Nouns Is Dead, Long Live Nouns

In 2021, a group of talented creatives came together. At first they were 10 in number: 4156, 9999, Dev Carrot, Dom, Gremplin, Kai of eBoy, Seneca, Solimander, Timpers, and Vape Ape.

These became the "Nounders," and together they created Nouns DAO. The pixel art was (and still is) a marvel in its own right, and the smart contracts can fairly be described as wonders of creative engineering.

The mission wasn't to make a ton of ETH through a simple NFT drop. The Nounders wanted to make a headless movement, underpinned by the CC0 Nouns art and daily avatar auctions, that would fund creative experiments that most other projects would overlook.

The vision became solidified in a motto: One Noun, every day, forever.

For nearly 5 years, this Nouns vision hummed along and attracted a tight-knit community of dreamers from around the world.

And while there's no question the DAO has been atrophying over the past year or so as a small group of whales have assumed dominance within it, its grassroots accomplishments to date are varied and the kind of stuff worth being proud of. For example, the Nouns have:

• Helped discover/conserve a new frog species (Hyalinobatrachium nouns)
• Funded new school grounds in Uganda (Ndurumo Primary School)
• Raised 199 ETH for Ethereum core devs (Delivery at Dawn mint)
• Donated 100 ETH to onchain detective ZachXBT (Nouns Proposal 184)
• Fielded world-class Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and Melee teams (Nouns Esports)
• Innovated the first DAO-native version of forking (Nouns Fork)

I'm glossing over many creative experiments, but you get the idea. In their prime, the Nouns would back the artistic, the charitable, the overlooked, the weird. And they did so out of a spirit of love and play, celebrating collaboration instead of worshipping profits.

In these ways, the Nouns have always been one of a kind in crypto, and crypto has been a better place with the Nouns around. I recognized this magic early on and have been writing on the group as something of an unofficial historian since they first launched.

Against this backdrop, it's with a strong sense of personal sadness that I relay the news that Nouns governance has finally been captured by that aforementioned handful of whales.

Mike Good, who I've followed for years and is an impeccable long-time Nounish community member, sounded the alarm on X yesterday. The barbarians are no longer at the gates; they have assumed control of the palace.

To make a long story short, a small coalition of anons have 1) accumulated enough Nouns to pass proposals unilaterally and 2) abstained from DAO governance for months to stall organic community proposals.

These dynamics paved the way to the group's Prop 955, which will effectively kill daily Nouns auctions by setting their reserve price to 2.8 ETH to reflect Nouns' "book value." The whales forced this through with only 10 voters, dooming the One Noun, every day, forever vision.

Why? As the prop itself reads:

"This is to address the current issues of voter dilution and near-zero voter retention. The majority of bidders in our auctions are scalpers who are primarily trying to catch the secondary bid and have not participated in governance at all - they have cast zero votes."

The irony is that the proposer, makenounsgreatagain.eth, had themself never voted in governance prior to Prop 955. Womp womp.

Plus the complaint about scalpers only caring about money is rich, since these whales have blocked quorum on legitimate DAO votes for creative experiments for months by intentionally not voting on them. They have done this in the name of establishing the "book value" of Nouns NFTs. Collaboration has been subverted for consolidating investments.

It's not rocket science as far as what will come next. Noun auctions, and thus the DAO's main income stream, will be frozen. In turn, this will prevents new voters from joining, entrenching the whale coalition that has assumed control. They will be able to do as they please, unchecked.

Will they bastardize the DAO into a mutant, finance-focused investment vehicle? Will they steadily loot it over time? Will they reforge it into a better cultural layer for the Ethereum ecosystem as they claim they want to?

Only time will tell, but it's safe to say the original vision of Nouns has fallen. The new leaders are not Nounish. The initial run of Nouns was a beautiful vision, and it is a vision that can be reborn in a V2. The question then becomes, how could we redo this project in such a way as to make it resolutely capture-resistant?

It's possible, like 4156 suggests above, that we don't yet have all the tools or knowledge that would be necessary to truly reboot Nouns the right way. But I agree, the governance would need more complexity, perhaps things like quadratic voting, a Tribune of the Plebs body, or etc.

I'm aware of at least one group of proven Nouners that is working on a V2. I know nothing beyond that, though I applaud their work and am rooting for them to succeed.

If they can pull it off, I and plenty of others will be there to support them. This dream is too good to give up on. The first rendition of Nouns may be dead, yes, but the spirit of Nouns will never die. That I believe, and it gives me hope. To everyone Nounish who has been discouraged this week, keep your heads up, and keep Nouns weird, every day, forever.

The glasses stay on. ⌐◨-◨