Nouns will live forever.

In recent history of the DAO, it has become increasingly difficult to get funded to bring big, ambitious ideas into the world. The reasons were mainly rooted in resentment from previous losses and failures, paired with a stronger point-of-view on the sustainability of the DAO’s funding abilities.

Assessing the status quo of the community, brand and DAO, it appears that we’re at a pivotal point: we either keep the downward trend in sentiment, community engagement and governance or we collectively commit to a reset and call this the bottom from where we can rise upward again.

Regardless of the nuances of the different directional visions that exist within and for Nouns, we have a few „2026 must lands“ that we need to figure out and work through this year so that we can move forward and away...

from:

• negative sentiment

• high levels of resentment

• not funding ambitious ideas

to:

• positive sentiment

• positive environment for new ideas to breed and flourish

• funding ideas

The 3 Must Lands in 2026

All of the below are things individuals can contribute to with low effort. Especially #1 + #2, since the greatest contributions there are change in sentiment and generally signaling support in various ways.

1. Retain existing Nouners and talent in the wider community


2. Double down on Winners

Support teams that have modelled their way into bringing Nouns into the world forever:

• The GNOME at Art City

• HOPE Outdoor Gallery

• Quack & Lola

• Nouns Coffee LA

• Nouns House Brazil

• Nouns Primary School in Uganda

• Nouns Deli / Nouns Hamburgers Melbourne

• …

• Surface and coordinate physical artworks and sculptures made for the DAO 
(e.g. Dustin Yellin and others)

• …

• and many many more…

3. Explore and develop more „Money-In“ Streams

• Onchain business models

• Increase and optimize yield spending capabilities

• Building out shareholder relationships to other onchain businesses

Exploring and developing more „Money-In“ Streams

Those are territories Nouns is truly pioneering, given the DUNA structure and the frontiers we're exploring.

Part of being a Nouner is also being a pioneer and confidently exploring the uncertain while being optimistic that:

It can be done. It must be done. It will be done.

A few initiatives have already been kicked-off and made significant progress to support a more sustainable funding model - e.g. Nouns x Octant, exploring and developing 501(c)3 structures, as well as some explorations in uncovering opportunities for shareholder relationships.

A big unlock may be for Nouns to become an active ecosystem partner to crypto projects that need what Nouns already has: brand and a community of builders. There is certainly an opportunity to build out and leverage AI tooling more to make this more accessible at scale too. The idea would be to build out the capabilities for being a partner that provides services and exploring how the bilateral partnership would work to unlock "Money-In" flows to Nouns.

The distinct character of these initiatives is always the same: First it moves slowly for a very long time. All of a sudden things gain momentum and move fast - and there it happend: we're so back.

All to say, that there are many more „Nouns Summers“ ahead.

It’s time to buckle up again and shift gears.

Stay nounish.

⌐◨-◨

Nouns will live forever.

This article addresses the What, Who, Why, and Where of Nouns and intentionally minimizes visual elements to spark your imagination.

The HOW is intentionally left to you, the reader, to discover opportunities to put a smile on people’s faces.

What is Nouns DAO?

Nouns are born from Art and Ethereum.
Nouns is a library of open sourced resources - art and code.
Nouns is a community shared brand with a CC0 license.

Who is Nouns?

• ...

• Artists 

• Athletes

• Culture Shapers 

• Developers 

• Ethereum Believers 

• Makers 

• Other-things-likers 

• Pioneers 

• Positive Sum Activists 

• ...

What does Nouns feel like?

in no specific order:

• weird

• fun 

• light hearted 

• optimistic 

• friendly 

• creative 

• bold 

• intentional 

• thoughtful

Nouns' North Star

Nouns expands the footprint of Ethereum by funding art, code, and communities that build in the public domain.

Nouns' Vision

Just like the ETH diamond is a unique identifier for Ethereum, the vision for Nouns is to make the ⌐◨-◨ the cultural identity system for the users of the World Computer.

Nouns needs Ethereum to be born, every day, forever.

And, I believe that Ethereum needs Nouns to grow into its full potential, the World Computer.

Nouns' Positioning

First of all, Nouns is for everyone.

Given that Nouns are born from Art and Ethereum, we have multiple homes to tie back to.

When we zoom out, all products, brands and services are made for one of these 3 places in your life:

1. Your Home

2. Your Workplace

3. A third place

The third place describes places in your life that are located somewhere between your home and your workplace. It could be your gym, your favorite coffee shop, a library, a pub or whatever else you can think of that you go to on a regular basis that isn't your home or workplace. Typically these places are characterized as places for inspiration, relief, entertainment or even sanctuary.

A great example are coffee shops. Your favorite coffee shop serves as a place to meet friends, co-workers, family and you might even take your dates there. It's also a place where you like to go to alone to read a book, or even get some easy work done because you feel like you get more inspired by and with the strangers around you.

It's a place to cultivate and nurture relationships, with others and yourself.

It's a place that you call home that you openly share with strangers.

Nouns is that third place in Ethereum.

To sharpen this perspective: DeFi aligns more closely with the workplace: apps designed to get jobs done as efficiently and cheaply as possible. While wallets and privacy align with the home.

More examples of those third places already "owned" by Nouns across the full spectrum from URL to IRL: the Noun Coffee Shop in LA, Nouns.gg, The Chip and Benny Show, Quack and Lola, Nounish, Nouns Breakers and many, many, many-many more.

Opportunites in 2026 and beyond

The big opportunity for Nouns to grow and contribute to expanding the footprint of Ethereum is by OWNING THIRD PLACES: temporarily and permanently, IRL and URL.

In the context of IRL, that means to aim at creating experiences that live rent free in people's heads forever. Like the Rose Parade, Bob Burnquist's Nouns can Dream event, Nouns Town, Nouns Animation Festival, Nounsvitationals and many more.

In the context of URL, it's close to timeless world creations like the Chip and Benny Show, Quack and Lola or Nounish.

You can see, that a lot has already been done.

The opportunity lies in true ownership of the positioning and being clear in how we communicate this to our communities and partners.

1) OWN THE THIRD PLACES

... in the domains that people put on their New Year's resolution list to do more of:

• the sports

• the arts

• the culinary

• the fun things

2) OWN THE THIRD PLACES

... that cultivate

• togetherness

• taste

• intellectual stimulation

3) OWN THE THIRD PLACES

... that nurture the communities that operate on the World Computer but aren't single-minded traders or developers.

Ticking Boxes

By owning third places intentionally, we tick several important boxes for Nouns:

• Most importantly, creating memory structures that are connected to ⌐◨-◨

• Making crypto soft

• Keeping Nouns and Ethereum weird

• Creating public goods

I generally believe that events for and by Nouns should be as accessible as possible at a low price point or for free.

And in order to make it possible this year too, here is a proposal for 3 ticket tiers

My goal would be to come up a variety of opportunities where everyone finds something they are comfortable to contribute and volunteer throughout the event.

Some examples:

1. Hosting a creative workshop or hosting any other engaging programming item

2. Make sure artists have all the materials, gear, etc. they need for their performance

3. Restock beverages in fridges

4. Help facilitate a workshop

5. ...

The more people volunteer, the less budget has to be spent on external staffing with the result that we can spend more budget on entertainment and experiences for people to make memories with ⌐◨-◨ that live rent free in their heads forever.

I believe that this carries some truth: the more we do these things together, the more we grow together and have fun.

We'll establish a referral program for everyone to claim a fixed amount of discount codes to invite friends and partners at a significantly lower ticket price.

The idea here is to incentivize the network to promote Nouns Town.

I'm sure we can establish a leader board where the top 5 event promoters win the full round trip to Austin or akin prizes.

The idea here is to create a very limited pool of tickets that will come with their own perks (tbd).

I'm keen to hear your thoughts on this!

We are a community-shared brand.
We are a global network of individuals who believe in this experiment.
And we all love ⌐◨-◨

The reality is that, for some of us, international travel is either not possible due to visa restrictions or the cost is prohibitive.

That said, it’s worth acknowledging that there will always be a group of people who feel left out.

However, I want to highlight that we see you.
We hear you.
And I’m sure there will be a nounish celebration happening close to you soon.

1. Accessibility for Nouners and Community Members
   Ultimately, we want to make sure that a large part of Nouners and community members are able to attend in person, and bring their friends. Accessibility should be granted through international airports.

2. Local Projects, Initiatives, or Larger Events Funded by Nouns
   A large local project that is funded by Nouns is a compelling reason for us to host Nouns Town in that city.

3. Opportunities for Partner Integrations
   The bigger we’re aiming for Nouns Town to be, the more we’ll want to integrate partners. Event location is one of the most important parameters to dial in, as it helps us engage with relevant partners who can spread the word and increase our impact.

Taking all of the above into consideration—paired with the fact that this year, the DAO will become a USA-based entity and that the general narrative is hyper-bullish on crypto—the chosen city for Nouns Town will be in the United States of America.

From my experience working with brands of all sizes, the previously more negative sentiment from governments and regulators toward crypto and web3 has often been the greatest friction point in bringing any crypto-related partnership or integrated activation to life. Today, the more positive sentiment towards crypto in the U.S. will also help with engaging new partners to team up on the “Local Impact” pillar, which will be a core pillar which we will bring to market this year, 2025.

While the exact location is TBD, if you are planning to attend Nouns Town 2025 and your visa process is lengthy, it’s worth initiating that process sooner rather than later!

Date-wise, it will be very similar to 2024—in the first half of October.

Also, please bear in mind that, for now, Nouns Town 2025 is only happening in our heads. The proposal to fund this undertaking hasn’t been submitted and therefore hasn’t passed yet.

I hope this sparks some inspiration and provides insights into my approach for Nouns Town 2025.

While Nouns Town 2025 is still in development, it's best to sign up here or subscribe to this paragraph for future news.

There is a point in the event planning process where you can't make any big changes to the plans anymore. Once you've crossed that point, you're in execution mode, though not yet producing.

This is when the event planner's mind begins making mental notes, clustering them into two categories.

A) Things I'd do differently next time, as shared in the last propdate here on Proposal 583.
B) Things I couldn't do but want to do next time.

In this essay, I share the key principles derived from A) and B) as a proposal to guide future community events.

Both are quite intuitive through the lens of ⌐◨-◨

1. Aim for local Impact

2. Money can't buy Experiences

It's as simple as this: Leave the place better than you found it.

This is the most intuitive to ⌐◨-◨ and can be achieved on smaller as well as larger scales. It's at the core of Nouns:

1. Building public goods

2. Doing good without expecting a return, aka being nounish

This guiding principle shouldn't need a lot more explanation. The following are examples that can serve as thought starters. I divided between smaller scale / low budget versus bigger scale / high budget examples.

What I would stay away from are doing and funding things that won't last, and pure monetary donations.

It's the act of "doing the right thing" that matters most and brings our mission, the brand to life.

⌐◨-◨

First of all, restating from above: it's the right thing to do and what we signed up for.

And secondly, actions speak louder than words. We're walking the walk of doing good and building public goods.

Things that people can see, touch, experience and support.

The above is relevant for any event, regardless of the size and amount of funding you have available.

When there is a ⌐◨-◨ event, there should be (at least) one activity to leave the place better than you found it.

There are many reasons on why to do it, the first two are listed above. What these activities also do, is increasing the opportunities for IRL impact of Nouns, it's charitable and it's something others might not be able to do and are therefor inclined to partner.

And then there's Money can't buy Experiences which the above is also part of.

This is the more difficult part which requires more creativity and outside-of-the-box thinking. It puts event planners to back to the drawing board after every event.

The task that wants to be solved at events, is creating experiences that live rent free in peoples minds forever.

For Nouns, that means we want to create experiences only we can. Part of our core DNA is art + code which proliferated into Esports, action sports, curling, breaking, education and many more.

Money can't buy experiences are typically cultural mashups that get the main audience to do things they typically wouldn't.

Two somewhat practical or non-practical examples:

• ESPORTS x ART – Getting the gaming community to actively participate in a community mural. But this works the other way around too: setting up gaming stations at an art fair to get art aficionados to sit down and play a game with their friends at an art gallery.

• DEV HACKATHON x ART – Getting developers to sculpt their own ceramic mug during a hackathon.

These are things only Nouns can do authentically, and again offers the opportunity for partners to collaborate with us in the future in one way or another.

1. 2025 should not be a rinse-and-repeat of 2024

2. It's one additional cornerstone that will be added to the 2025 happening.

Resulting in the following recipe formula for Nouns Town 2025:

Art x Code x Communities x Local Impact = Nouns Celebration

__________________

I hope this sparks some inspiration and provides insights into my approach for Nouns Town 2025 and how I evaluate future proposals and projects.

While Nouns Town 2025 is still in development, it's best to sign up here or subscribe to this paragraph for future news.

A lot of learnings about things we couldn't know, some we could've or should've, and a lot of revelations of good. And hey - we're still here and kicking!

My line of work is in brand development and marketing. One of the things I've been thinking deeply about is how we foster more integrated cohesiveness and connectivity in executions. The simple answer is that we need more "management" and "structure". There has been rising demand and discussions around (more) centralized leadership.

Frankly, I don't believe in this being the great unlock for "the things" we want to see happening.

Not for this experiment in which we're on a quest to reduce point of failures, to do things differently, and right. Not for this forever project where centralized structures are the antithesis of its existence.

We have good reason to double down on what we know works and believe in ourselves. It's probably not "wagmi", a little less delusional and optimistically pragmatic.

Be a Pioneer.

When we boil it down, there are two pressing questions that remain unanswered:

1. Where do we funnel people to learn about ⌐◨-◨ ?

2. What does onboarding look like to a shared and headless brand?

This essay is an attempt to provide one of many answers for both. But before we jump right to the answers, let's take a step back: there's something we can learn from what we know.

Traditionally managed brands have finessed onboarding and cultivating super fans through one tool: Stories. You might have heard it in your line of work: story telling is the key. And I have to break it to you, it is.

Overly simplified, the reason why super brand fans and self proclaimed brand ambassadors exist, is because of the stories they share with the brand. Those stories not always were experienced together, mostly independently. Yet the strongest stories are the ones experienced together - memories.

These stories are onboarding tools for brands. And, the reason why people stick around to eventually become super fans.

It's stories that trigger the feeling of:

• I felt like this too!

• I feel like this too!

• I want to feel this too!

• I want to feel this again!

Past. Present. Future.

Looping back to us - what's the story of Nouns?

A lot of our story traces back to the foundational principles of ⌐◨-◨ a shared brand, open source protocols and pioneering (Ethereum) on chain governance. The belief that we can do things differently and change the world to the better by doing so. And that is where the story of Nouns pretty much ends.

There are some fragments of shared stories through Gnars, Nouns Esports, Nouns Breakers, and many many more. But I believe the nut we need to crack is keeping everything intentionally decentralized and independent, yet cohesive in the story that's being told and timely integrated considering the impact we're aiming for.

There's more that goes into this train of thoughts, but to cut this essay shorter and to the point, I believe the answer to the questions listed, is by collectively creating experiences that celebrate ⌐◨-◨

A place and time we collectively agree upon to show up and present what we worked on, connect, align and cultivate more of the great we want to see coming to life through ⌐◨-◨ and make that a celebration.

It's a place and time teams and communities can work towards to.

An annual [Place] and [Time] are two new data points that can be governed.
Both provide an ecosystem wide synchronicity that don't create artificial dependencies in "management", "structure" or "leadership".

Two new data points that can guide growth, expansion and proliferation.
And, result in the creation of shared stories for onboarding and retention, experiences to funnel people to.

Closing the loop to the two questions:

1. Where do we funnel people to learn about ⌐◨-◨ ?

2. What does onboarding look like to a shared and headless brand?

I believe that for both questions "Nouns Town LA" can be one of the answers.

It does feel way to late, two months after the event. So much has happened during the event and after.

I arrived in Denver full of energy, excited to connect and host a couple events. And, I left Denver with a little less energy and a full heart and new friends.

If you ever wondered how ETHDenver really was and how we showed up – if you'd ask me: it was all smiles.

Here is my photo dump from my camera roll while I'm editing a recap video.

Hope you like it,

Benjamin