Last year post-Merge, there was a meaningful public concern around the rising level of censorship in Ethereum due to the (then dominant) Flashbots relay censoring OFAC transactions. At its peak, block censorship reached ~80%.
In response to the public concern, the Flashbots team accelerated open sourcing their relay code and many teams sprinted towards building non-censoring relay alternatives.
Two such relays succeeded in gaining meaningful traction—the ultra sound relay and the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team—resulting in the dramatic reduction of censored blocks earlier this year.
It's worth noting that such gains in relay market share was not attained simply by launching a copy-paste non-censoring fork of the Flashbots relay. The ultra sound relay team had to actually build a lower latency relay through innovations of their own such as optimistic relaying and various devops optimizations.
ultra sound relay's market share has been capped around 33% lately because the team is committed to self-cap its dominance to 1/3 of Ethereum blocks to foster relay diversity. They are also working closely with Mike Neuder from the EF to help accelerate R&D for enshrined PBS that would eliminate the need for relays entirely.
1. To continue to express our alignment with Ethereum and its values.
Nouns is a headless brand. There is no PR head that builds coherent brand identities. Instead, we are what we do.
So far our track record is strong:
It's important to continue these things. To have an identity. To be who we are.
Ethereum-aligned public goods we've funded so far in our history:
We should be proud of what we've done so far but we must continue. Ethereum-aligned public goods are the substrates of our onchain world and funding them is an important expression of who we are and what we stand for.
2. To reach prospective DAO members that also care about Ethereum and the onchain world.
Charismatic giving towards public goods creates news and generates viral attention like anything else we might fund in an attempt to proliferate our brand and attract the attention of prospective DAO members.
Funding Ethereum public goods is particularly useful in this regard since ETH holders and onchain world enthusiasts who care about Ethereum public goods are also (at least currently) our primary prospective DAO member demographic.
Who is on the ultra sound relay team?
AlphaMonad leads the dev effort, with support from alex and Justin Drake.
Does the ultra sound money team need the funding?
This proposal is meant to recognize what has been accomplished (more like an award) not necessarily fund future work so the proposal does not focus on this aspect. However, the team communicated that funding is currently very tight, cloud bills alone costing ~$15k per month, so the funding would be very welcome.
What other funding sources does ultra sound relay team have?
A 10 ETH per month no-strings-attached donation from a top MEV-boost builder is the primary funding source according to the team.
Any conflict of interest?
The proposer (Noun 40) has no prior (or planned future) personal or business relationship with anyone on the ultra sound relay team. Reaching out to ask for permission to make this proposal was the first and only connection.
Why not also fund the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team as well?
The ETH prize felt a bit superflous given that the Gnosis DAO has a $260M treasury of their own but they definitely deserve high praise for stepping up and maintaining a successful non-censoring public good relay as well!
Last year post-Merge, there was a meaningful public concern around the rising level of censorship in Ethereum due to the (then dominant) Flashbots relay censoring OFAC transactions. At its peak, block censorship reached ~80%.
In response to the public concern, the Flashbots team accelerated open sourcing their relay code and many teams sprinted towards building non-censoring relay alternatives.
Two such relays succeeded in gaining meaningful traction—the ultra sound relay and the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team—resulting in the dramatic reduction of censored blocks earlier this year.
It's worth noting that such gains in relay market share was not attained simply by launching a copy-paste non-censoring fork of the Flashbots relay. The ultra sound relay team had to actually build a lower latency relay through innovations of their own such as optimistic relaying and various devops optimizations.
ultra sound relay's market share has been capped around 33% lately because the team is committed to self-cap its dominance to 1/3 of Ethereum blocks to foster relay diversity. They are also working closely with Mike Neuder from the EF to help accelerate R&D for enshrined PBS that would eliminate the need for relays entirely.
1. To continue to express our alignment with Ethereum and its values.
Nouns is a headless brand. There is no PR head that builds coherent brand identities. Instead, we are what we do.
So far our track record is strong:
It's important to continue these things. To have an identity. To be who we are.
Ethereum-aligned public goods we've funded so far in our history:
We should be proud of what we've done so far but we must continue. Ethereum-aligned public goods are the substrates of our onchain world and funding them is an important expression of who we are and what we stand for.
2. To reach prospective DAO members that also care about Ethereum and the onchain world.
Charismatic giving towards public goods creates news and generates viral attention like anything else we might fund in an attempt to proliferate our brand and attract the attention of prospective DAO members.
Funding Ethereum public goods is particularly useful in this regard since ETH holders and onchain world enthusiasts who care about Ethereum public goods are also (at least currently) our primary prospective DAO member demographic.
Who is on the ultra sound relay team?
AlphaMonad leads the dev effort, with support from alex and Justin Drake.
Does the ultra sound money team need the funding?
This proposal is meant to recognize what has been accomplished (more like an award) not necessarily fund future work so the proposal does not focus on this aspect. However, the team communicated that funding is currently very tight, cloud bills alone costing ~$15k per month, so the funding would be very welcome.
What other funding sources does ultra sound relay team have?
A 10 ETH per month no-strings-attached donation from a top MEV-boost builder is the primary funding source according to the team.
Any conflict of interest?
The proposer (Noun 40) has no prior (or planned future) personal or business relationship with anyone on the ultra sound relay team. Reaching out to ask for permission to make this proposal was the first and only connection.
Why not also fund the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team as well?
The ETH prize felt a bit superflous given that the Gnosis DAO has a $260M treasury of their own but they definitely deserve high praise for stepping up and maintaining a successful non-censoring public good relay as well!