lasting impact on Nouns DAO, some buildors go unnoticed.

It’s a sad situation, but really not their fault.

I remember a saying (from Nouns Discord):

Buildors build. Not talk.

~ Anon 👽

Drawing from the limited data points, I found 4 people who allocated most, if not all of their tokens to a single person. Namely…

• Krish - Rainman
• Brennen - Sasquatch
• Hugothedoodle - Ser Noadz
• Jacob - Yitong (vectorDAO)

I think each one of these cases is extremely subjective, and we shouldn’t second guess anyone’s motives here.

So I asked some of them for the rationale behind their decision, and here’s what they said:

We work on the nouns esports together… I think [Sasquatch] deserves it, most people don't see the work [Sasquatch] does for the pod.

~ Brennen 🦆

In all, my takeaway is that this group wanted to reward the unnoticed buildor. I mean, the backend deserves credit as well… don’t they?

Loved By All 💕

Last but certainly not least, we have the group of people who received the most GIVE, from the majority of applicants!

As the results clearly display, these builders have received the most recognition this Prop 63 round, and, for good reason.

When asked “What are your thoughts on being in the top few recipients in terms of ETH”, here’s what they said:

I’m glad that people find the things I’m building valuable and useful!

~Cdt 💻

Very grateful and appreciated 🙏

~ JoelCares 👨

Others have more elaborate views. Benbodhi’s response really struck me:

In short, I was surprised, humbled and blown away by the results of 63.

So, do I think I am the biggest contributor to Nouns out of the entire ecosystem? Absolutely not, of course. But I do work full time in the community and I pour my heart and soul into my work, so it was really, really heart-melting to receive so many messages of support and such a volume of GIVE from my fellow Nounsfolk.

~ Toady Hawk🐸

I guess the lesson to takeaway here is about giving back. Hard to believe, but those who showed up, helped out, and accommodated timezones to push the Nounish agenda:

It all paid off.

Conclusion: The Bigger Picture

In a nutshell, Prop 63 has been a fun and unique governance experience, both empowering to participate in, and rewarding. (ETH payouts, congrats!!)

Despite the results obtained via Coordinape, I’m certain we can’t really put a number behind the overall contribution of buildors, and the allocation simply serves as a gauge of how other members think of your contribution to Nouns DAO.

Toady summarizes it well:

I do think there are a lot of builders who do more or equally important work behind closed doors compared to where my personal efforts have been focused (which is a lot of community building and onboarding new people to Nouns) and maybe I received more GIVE because of the public and personal nature of my efforts. (These kinds of rounds are never perfect.)

Nevertheless, I hope we can strive to achieve greater recognition for the work that goes on behind the scenes.

Perhaps a suggestion made by Chris(Noun Profiles) would do the trick…

And that’s it, folks!

I hope you enjoyed this article on Prop 63, do subscribe if you liked it, and would really appreciate it if you “collect” this entry. It’s my first time trying Mirror’s article NFT tool too!

And perhaps if this article helped others further understand Prop 63, I’ll craft another piece on similar events in Nouns DAO.

Until then, stay Nounish ⌐◨-◨.