Toggle Noggles don't exist ... yet. Not in any real sense, anyway. They are little more than an idea and a couple of Figma design mockups. But with this proposal, or Prop, in Nouns parlance, it's my profound hope that one or more intrepid developers will grasp the Toggle Noggles baton and run with it — that they will run fleet and far, taking a product of my imagination and building it out into an IRL product that people can actually use as a public good.

BACKGROUND

If you read the word "Nouns" with a capital "N" above and thought to yourself, "WTF?," rest assured, Faithful Reader, you are not alone. A full explanation of Nouns and the culture that has blossomed around it is beyond the scope of this article. But in brief, Nouns are an experimental attempt to improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities, with the goal of bootstrapping identity, community, governance, and a treasury that can be used by those communities.

"Avatars" above refers to the digital image that a person or organization selects to represent them online. "On-chain" refers to the idea that those avatars are stored not on some centrally controlled server but rather in a widely shared, ever growing, public database, a ledger of sorts, to which new info can be appended but from which old info can never be deleted — a database that can only ever grow larger over time. These on-chain avatars are known as non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, which in this context are a type of digital collectible — think of trading cards or any physical art or object that's produced as a limited, numbered edition.

Meanwhile, you can think of Nouns as a kind of model that anyone is free to copy and remix as they see fit. There are already many such offshoots, but they tend to have the same basic pillars:

• Digital art

• Community

• Treasury

• Governance

Nouns Builder, a "decentralized autonomous organization," or DAO, is one such offshoot of the original Nouns project. Nouns Builder is responsible for funding the expansion of the Nouns ecosystem and proliferation of the Nouns meme over time, as well as supporting the development of the software that underpins all of it. The DAO received a 1,000 ETH grant (about 1.18 million USD as of Dec. 19, 2022) from the parent Nouns DAO in Prop 167.

The mission of Builder House, the Prop House of Nouns Builder, is to fund as many builders, artists, and other creators as possible, with the common goal of expanding the Nouns ecosystem. All Nouns Builder artwork and codebase is in the public domain so builders, artists, and other creators can feel free to use it as they wish. Funding rounds are held on a regular basis and are voted upon by members of the DAO.

"Prop House" can be thought of as the legislature of a Nouns organization, with each Prop House running on the same core software that serves as public infrastructure for them all.

PHEW! That. Is. A. LOT. Believe me, I've been struggling for weeks to wrap my head around all of it. Maybe it's a little easier to make sense of if you have some familiarity with blockchain, web3, crypto, DeFi, DAOs, and all that jazz. But if you're most people in the world, I completely understand if your response is another gigantic "WTF?" To you, I would offer some gentle encouragement to explore and learn about these things at your own pace, starting with the prolific Ethereum network. What might sound like a foreign language today could well be rocket fuel for your imagination tomorrow.

TOGGLE NOGGLES

Right-o! Now that we've got some groundwork laid, let's get into Toggle Noggles.

Toggle Noggles are a response to a Builder House funding round called "Ideas are Valuable," which ran from Dec. 5, 2022, to Dec. 19, 2022. The round seeks to incentivize the creation and publishing of novel ideas that will improve and expand Nouns Builder in a meaningful way. The first version of this experiment is focused exclusively on Nouns Builder, the tool and protocol that makes it easy for anyone to launch their own Nouns DAO. Participants (“Imagineers”) simply put forward their best ideas for any builders, creators, and artists in the Nouns Builder ecosystem to be able to pick up and run with. No delivery is expected other than the idea itself.

Toggle Noggles are inspired by Noggles, the iconic Nouns glasses that have become one of the most potent instruments for spreading the Nouns meme, or brand, far and wide.

Toggle Noggles are super-powered Noggles that serve as a collectible display for other NFTs, remixing those NFTs in a manner that — I really, really hope — lawyers will agree falls under the doctrine of fair use.

Take a pair of Noggle frames and assign two NFTs to each of the two rims, for a total of four associated NFTs.

Each rim can be toggled between its two assigned NFTs, for a total of 2 x 2 = 4 possible configurations.

Colored, rectangular filters of variable levels of pass-through ranging from 0 to 75% can be applied to each rim.

Attributes, therefore, would consist of at least the following:

• Frame color

• Left rim image 1

• Left rim image 2

• Left rim filter color

• Left rim filter position (i.e., left, right, top, bottom, or none)

• Left rim filter pass-through %

• Right rim image 1

• Right rim image 2

• Right rim filter color

• Right rim filter position

• Right rim filter pass-through %

NFTs used as images must be owned by the same wallet that creates the Toggle Noggle.

Once created, the Toggle Noggle can be minted as an edition of 2, with one going to the creator and the other going to a Nouns-style auction.

Revenue from the auction is split among the Toggle Noggle DAO general fund, Toggle Noggle Nouncil, Nouns DAO, Nouns Builder DAO, Zora, Toggle Noggle creator, and the creator(s) of the four component NFTs.

In addition, once every 24 hours, a Super Toggle Noggle is created and offered in a separate Nouns-style auction. This “STN” incorporates four image NFTs at random from a pool curated by the Toggle Noggle Docents as part of the Toggle Noggle Permanent Collection. These are NFTs that the Docents acquire for the DAO through purchases with restricted funds allocated by the Toggle Noggle Nouncil, received as donations, or received for in-kind services the DAO may provide.

THE FUTURE

As a longer-term vision for Toggle Noggles, I am already imagining how they could be remixed by borrowing elements of OKPC, the on-chain toy that lets you create, collect, and share artwork. If Toggle Noggles 1.0 is based on curation, collection, and sharing, Toggle Noggles 2.0 might be focused more on creation, collection, and sharing.

Also in the back of my mind for a future Toggle Noggles remix is the View-Master stereoscope toy that became so popular in the 1950s and ‘60s, with its iconic design and memorable reels that held 14 film transparencies in seven pairs.

Even if Toggle Noggles aren't selected for the Builder House "Ideas are Valuable" funding round, I'll be thrilled if someone takes this idea of mine and runs with it. So go on, Intrepid Builder, show us what you've got.

Thanks for sharing your time, Faithful Reader. I invite you to mint a free commemorative Toggle Noggles digital collectible as a signal of your early support in the event Toggle Noggles make the leap from my imagination to an Actual Thing.

Toggle, toggle! ⌐◨-◨

— logonaut.eth —