Cover: Berthe Morisot "Reading" + Noggles

This post is taking part in the Nouns x Kiwi writing contest

I'll be the first to admit that before the Kiwi writing contest, I'd always put off learning more about Nouns.

I was vaguely aware that they were an NFT DAO, that Nouns NFTs were too expensive for me, and that they went through a fork over naming an endangered frog species - which at the time seemed a bit of a stupid reason for a divorce, but then... who ever talks about endangered frogs?!

That was until a few days ago...

A small auditorium. You're sitting on the top left on the stairs among a crowd of maybe 25 people. Looking around, you spot art students and culture aficionados. Two of your friends are still outside, chugging their glasses of Chardonnay, not two to pass by a bar without ordering.

Another one sits right next to you, studying the pamphlet.

On the first site, it reads that the play is centered around Nouns, written by a hobby linguist who got fascinated with this group that picked a grammatical concept to name their governance experiment.

As your friend notices that you forgot to prepare - as usual, you just walked into things without a clue - she reads the next part aloud.

"The linguist in me knew nouns as a syntactic class. They are one of the most time-stable concepts in any language, and let's face it, we couldn't get through our most basic conversations without them. There's also a huge variety of them... which got me wondering: what does an organization that calls themselves that do?

At the same time, nouns encompass such a vast field that they can be difficult to lock down. I wanted to explore whether the same can be said about this group. And to do that, what better way than imagining a dialogue between different parties at, where else would it be, the networking area of a crypto conference?"

That's where your friend stops and adds.

Maybe I should have chugged one of those wines, too. I'm not sure I can face crypto networking without it.

Your bittersweet chuckle is drowned out by the gong. The two missing friends hurry in.

The lights go off.

Only one lone spotlight illuminates the stage, where a figure dressed from head to toe in crypto merch struts along. We all know them—one of those overenthusiastic BD guys.

He's on his phone, frantically responding to telegram messages (you can see his phone screen on a screen hanging on the wall behind) - then opening Google and typing in: What's Nouns DAO?

Talking to himself: Sooo... Nouns is a DAO where people buy a 32×32 pixel character NFT to get in. One NFT, one vote. That's simple enough. Maybe I should buy one... Oh wait, no. I need to make a lot of commission to pay 0.69 ETH... And then, will it be worth it? My team expects a lot of new partnership announcements and integrations...

What else does it say here. Ah yes, so it's CC0 license. That means, I can print myself some cool t-shirts with these glasses. And it gets better; there's a lot of funding in the treasury, and they don't seem greedy with it. Maybe I should lobby someone to get a proposal for my merch through. Or a partnership...

Behind him stealthily, the stage crew arranges a few tables, paper cups, and a coffee bar. They even include the obligatory stickers and a bunch of cheaply printed flyers promising a guaranteed 4000% yield.

The BD guy, let's call him Steve, heads toward the coffee.

From the right enters someone else—a DAO enthusiast wearing a T-shirt making loose references to mushrooms and their decentralized properties.

Steve: Hey, want a coffee?

DAO enthusiast: Nah, a tea for me, please.

Steve: Sure, they got some here.

Beverages sorted, they both move toward one of those standing desks to study the agenda.

DAO enthusiast: I'm Mark, by the way. And you're?

Steve: Steve. Nice to meet you. Did you see that someone from Nouns is speaking?

Mark: Nouns? I thought they were dead.

Steve: Nah, why would you say that?

Mark: Interesting. Well, you know, after this entire frog debacle and the fork, all I remember is that a handful of OGs quit, and people lost interest in it. It didn't help that they moved all of their communications to Farcaster. I'm sorry, I have commitment issues with any social platform that isn't X.

Steve: Out of sight, out of mind.

Mark: Attention is all you need and all that jazz.

Steve: I gotta say, though, they seem alive and well. At least, this is what their upcoming talk suggests. They even have tooling that allows anyone to set up their own Nounish type DAO.

Mark: Yeah, whatever that means. Nounish. Any clue?

Steve: Honestly, my best guess is that it's somewhat related to the NFT mechanism and the phrase on their website saying that it's a community-owned brand that makes a positive impact by funding ideas and fostering collaboration.

A green-haired girl enters from the side, nose deep into a book, the cover identifying it as The Starfish and the Spider.

Mark: Oh hey, there's Isa. Let's ask her what she thinks about this. Reading, as usual. I hear she loathes networking.

Isa, who overheard that last part: I don't hate it, I just hate it when people can't talk about anything but how amazing they are. Or worse, stop talking to you the second they realize you're not an angel investor or KOL. Anyway, what's new?

Mark: We were just discussing Nouns DAO and what it could mean to be Nounish.

Isa: Funny choice of name isn't it. There's pronouns but no anti-nouns. So, one could assume you can't be against them. 😄

Mark: I'm not sure whether that's real smart or dumb, or something in between.

Isa: If only I knew. From what I hear about Nouns, it's a pretty exciting experiment in governance. You see, I'm reading this book that talks about the rise of leaderless organizations. For example, did you know that the Spanish Empire, with all its advanced weapons, lost to the Apache?

Frantically turning pages, Isa moves toward the counter to get some tea.

Steve: I mean, all these decentralized organizations sound great in theory, but I'm not so convinced they deliver more than their centralized counterparts. It just doesn't make all that much sense to me. You grow infinitely by one person every day? How can you get stuff done?

Isa, who has found the page she was looking for: let me quote

If we're used to seeing the world through a centralized lens, decentralized organizations don't make much sense.

So maybe you just need to be more open to different ways of doing things.

Mark: What she says. DAOs are quite fascinating. Although I admit they're far from perfect, the usual problem is that whales end up deciding. If you want to be cynical, you could say that's just like irl politics.

Isa: Maybe the money is the problem. The author has some examples of organizations before DAOs existed. One of them is the anonymous alcoholics. It's a decentralized organization where the steps and program are agreed upon, but you can implement it in your town.

At Alcoholics Anonymous, no one's in charge. And yet, at the same time, everyone's in charge.

Maybe it's like that at Nouns too?

Mark: Could be, it would appear that some spirit of accountability for creating a positive vibe around the brand - for lack of better word - is definitely there.

Steve: They're funding e-sports team players and plenty of creative things like the recent movie fest. There's also a Nouns cafe, a deli...

Isa: Yeah, that checks out. My only association with it had been the creative aspect.

Steve turning toward Isa: Any more smart things in that book that might help with our discussion here?

Isa: Hmmm, there was something about how for users it doesn't matter whether the entity is centralized or not as long as they can do what they want. I don't think that's as important here, people might encounter these nouns, the glasses, in any context. So they won't necessarily ever figure out what they are about. But maybe this one:

It's not just about community, not just about getting stuff for free, not just about freedom and trust. Ideology is the glue that holds decentralized organizations together.

Mark: Aaa, ideology. That's become a bit of a dirty word, hasn't it?

Isa: Ha, you don't say. Isn't the same true of the word DAO these days?

Mark, visibly annoyed, turns his attention toward the screen, which is now showing the agenda of the conference.

Steve: We got Napoleon to thank for that—the bad associations with the term ideology. We might be onto something. Isn't it the thing you can't clearly define, the fluffy stuff that holds all this together?

Isa: I believe so. Like in a cult. But without being about a supreme leader who wants to have multiple wives.

Mark: You watch too many cult documentaries on Netflix. Let's go watch this talk, maybe we'll be smarter for it—something about brand building.

Isa: Since when are you interested in brands?

Mark: Since I've been appointed as a council member to oversee the marketing working group.

On the screen for the audience, it reads: five weeks later, the DAO decided to fire the working group Mark was appointed to oversee.

All three walk out of the door.

The stage crew rearranges the scene. No more coffee. They hang up some prints on the wall and position a variety of liquors and wines on the right. There's also an obligatory pizza and some snacks.

Next to it is a big banner advertising [generic crypto company]. They put some legos on the table, probably because modularity is hot these days.

Isa, Steve, and Mark enter the scene again, serving themselves drinks while another person walks in.

Isa: I don't know about you guys, but I feel my head is gonna explode. So much information.

Steve: Ha, yeah, I saw you were even making notes.

Isa: Yeah, obviously. In German we say wer schreibt, der bleibt. If you write you remain.

Mark: This branding talk was interesting. I, too, noticed that recently, stuff is so ephemeral that brands have become harder to define. Unless you're so uber successful that people will even see your red Coke can when zero red pixels are in an image.

Isa: Yeah, that's like brainwashing. But aesthetics is just one part of the equation. Outside of the noggles and the pfps, the styles that Nouns are expressed in are pretty diverse.

Steve: Isn't that just the same as the headless brands they talked about in that panel? There's no one committee doing all the branding, but there's the noggles and some loose association of good vibes.

The person who also entered the rooms walks up to the trio. He is equipped with an ENS badge dangling around his neck and an artblocks earring in his left ear, clearly an NFT holder..

NFT Holder: Hey y'all, I hear you're talking about noggles... May I butt in?

Agreeable nods all around.

NFT Holder: I've been following the Nouns thing for some time. There was a time it was considered cool, and novel. They were this grassroots movement that wanted to fund public goods and have fun. I don't quite feel they maintained that image. Maybe they have too many parasites in the community, or they just suffer a similar fate as other DAOs... apathy. Clearly, some proposals are just aimed at draining funds, and I don't sense that cloud wisdom always prevails...

Oh, also, what happened to my manners? I'm Jojo. Nice to meet you all.

Mark: Apathy, indifference... the enemy of all our noble communal aspirations.

Isa: You sound like a burned child, hun.

Jojo: Don't get me wrong. I still think the intentions were good, and we all in crypto are constantly experimenting. This includes stuff going wrong at times. The question is whether you move on from it. During the latest fall-out, I reckon they cut off some of the idiots that didn't align with the...

Steve: The ideology. The Nounish-ness. Honestly, they should have written a manifesto or something. That's the new hot thing, isn't it?

Isa: Manifestos are nice. The spirit of Nounishness is haunting the world haha, But who even reads them nowadays? In my view, what drives the people in these communities and their worldview matters more. For example, the impression I get is that they aren't mindless accelerationists or cynical postmodernists..,.

Mark: Hmmm...Being Nounish, we're not much closer to a clue of this, are we?

Jojo: One minute. I met this lady who was part of Nouns in the other room. Let me find her and drag her into this. It'll be worth it.

...

An elegant lady wearing a throw-over kimono covered in a noggles pattern and a black onesie enters the room, led in by Jojo.

Noggles Lady: Hey, everyone. I'm Lisa. I hear you're trying to understand Nouns.

All eyes on her expectantly. She continues

Lisa: I got my first 2 years ago, and by now, I'm up to two. I went through the ups and downs, but what keeps me around is that the overall goal hasn't changed. It's still about funding public goods, spreading the Nouns brand, and having fun. It's cliche, but the people keep me around.

Isa: But how do you decide what spending is worth it or not? What's the mindset like?

Lisa: We don't all agree at all times, but that's the beauty of having a diverse crowd. And in a sense, what makes it worthwhile? How boring would it be if we all had the same opinion all the time? We also funded stupid stuff, and at the same time, many cool things got built that even found their use beyond the Nouns community, such as in OP governance.

The wrong way to approach it is asking what's in it for me. What I'd like to believe is part of the Nounish mind is to oppose zero-sum games and operate under an abundance mindset.

Steve: So, it's a bit like being a hippie?

Lisa: Steve Jobs was a Hippie.

Jojo: A successful one at that, everyone knows the apple brand...

Lisa: Indeed, if there's one thing we can agree on as Nouns, we want to grow the brand, and alongside that crypto as a whole. We all benefit from that, don't we?

Mark: Yes, true. So, are you all crypto-optimistic humanists?

Lisa: You could say that. Yes, we believe in people and the positive impact we can make coming together. That includes making mistakes along the way...

Isa: Honestly, that's refreshing. There's a type of DAO persona who ends up talking so much about quadratic voting and the abstract of political philosophy that you wonder who's supposed to want to get in. Now, at least, this one is simple. I might not be able to afford the NFT, but hey, why don't we run our own Nounish Collective?

Steve: As an experiment? And what's our shared mission?

Isa: Hm, could we just become bored with the crypto events support group? Do stuff like a trip to the local museum instead of enjoying the view of the hotel carpet... simply be a bunch pondering the deep questions such as what does it mean to be nourished or the reasons for the loneliness epidemic?

Jojo: I'm in. There's a manga exhibit around here I've been meaning to go to. Now we can do it as a group!

Steve: If we throw in some funds, we can even buy a ticket for a person who otherwise can't join... In the long run, we could use some yield earned on stablecoins. Then it doesn't feel like we'd be asking people for money upfront...

Isa: Yes, I like that. I have no clue how it could technically work, but I'd be happy to have some of my farmed tokens go toward a good cause, like getting someone new into an art exhibit. Who knows, it might grow into something beautiful...

Mark: Another governance experiment in small? Of course, I'll have to join. Let's make something fun of this, and go beyond the usual hyperfocus on tech toward focus on what moves the humans like us.

Lisa: That sounds like a Nounish thought to me.

In the back of the room, a guy in a suit enters... A lawyer or ex-wallstreet banker.

But before the third act begins, the gong goes off—break time.

You turn toward your friends. Everyone seems eager to get to the bar and start discussing the dialogue that just transpired.

A pamphlet falls to the floor. In passing, you read: The group pursues their experiment of launching a Nounish Collective. After an initial honeymoon phase, opinions on how the financial side should be handled converge, showing deep rifts. Things worsen when the friends learn they need a legal entity, and a lawyer suggests setting up a foundation, imbuing himself with veto powers in the process. Can the friends unite to overcome the power-hungry lawyer, or will their Collective fall apart?

You recall a quote from Mark Twain.

“If you want love and abundance in your life, give it away.”

You look forward to seeing how the drama resolves and whether the optimistic friends will win against the power-hungry Hobbesian lawyer. You're hopeful despite so much evidence to the contrary.

Thanks for reading. 💚

All the characters in this play are a figment of my imagination. The conversations I had in my mind trying to make sense of Nounish.

I figured I'd try something different than a usual stream of consciousness by one voice (me).

Big thanks to the crypto friends I pestered to provide me with their thoughts on Nouns; you might find your stance reflected in one of the figures :))

Credits to the Nouns for providing me with insights, Chris & Nounish Prof. Further credits to Mo from Animoca and Wai from the Galverse crew.

A bit of Dr Nick's thoughts also found their way into this, and nuance from a discussion in the FactoryDAO chat.

Highly recommend reading The Starfish and the spider for a look at decentralized organizations before DAOs existed.

If this is received well, I shall write the following acts.