What follows is my translation of a Ukrainian poem by a 19th century poet Taras Shevchenko - “Мені однаково“ (~= “It’s all the same to me” / “I don’t care”).

Now as it did back in the tumultuous past when it was written, the poem speaks to the experiences of Ukrainians in Ukraine, as well as those in the diaspora.

All proceeds from the NFT editions will go to a purpose-built DAO (established with https://daodao.zone). The NFT holders will receive governance tokens, and through proposals, will decide which charities supporting those displaced by instability in Ukraine’s East will get the funds.

“It’s all the same to me” (translation)

It's all the same to me, it is, if in Ukraine I live or not some may remember, others shall forget me in the snow of land remote, indeed, to me, that truly is the same

We grow up captive amidst strangers, And, now, not even mourned by our own, In new unfreedom we will die in tears And take it all with us to grave Won't leave a trace, however small, in our once glorious Ukraine, in ours - yet not ours land

The fathers won't beseech their sons, won't tell them: "pray, son, pray, for a Ukraine that was, and those who perished for its sins"

It's quite the same to me as well if sons will pray or not... but, it is not at all the same, if evilspawn will decimate the land, the wicked robbing in their frenzy, the place their goons have set aflame, No, really, it is not the same

Note: This translation was done over the course of an hour, and writing poetry is not something I usually do in either the source or the target languages here. Producing this turned out to be a difficult but satisfying exercise. I took some creative license in attempting to make the translation flow as nicely as the original, and purposefully did not follow any canonical rhyme structure. In keeping with Noah Smith’s advice of writing because you need to write, publishing this right away seemed more important than pedantry.

Context

More or less every Sunday since last December, first virtually over Zoom and then IRL, I have been writing with a group that was initially brought together by Lisa and specifically this tweet:

https://twitter.com/LisaWehden/status/1465364994623610880?s=20&t=xE9WpbCFEd59Yir4ufukkA

Since then, the club has grown and established itself as the highest signal way to spend a Sunday morning. 🌇

After hearing the poem at the Stand with Ukraine rally in San Francisco last week, and attempting to live-translate it for someone special who does not speak Ukrainian, I realized that it would be doable to attempt my own translation. A week later, on the verge of what appears to be an impending incursion by Russian military and an event with potential for significant loss of life in an already war-torn region, I am happy to share the output.

If you would like to learn more about the conflict, a lot has been written on the matter.

I urge you to form your own opinions and while you understandably could be wary of the increase in “kinetic action equipment” in an already unstable region, there are many other ways the situation can be made better.

“Мені однаково” (original)

Мені однаково, чи буду Я жить в Україні, чи ні. Чи хто згадає, чи забуде Мене в снігу на чужині – Однаковісінько мені.

В неволі виріс меж чужими, І, не оплаканий своїми, В неволі, плачучи, умру, І все з собою заберу, Малого сліду не покину На нашій славній Україні, На нашій – не своїй землі.

І не пом'яне батько з сином, Не скаже синові: “Молись, Молися, сину: за Вкраїну Його замучили колись”.

Мені однаково, чи буде Той син молитися, чи ні… Та не однаково мені, Як Україну злії люде Присплять, лукаві, і в огні Її, окраденую, збудять… Ох, не однаково мені.

Much ado about… something!

Since everyone and their cat will likely start or join a DAO this year, and practice is essential when mastering any new skill (from kitesurfing to Lojban to shitposting), as a part of DAO EVERYDAYS series I will aim to write a little bit about a new DAO each day. 🐈

True, the daily thing is overrated, as illustrated by spaced repetition systems. There is also no shortage of DAO catalogues out there already and more will inevitably be added. These posts, therefore, aim to neither be particularly original, nor are they an effective or comprehensive DAO discovery tool. Instead, as I get into this practice, I hope to be able to settle on a way of understanding what any given DAO is about, to always have something to write about, and yes, mint some NFTs in the process!

Nouns DAO

nouns.wtf

Intro & Funds

https://opensea.io/assets/0x9c8ff314c9bc7f6e59a9d9225fb22946427edc03/0

In the beginning there was a Noun, and the Noun was… a 32x32 pixel image minted as ERC-721 Ethereum NFT on 2021-08-08, the event and the compressed base64-encoded SVG image itself immortalized in block 129857 (along with a few other transactions).

One of these NFTs gets generated every day and goes to an auction, the totality of the proceeds from which end up in the Nouns DAO treasury.

As of writing, a total of 162 Nouns have been generated and the treasury contains 16,931.8 Ξ or ~$64.4 mil. For comparison, the estimated 2021 revenue for the city of East Cleveland is at about $13 mil.

Governance

How does the treasury get utilized? Through decisions arrived at with a governance mechanism consisting of proposals, of course!

To submit a proposal today, one needs to have 0.5% of the total NOUN supply, (effectively by anyone in possession of at least one Noun before Noun #200).

The more NOUNs you have, the more voting power you bring to the proposals.

With 30 proposals to date, some delightful ones include a proposal to Send a Noun to the International Space Station and one to name a recently discovered species of glass frog after Nouns.

1 NOUN = 1 vote, and one wallet can have multiple. Votes can be delegated to others, allowing for NOUN holders to rely on an aligned representative in all governance matters. If a NOUN holder sells their NFT, their vote goes with it.

Additionally, a set of 10 og wallets (known as Nounders) have control over the multisig, as well as absolute veto power over any proposal. The DAO promises that they will

[…] revoke this veto right when they deem it safe to do so. This decision will be based on a healthy noun distribution and a community that is engaged in the governance process.

Protocol

https://github.com/nounsDAO/nouns-monorepo/

The protocol for generating the art and running auctions is written as a combination of TypeScript and Solidity respectively, and is decently documented inside of Notion. What stands out are the considerations around auction timing and the compression mechanism for the pixel art itself.

The Nouns DAO governance protocol is a fork of Compound Governance.

Utility & verdict

TL;DR ngmi 👎

Nouns are an experimental attempt to improve the formation of on-chain avatar communities. While projects such as Cryptopunks have attempted to bootstrap digital community and identity, Nouns attempt to bootstrap identity, community, governance and a treasury that can be used by the community.

Source: WTF? at nouns.wtf

I think we should be bold with the Nouns DAO treasury. We should fund and cultivate a community of builders by experimenting, taking risks, and ultimately funding every high quality proposal that could lead to interesting culture and software (especially ‘middleware’) on the Nouns protocol:

• Centralized and decentralized APIs (let’s turn Noun o’clock into an internet-wide event)

• Artwork that adds something new to the cultural conversation

• Integrations with other Ethereum primitives and dapps

• iOS and Android apps

• Hackathons and Documentation

• Things we’ve never seen before

Source: The Nouns Virtuous Cycle at nouns.notion.site

In addition to purely whimsical value of generating permutations of visual attributes, the bigger vision for the so-called virtuous cycle in the community is to fund a set of projects referred to as middleware using a governance mechanism to shortlist the ones that are worth building.

What does it mean for a community if its governance token can be bought? Here I think the top addresses by voting weight of Compound Finance itself can be informative:

While the governance token does not have to be tradable on the secondary market, in practice quite a few governance tokens today are, including NOUNs, and it is a DAO configuration default I hope changes in 2022.

With a treasury this impressive it is difficult to imagine that the DAO will not survive in some shape or form (even if the bear arrives for ETH 🧸).

However, lest we want to preserve the existing realities of wealth inequality, allow for self-dealing, and attacks by well-monied adversaries, any DAO whose governance token I can buy in troves will automatically not make it in my estimation (as far as reshaping organizations and society for the better), even with multisig failsafes and off-chain reputational incentives for the Nounders.

https://music.apple.com/us/album/cryptomnesia/1559912146?i=1559912153

https://twitter.com/bmorphism/status/1477420448627363840?s=20

What new calamities will you bring our way?

Are you the year of the DAO, stablecoin regulation, and Music NFTs landing in a big way (as the web3 commentariat would have us believe)? 📈

Or will a cyclical bear market, diminished expectations, hyperinflation, war, novel coronavirus variants, and changing climate wipe those techno-utopian grins off of our metaverse faces? 📉

Come what may, on a personal level, I do want you to be the year when I finally get to write more in public - not least, to spare my very forgiving frens numerous Signal walls of text, an incessant shitstorm of links, and rapid fire delivery of too many abstruse goose ideas at various mixers in and around San Francisco.

Yes, we do live in a society and it is common decency to have immersion into one’s web of belief be opt-in, rather than opt-out. As you already know, some folks simply do not give a fuck about NFTs and revolutionary causes.

So here it is, yet another web3 blag; Z Nowym Rokom, Druzi! 🏴‍☠️

https://music.apple.com/us/album/connecting-the-dots/1555202810