Welcome back to Active Governance, issue #11!

As some of you may know, I've recently had my very first proposal on-chain, Prop 340. The pitch was to create the first Nouns animated series. We had a great vision and a fantastic team, but unfortunately, it didn't quite go our way.

I believe this was partially due to the state of the DAO, with a sizable portion of voters defaulting to vote against. However, we also received a significant number of genuine "no" votes with valuable feedback. Currently, we're back to the drawing board, exploring how to improve and consider the viability of a version 2.

The next topic is proposal 354, which introduces the infamous FORK 🍴. Due to the importance of this proposal, I'll be changing the usual structure of the newsletter and solely focus on this proposal and its implications. Let's dive in!

Proposal 354 - Voting FOR

Nouns DAO V3 upgrade, including Nouns Fork

A note on the proposal:

There are many features being proposed here, only one of which is the fork. While I understand this was done for practical reasons, such as audits, costs, and implementation, I believe that a topic as contentious as the fork should have been its own separate proposal.

Because of its importance and overall impact on the DAO the only feature I'll actually be analyzing and deliberating on is the fork, and I expect many others will do the same. Which defeats the purpose of bundling in the other suggested features.

On the fork:

This has been a topic of discussion since I first joined the DAO some 8 months ago.

From my first hearing of it I was fundamentally against it, questioning why we should allow people to exit the DAO at the cost of the treasury and in detriment of the DAO's objectives. There was never a promise of a claim to the treasury. When you purchase a Noun you are purchasing the art and one vote.

If we compare it to other NFT projects there isn't anything similar. If the price of your asset drops, you can't just take back your investment because you changed your mind. Investing comes with risks, and that's how it goes.

Later, I came to know one of the counter arguments, which is that a fork is more cultural in its nature. It suggests that DAOs should allow for forks in case a group of people don't agree with the direction that's being taken and want to try a different approach. This is aligned with Web3's permissionless and decentralized nature which Nouns support.

While those are valid points, the truth is that it's not the case here. Some may really be unsatisfied with the DAO's direction, but I don't believe there is a single one interested in running a separate version of Nouns. Their interest is to simply "sell" their Nouns at a better price than the secondary market, which is the "book value". Nothing more.

So if that is the real reason and demand for such a fork, why should Nouns jeopardize its treasury and objectives to facilitate that? Well, the answer, at least for me, is that we shouldn't. The secondary market already fulfills the role of an exit well enough.

I believe another reason why people support the fork is that it's the fastest way to eliminate what some would call "bad apples" from the DAO. People that, for some, are hindering the progress of Nouns and going against its ethos. With a fork, they could easily exit, and Nouns would return to what the vision of those people for the project is.

Now, that is an even worse argument. It goes against the premise of what a DAO is. We are meant to be a decentralized organization and people disagreeing is just part of it, maybe even the fun of it. I would much rather be working on these issues as a community instead of just separating. It's all part of the experiment.

My position:

So how come am I voting FOR this proposal? Well, things have changed a lot since from when a fork was just an idea to where we are now.

One of those things being a problem created by its own self. Arbitrageurs. With discussions around the fork and the likelihood of it, some folks started to notice an opportunity to buy nouns below the "book value" and then exit with the fork, making a profit in eth.

Now there is a much higher number of people interested in leaving the DAO, no matter what. This is one of the things that I dislike the most, because now we have a significant number of people that don't have the slightest interest in Nouns, what it is and what we are trying to achieve. Effectively, they can hold the DAO hostage.

This is the main reason for me voting in favor. Staying as we are is no longer viable. The hindrance to governance would be too high, and we are already seeing this. If a fork were to not pass, things would just get worse: proposal spamming, default no votes, attempts to raid the treasury, etc. I truly dislike the position the DAO is currently in, but at this point, I believe there is no better solution than to fork.

I honestly don't know how all of this will play out. But I can say it does not diminish my passion for Nouns. There are so many great things going for it - Innovation, community, public goods, proliferation, technology and so on. I am excited to keep working on it.

At the end of the day Nouns is one big experiment, and I can say, if nothing else, it has been entertaining.

Til next time. ⌐◨-◨
@thebower_

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