Vrbs is a new take on the Nouns protocol where you can earn a vote for your efforts.

What is Nouns?

Nouns is a protocol for spreading nounish culture. In Nouns, 1 membership (a Noun) is auctioned off every day, forever. 100% of sale proceeds go into a shared treasury, and owning a Noun gets you a vote on how to spend the treasury. The Nouns treasury funds public good, art, open source software, and more. Nouns has the most vibrant and well-intentioned community I’ve seen in more than a decade in crypto.

Nouns has been able to focus the otherwise degenerative speculative energy of crypto into more productive means for the common good. For example, my friend Davin was recently funded $250k to rebuild a community school in his hometown of Kiyanga, Uganda.

Anyone can build on Nouns, the brand is in the public domain. This has led to a Cambrian explosion of entrepreneurial, philanthropic, artistic, and otherwise massive creative energy on top of the Nouns brand ( ⌐◨-◨ ). Instead of competing for attention and creating in single player mode, you can build together with a community and get funded to do it.

⌐◨-◨ is a rallying cry onchain. Calling everyone to build a better world, together.

Why did we build Vrbs?

Our only gripe with the Nouns protocol, for all it got right, is that most people building the movement do not have a vote. And grassroots movements should be owned by the people.

In Nouns, the daily auction is a fantastic onboarding mechanism. But the auctions are expensive and exclusionary by nature, with only one new member onboarded every day. There are thousands of artists, creatives, builders, developers, and people building on Nouns. Only a small fraction of them have a vote.

That’s not to say Nouns holders are not contributing their time and energy to Nouns. Our only contention is that voting power is not accessible for most people.

Vrbs makes it possible for anyone to earn a vote for their efforts.

How does Vrbs work?

At a high level, Vrbs is a fork of Nouns. One Vrb is auctioned off every day, forever. Proceeds fund a shared treasury. Vrbs takes the meme machine pioneered by Nouns and adds more accessible incentive mechanisms. That way, more people can own votes.

The first major difference is the art. Anyone can create the next Vrb.

Vrbs are original art pieces. Artists create and upload art on vrbs.build. Art pieces are fully onchain SVGs.

The community picks their favorite art, and the top voted piece is auctioned off as the next Vrb to the highest bidder.

The artist behind each Vrb earns 20% of the auction proceeds in ETH and voting power.

Artists from all around the world create Vrbs and earn votes in the Vrbs movement.

Why is this important?

Anyone contributing time and energy to Vrbs has an avenue to grow their say in the movement.

Through the daily auction, a new member and artist get votes in Vrbs. Artists are able to do what they do best, and earn votes in the process.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Imagine you build a business on the Vrbs brand. Split revenue with Vrbs, earn votes, and incentivize consumers who can earn votes for their purchases as well.

Anyone who builds on Vrbs now has an accessible entrypoint to earn a vote. As the movement scales, all new members can get votes and start growing their stake in Vrbs.

Vrbs is a grassroots onchain movement, owned by the people building it.

How does it work?

One Vrb is sold every day to the highest bidder. Each Vrb is 1000 votes in Vrbs DAO.

In addition, 1000 Vrb Votes, an ERC20 token, are sold on average each day by a continuous VRGDA.

The VRGDA is where the real magic happens. It works by targeting an issuance of tokens over time (1000 a day), and adjusting the price of each token depending on the difference between the current and scheduled supply of tokens.

This means anyone can send any amount of money to the VRGDA contract at any time, and receive Vrb Votes in the process. Funds spent to buy votes go directly to the Vrbs treasury.

You can start a merch shop or work with your favorite charity to split money raised with the Vrbs treasury. There’s a direct incentive to do so.

Anyone can earn votes for their efforts.

What can Vrbs do?

Our potential is massive. Nouns has raised over $100m and funded thousands of people millions of dollars to spread positivity and build public good in the world.

Vrbs builds on Nouns in a way that can bring ⌐◨-◨ to the masses. With Vrbs, there is now a direct incentive to grow our shared treasury. Anyone can earn votes in Vrbs by helping to spread nounish culture.

Like Nouns, Vrbs should be bold with spending the treasury. We should dare greatly and empower people to uplift their communities to build a positive future we can all be excited about.

New apps, giving platforms, storefronts, services, IRL events, products and more can all be built on the Vrbs brand. By splitting money with the treasury to earn votes, every transaction in the Vrbs ecosystem can be a force for good.

With these new incentives, everything you purchase or give your energy to can grow treasury and earn you voting power in the movement. The power of this public goods flywheel cannot be understated, and we are excited to see what people will build with it.

What’s next?

To paraphrase owocki - the rise of smart contracts means we can now program our values into money. We have a revolutionary opportunity to design new incentive mechanisms to help people coordinate towards positive ends that benefit humanity as a whole, not just corporate shareholders.

The Vrbs purpose, taken largely from 4156’s answer to “What does it mean to be nounish”, calls us to reorient our collective consciousness to a culture that rewards positive impact and public good.

The building blocks we have put in place with Vrbs open up a massive new design space for experimentation and innovation in line with these ideals.

We need to build tools that help us direct our time and energy towards the common good. Help people come together with friends to uplift their local communities. Steward public spaces in a time when legacy institutions are failing us. Create positive externalities that regenerate the world and the lives of everyone in it.

Ultimately, help people envision the positive future that is within reach, if only we can come together to build it.

With ⌐◨-◨ and ▀▄▀,

- the Vrbs Architects

How can you help?

Have an idea for a product or service or business want to build with Vrbs? Create a splits contract and earn votes.

Want to join the community, support incredible artists, and own a piece of history? Bid on the next Vrb.

Want to get funded for an idea you’ve always wanted to build that makes the world a better place? Make a proposal to get funded.

Want to help create Vrbs culture onchain? Fire up a pixel art editor and create the next Vrb.

Not sure where to start? Visit the build page to view current goals in Vrbs, or participate in contests to build with the community.

The onchain revolution is here, we can’t waste this historic opportunity to reorient the world in a positive direction, both for ourselves and for posterity.

⌐◨-◨