Welcome to the Beaniverse

A spawn of the Nouniverse.

I believe the future of crypto will increasingly look and feel nounish.

Nouns have helped pave the way for public goods and pioneered all kinds of new infra for creators to explore their own ecosystems.

At this point, I’m sure there is a bit of nouns fork fatigue but truthfully I am surprised there aren’t more forks exploring their own characters, brand, and missions.

It’s our goal at BEANSDAO to do exactly that while following our own north star:

Support the arts.

We are able to narrow in on this goal simply because Nouns have freed us up to do so by providing the infra rails we need in order to pursue this mission.

Although the mission is intentionally left a little vague to leave room for our community to interpret and build upon, I’ve been asked what my own hopes are for the future of beans.

This article is where I’ll share exactly that.

If you’re new here, you should start with these:
What are Beans?
Why Beans?

The Question

What does a unique character brand born from the pioneering work nouns have laid look like?

We've seen Nouns reskins and other pixelated forks of Nouns with new head shapes. But what does that look like with unique, original characters exploring their own focused missions?

I don’t know and I have gone to extreme lengths in order to find out.

My Hopes

Nouns + Gorillaz + Pokemon = Beans

Nouns
For their open source philosophy + bootstrapping and governance mechanisms

Gorillaz
For championing the arts
(For those that don’t know Gorillaz are fictional characters controlled by a group, brought to life by animators, musicians, production studios, etc. that often work with and support artists early on in their careers)

Pokemon
For their little monsters

Roll all of those things into a ball and that’s what I hope for Beans.

I don’t know exactly what this looks like but I can’t wait to find out.

I hope that we can continue using the tools built by Nouns. Without them, this project wouldn’t be able to exist.

While I love Nouns and I want to keep their open, pioneering spirit alive within Beans, my hope is that our site begins to take a shape entirely its own and inspires a whole new class of nounish characters.

My Dreams

I see beans as main characters, I see them as side characters, I see them as digital companions to the metaverse. (the latter being my favorite).

But ultimately I want these bean-like characters to be synonymous with art.

A project brought to life by artists all over the world on the internet. Illustrators, animators, designers, fashion designers, coders, musicians, performance artists, and more all working together to bring these characters and these stories to life.

They all have a say in what the Beaniverse is and how it’s governed.I hope, much like when I see a character from Gorillaz, that Beans end up becoming beloved characters that collaborate with rising stars who end up shaping the cultural zeitgeist. But in our case, the cultural zeitgeist of art on the internet.

With our focused mission and our characters at the forefront of it, Beans could become this.

I hope to see new weird things, new interpretations of the world they live in, and bring to life something that wouldn’t have been able to get funding anywhere else.

I want to be part of a group that is focused entirely on accomplishing these goals.

Why this is important to me

I’ve been the kid growing up in a blue collar town being told that becoming an artist is dumb, pointless, even impossible.

I’ve been the person that decided to stick both middle fingers up, defy the odds, and teach myself how to make digital art so I could make a living doing what I love.

And I’ve been the artist struggling to get grants trying to pursue a career outside of making commercials in order to find my own artistic path.

My goal with Beans is to create a project that can directly support artists that find themselves in similar situations.

Supporting the arts is a core piece of my belief system and whether or not this experiment works out, this mission and these characters are something that will be with me my entire life.

Other thoughts

These characters have gone by many names but once the name beans was out of the bag it was hard to call them anything else.

People just love saying beans.

There may come a time where we need to differentiate the brand a bit more and grow away from just ‘BEANS’ but for now that’s where we’re at.

Much like how Mickey Mouse is a mouse, or Hello Kitty a cat, there are a lot of bean characters out there and we need to find our ‘Pikachu’ in order to break out.

I feel pretty confident the project can pivot around/grow from where we are in order to find that.

Along with keeping the wheels on the DAO in this early phase, that’s likely where I’ll end up shifting a lot of my focus.

Thank you

If you’ve made it this far, you’re a real one and I appreciate every second of your attention.

I hope to find a tribe of people that share these interests and again, these are my own hopes for the project. I'm sure there are others out there that are interpreting the mission differently and I want to be supportive of that as well.

Cheers and thanks for reading along,

Jack