Here’s my experience going through prop Retrofund Yukigesho's work on Nouns Terminal (Prop 676), things I learned and things I wish I’d done better.

I started by building something I was really passionate about and later applied for a retro funding grant. It was a roller coaster ride, but in the end, it got approved.

Hope this helps developers who are trying to build in the Nouns ecosystem.

Background: I learned about Nouns from w1nt3r. I fell in love with the idea: digital country where you buy passports and vote on where to spend the money. Really cool, nothing like this before. I also loved the art, fun and lots of variants.

I wanted to start but wasn’t sure how. Winter mentioned he had worked with Nouns before, where they funded some experiments. One of them was Nouns Terminal, a prototype auction client with a sleek, professional design.

I jumped in because I wanted to learn. I updated dependencies, fixed bugs, and worked on over 50+ tasks Winter set up for improvements and new features. I loved the work and learned a lot.

Then Winter suggested I might even get paid by the DAO for the work. This type of payment is called “retrofunding” — it means the work has already been done, and a DAO can reimburse some costs.

Dream come true — I was excited about Nouns as a concept, and now I was going to send a real proposal. I drafted up a prop and asked Winter to post it.

Choosing a price point was really stressful—while more money is always nice, I didn’t want the proposal to come across as greedy. We calculated it by taking my “friends and family” hourly rate, estimating the total hours I worked, applying a 30% discount, and rounding up to the nearest whole ETH. I probably could have asked for more, but the real value came from gaining exposure to the ecosystem and the skills I developed along the way.

I didn’t think about lobbying when I did this. I thought the idea was great, and if people liked it, I’d get the funds. I didn’t realize some people didn’t know about it, and they took the surprise the wrong way.

The biggest failure was not engaging Nouncil early on. Nouncil is a sub-DAO that holds a few dozen Nouns. They have a process where every week they discuss props and vote on them anonymously.

Towards the end of the project, I actually joined 2 of their calls and presented my idea. It was very nice being in the circle of other proposers. I got some good feedback in DMs too.

Most Nouncils voted NO on my proposal, which was devastating. Winter and I tried reaching out to individual voters to see if we could gather enough support.

We are very thankful for the unexpected support from the Noun founders at the last minute. We didn’t reach out to them. Their help was a complete surprise and made all the difference—without it, we would have been 6 votes short.

However, I also see that the challenge with my proposal happened because I didn’t do enough to explain and share my work with others. If I had started earlier and communicated better, I think I could have gained enough support from the Nouncils and individual voters on my own.

This experience has taught me a lot, and I will work harder in the future. Thank you to everyone who supported this proposal. It means so much to me.

With Nouns Terminal, I felt into a common software engineering trap — being nerd sniped into the cool tech and forgetting that the tech doesn’t matter if nobody knows how useful it is. I’ll be writing more about Nouns Terminal and other projects — so please subscribe to the blog.

Also here’s a list of recommendations I’d give to my past self or anyone else getting started in the Nouns ecosystem:

• If you want to learn about building crypto apps, start with contributing to an existing project. Simple bug fixes or dependency upgrades will teach you a lot.

• Unless you have a big brand name, it’s likely some of the work has to come before the funding, at least in this DAO climate. This means focusing on building an MVP — minimal viable product, shipping it, and then maybe asking for more funds to develop it further.

• Create social profiles on Farcaster early on. Post your progress, findings, etc. It might feel in the beginning that nobody cares, but it helps you develop a skill of how to talk about your own work.

• Engage Nouns community early on. You don’t want people to feel out of the loop and surprised with your out-of-nowhere prop. You can gently post about your project in /nouns channel on Farcaster or various Discords, ask for feedback, tell them why you are working on it and what excites you about Nouns.

• Make friends with someone who is active in the Nouns community and is willing to engage with your project. They’ll give you tips, and maybe even help with submitting a prop.

• Read up on existing props on nouns.camp. Check out the reasons people voting with, it’ll help you understand how the Nouns think and make decisions, what’s important, etc.

• Make a plan for lobbying. Nobody, especially engineers, likes politics, but it often comes down to people just not knowing or understanding enough about your prop to make a decision.

• Be ready for your first proposal to fail. Opinions can change for reasons you can’t control. Don’t take it personally—some people who voted NO even sent me kind messages with helpful feedback. It’s okay to take the feedback, make improvements, and try again. Lots of examples when this worked.

As for me, I’m grateful to Nouns for accepting my proposal. This feels more real—the DAO trusted me enough to fund my work, and I feel both excitement and responsibility for the future projects I’ll build in this ecosystem.

By the way, there are a few ideas I’m already playing with. Can’t wait to tell you more about them. Please sign up to my blog and follow me on Farcaster.