Core Issue: A lot of talented builders have Nouns on their radar, but are not sure how to contribute. The only place we actively incentivize them with ideas and funding is Prop House mandated rounds, which are retroactive, leaving builders who lose the round uncompensated for their work. Otherwise, they must figure out problems themselves and then ask for money, a difficult process if someone has no connections to the ecosystem.
Solution: Create a program to actively recruit new talented builders and pro-actively fund them to explore the Nouns ecosystem.
The entire process will be transparent via a public Discord and run by the 3-person team, who will be lightly compensated to do this work, ensuring accountability and commitment. Our initial proposal had no funding for the team, but we were recommended otherwise by Nouners.
Public Application:
Program:
We will use a 3 of 5 multi-sig, with the core team members as well as krel and yitong.
How will you actually find these builders? Our team has fairly deep networks within the crypto and broader tech space; we'll leverage our personal connections as well as our social media presence to find more builders. Additionally, a large appeal of programs like these (Thiel Fellowship, Prop House, MacArthur Grants) is the benefit of continued funding + prestige, which we intend to lean into.
But what if the builders don't do anything? This is similar to everything in Nouns already - there's a social contract to uphold, someone could always dissapear after receiving 200 ETH on-chain. We can setup the grant via Sablier to revoke if a builder goes MIA, however.
What will they actually build? The first round will not have a particular mandate but future ones could be structured closer to Prop House mandated rounds, where there is a theme. We believe that time and freedom is key to allowing talented builders to find something meaningful to build long-term.
Why not just run this on Prop House? Decisions are not always best made by large committees. Prop House rounds do not allow for deep conversation and analysis of candidates. A transparent, small committee allows for depth and betting on candidates who might not otherwise get a shot (i.e. people who aren't good at writing a description on prop house but would be amazing builders). Additionally, we'd like to create a long-term relationship with these builders via an organized cohort.
What if no good work comes out of this? That's a possibility, as is the case with prop house rounds. However, we believe that Nouns already has a great enough brand to attract solid builders. However, if nothing goods comes out of this trial, then we will have learned that pro-active grants for attracting builders is not a valid technique for our DAO. If there are takeaways, they can be adapted into other funding sources, like Prop House or NSFW in the future.
Why are you being paid? Our initial proposal did not include payment for the team, but it was suggested by Nouners that we should be getting paid to create accountability, as well as allow us to dedicate more time in making this more of a full-fledged program than one-off grants with no support from us.
5 Builders x 10 ETH = 50 ETH
Team Comp: 14 ETH
Total: 64 ETH
Questions? Contact mrtn on Discord (mrtn#7388) or Twitter (@anquetil)
Core Issue: A lot of talented builders have Nouns on their radar, but are not sure how to contribute. The only place we actively incentivize them with ideas and funding is Prop House mandated rounds, which are retroactive, leaving builders who lose the round uncompensated for their work. Otherwise, they must figure out problems themselves and then ask for money, a difficult process if someone has no connections to the ecosystem.
Solution: Create a program to actively recruit new talented builders and pro-actively fund them to explore the Nouns ecosystem.
The entire process will be transparent via a public Discord and run by the 3-person team, who will be lightly compensated to do this work, ensuring accountability and commitment. Our initial proposal had no funding for the team, but we were recommended otherwise by Nouners.
Public Application:
Program:
We will use a 3 of 5 multi-sig, with the core team members as well as krel and yitong.
How will you actually find these builders? Our team has fairly deep networks within the crypto and broader tech space; we'll leverage our personal connections as well as our social media presence to find more builders. Additionally, a large appeal of programs like these (Thiel Fellowship, Prop House, MacArthur Grants) is the benefit of continued funding + prestige, which we intend to lean into.
But what if the builders don't do anything? This is similar to everything in Nouns already - there's a social contract to uphold, someone could always dissapear after receiving 200 ETH on-chain. We can setup the grant via Sablier to revoke if a builder goes MIA, however.
What will they actually build? The first round will not have a particular mandate but future ones could be structured closer to Prop House mandated rounds, where there is a theme. We believe that time and freedom is key to allowing talented builders to find something meaningful to build long-term.
Why not just run this on Prop House? Decisions are not always best made by large committees. Prop House rounds do not allow for deep conversation and analysis of candidates. A transparent, small committee allows for depth and betting on candidates who might not otherwise get a shot (i.e. people who aren't good at writing a description on prop house but would be amazing builders). Additionally, we'd like to create a long-term relationship with these builders via an organized cohort.
What if no good work comes out of this? That's a possibility, as is the case with prop house rounds. However, we believe that Nouns already has a great enough brand to attract solid builders. However, if nothing goods comes out of this trial, then we will have learned that pro-active grants for attracting builders is not a valid technique for our DAO. If there are takeaways, they can be adapted into other funding sources, like Prop House or NSFW in the future.
Why are you being paid? Our initial proposal did not include payment for the team, but it was suggested by Nouners that we should be getting paid to create accountability, as well as allow us to dedicate more time in making this more of a full-fledged program than one-off grants with no support from us.
5 Builders x 10 ETH = 50 ETH
Team Comp: 14 ETH
Total: 64 ETH
Questions? Contact mrtn on Discord (mrtn#7388) or Twitter (@anquetil)