i'm supportive and really love the aesthetic, consistency, mono & lex's long term community participation, what everyone that attended one of the ETH global events are reporting back about the nouns fair presence, etc. it's all really great and much needed for nouns to continue to grow into a cornerstone of eth builder culture so i'm very much excited to vote FOR.
that said, i do want to take the moment to highlight a few things that was a bit of a red flag on the budget side of things.
i know that prop 524 was cancelled for the reason to separate the followup onboarding portion of the prop, but the prop had the nouns fair budget entirely in eth (115 eth), which doesn't make sense to me since the fair event costs are all USD based.
with the updated prop we're seeing possibly an explanation of why it was eth based since the builders are asking for builder comp of 90 eth. but builder compensation wasn't a bullet point in the nouns fair eth budget in the original prop?
to be clear i'm TOTALLY fine with builders asking for comp and asking for a generous comp if they are proven and over delivered over their past props (mono & lex qualify imo) but i'm really not okay with builder comp being silently added to what is described as cost. i'm honestly a bit surprised veteran prop builders mono & lex approached it that way. giving the benefit of the doubt here since they are trusted community builders but would have voted against if i saw it from new builders tbh.
also, in general i really want to ask for builders to put comp requests in USD terms than put it in ETH units. i know it can be framed as being more eth aligned but i kind of don't buy it and view it as making harder for the voters to easily comprehend the salary ask being made (without doing additional mental math) and prop writing should focus on making it easier for voters. also what if eth prop goes down? asking for eth comp for an annual prop like this is kind of like asking for an eth call option as payment. you're taking a directional bet on eth price. it's just weird. i honestly wonder if builders that put their comp in eth terms feel a bit awkward about asking for a large sum of usd and feel better showing a smaller number in eth terms. 90 eth is asking for $270,000 (given this is for 9 months, you're each asking for a $180k salary for running nouns fair). yeah it's not a small sum of money but you're saying your work is worth it and you deserve that amount. i'm down for the dao to pay that but you should ask it upfront proudly with clarity.
also one last thing is that the two of you already get paid 2 eth per month for prop 468 (nouns amigos). so in reality you're each asking for a combined annual salary in the $250k range (7 eth per month) for running both nouns fair and nouns amigos. that's okay, full time nouns ppl that are exceptional can command that amount of money, but again i feel weird that the nouns amigos compensation is not mentioned in this prop as kind of a disclosure. how is time being split between the two efforts? are you actually full time nouns or is nouns fair and nouns amigos part time work still?
the financial reality of this prop is that it's a ~$500k prop. that's the range in which i take the financial ask really seriously and only would vote yes for proven builders that scaled the prop funding ask over many props with transparency. the reality of this prop at the moment is that the financial transparency and clarity of the ask is just not what i would expect from a $500k ask returning nouns prop
given that this prop would likely still pass without my support (and having written this full vwr) i'm actually deciding to vote against just to make the signal around the issues i had a bit more clear and hopefully have more future prop builders writing props avoid the same issues.