Crude classifications and false generalizations are the curse of the organized life. ~ H.G. Wells

First thing’s first…

This started out as curiosity about what kind of proposals were being submitted to Nouns DAO. By looking at what was working there, it seemed logical those of us working on similar projects could better anticipate how early proposal cycles would develop and perhaps even incorporate some elements in advance.

This led to an idea that a classification system to organize proposals might also be helpful to the community. I’m not sure yet exactly how this will be useful -- maybe it’s just interesting. But if you find it useful or just interesting, well either is great.

This most definitely ain’t Dogma. There certainly wasn’t any intention to define certain projects as “art” and others as “non-art,” though I can see how some might interpret that. FWIW, I just got here. I’m definitely still learning. I very well might have gotten it all wrong. I invite you to let me know if you think I did.

If you aren’t familiar with the concept of a daily token-governed DAO, then I suggest you read about Nouns DAO and the idea of the Nouns Virtuous Cycle and maybe even the concept of compound governance. And if all that seems a bit rich for your hot wallet, check out Beans DAO, a fork of the Nouns architecture launching soon.

TL;{PleaseStill}R

The full list of 48* currently voted on proposals to Nouns DAO can be classified into 8 categories.

• Category 1: Charitable Contributions

• Category 2: Inside Ecosystem Expansion

• Category 3: Outside Ecosystem Expansion

• Category 4: Awareness-Focused Art Collaboration/Commission

• Category 5: Marketing via Non-Art-Specific Methods

• Category 6: Add-on or Upgrade to System Mechanics

• Category 7: Fix or Update to System/Mechanics

• Category 8: Growth and Governance

Though it was the latest category to have its first proposal, the growth and governance bucket is the largest with a full quarter of proposals falling under its definition.

*For clarification’s sake, the count is actually based on the first 49 proposals, however proposal #29 expired due to a configuration error and was resubmitted as #32. A number of proposals reference other proposals or have funding split across multiple proposals. To keep things simple, I’ve just counted each proposal as its own (except #29) and any proportions or percentages are based on all 48. Meh, sorry.

Category 1: Charitable Contributions

4 proposals (8.33%) | #1, #12, #21, #42

Not much explanation needed here. There are likely some PR aspects involved in any public charitable contribution, but the main purpose of these proposals is charity.

https://twitter.com/sharkdao/status/1429229287199096833

Category 2:  Inside Ecosystem Expansion

7 proposals (14.58%) | #2, #8, #9/19, #24*, #27, #46

I define inside the ecosystem as information or projects primarily aimed at Nouns holders and Nouns fans. Surely there is some effort to spread Nouns love and to bring awareness to outsiders via projects like the Nouns Bidder POAPs (#9), but primarily these projects are for generating excitement and engagement with people already aware of Nouns.

Interestingly the only ever failed proposal (creating Nouns Sounds #24) is insider ecosystem focused.

https://twitter.com/davidzhorvath/status/1492986822175207425

Category 3: Outside Ecosystem Expansion

5 proposals (10.42%) | #4, #6, #11, #20, #34

This category is all about building out the world of Nouns so that people who are not familiar with the concept and characters will find their way into the ecosystem. While there is some similarity to Category 4 below, I defined this as having a bigger scope than the art-specific focus of those projects. This can be done by building in utility such as with Nouns O’Clock (#4) or with narrative such as Nouns Stories (#20).

https://twitter.com/ckurdziel/status/1438476907117428743

Category 4: Awareness-Focused Art Collaboration or Commission

7 proposals (14.58%) | #7, #10, #26/41, #32, #40, #48

These are the projects that perhaps most people are the most familiar with. The idea here is to spend the big bucks to team up or hire an artist like Danit Peleg (#26/41) or David Horvath (#32) to create Nouns-inspired art. In other words, marketing through fine art.

https://twitter.com/songadaymann/status/1447240897813483522

Category 5: Marketing via Non-Art-Specific Methods

6 proposals (12.5%) | #14, #16, #28, #33/35, #36

This category is all about spreading the word via more traditional marketing. This could be in a Super Bowl ad (#33/35) or via a marketing stunt like putting glasses on Randy’s Donut (#36).

https://twitter.com/RainforestTrust/status/1511701666797608963

Category 6: Add-on or Upgrade to System Mechanics

3 proposals (6.25%) | #3, #13, #23

These are proposals that expand the mechanisms of the project; in particular the funding mechanisms. This includes multi-party buying with Nouns Party (#3), small grants (#13), and the Nouns Prop.house reverse auction funding system (#23).

Category 6 proposals may be particularly interesting to those building similar projects as they are the sort of things that could potentially be built in to a project or planned for at an early date.

https://twitter.com/nounsprophouse/status/1465523026481586178

Category 7: Fix or Update to System/Mechanics

4 proposals (8.33%) | #5/15/37, #25

These are the (usually without cost) things that the DAO needs to approve to do something like adjust their BPS rate for proposals (#5/15/37) or to just fix something broken (#25). These aren’t particularly exciting but potentially instructive for similar projects.

Category 8: Growth and Governance

12 proposals (25%) | #17, #18/22/30, #31/43, #38, #39, #44/49, #45, #47

I saved the largest and perhaps most interesting for last. This is also the latest category to receive its first proposal. Category 8 includes everything that builds out the DAO from the inside. So that means funding community, design, engineering (#17), refilling the small grants pool (#31/43), creating a committee to acquire Nouns internally (#44/49), creating an events committee (#47), growing wealth by staking ETH with Lido (#18/22/30), and creating a traditional foundation in the Cayman Islands (#39) in order to do all the things that a DAO has trouble doing.

Category 8 is of particular interest for anyone thinking about similar projects. Want a roadmap to exactly how Nouns has expanded the DAO? Look here.

https://twitter.com/NFTxDeFi/status/1469052918125019140

By the Numbers

This graph shows how all 48 Nouns DAO proposals lined up over time.

But Wait, There’s More

It took some 230 days to get to 48 voted-on proposals. But then in came Nouns prop.house project (kind of a crowdfunding reverse auction, itself Nouns DAO proposal #23) and the sample size nearly doubled. It’s important to note that the proposals on prop.house are aimed to garner the most votes from Nouns holders (and some related ecosystem participants) and not to pass a simple up/down vote. Therefore the strategy to get votes is somewhat different. And because the proposal process was open to all, some of the props were a bit vague or off target.

Regardless, this still makes for an interesting study of the classification system. And it turns out we need to add another bucket.

Category 9: Advance Awareness of Broader Web3/Tech Not Related Directly to Project

Seven of the 47 prop.house proposals really had nothing to do with Nouns but did relate at least tangentially to tech or Web3 (or moon cheeze).

Rounding It Up

Of the 47 proposals in Round 1 of prop.house funding, nearly 1/3 of them were proposals for outside expansion of the Nouns ecosystem (category 3), up from just over 10% of the Nouns DAO proposals.

The second most popular category were proposals for awareness-focused art collaborations (category 4) with just over 25% of the submissions. That’s up from just under 15% of the first 48 in Nouns DAO.

The closest to Nouns DAO in terms of similar slices of the pies was the third most popular of the prop.house proposals, inside ecosystem expansions (category 2) or fun things for Nouns lovers to love on. This category made up 17.1% of the prop.house proposals after making up 14.6% of those on Nouns DAO.

While it is perhaps not overly surprising that the fixes to system mechanics (category 7) only saw one proposal and the add-on mechanics (category 6) saw none, it should be noted that the most prevalent category making up a quarter of Nouns DAO, growth and governance (category 8) had just the one proposal, and perhaps the lowest hanging fruit, charitable contributions (category 1) was completely shut out.

The three winners of the first round of funding were made up of one each from category 2 (insider merch), category 3 (a bot to nounify your twitter pfp), and category 5 (blanketing Hong Kong in TBD Nouns posters).

https://twitter.com/sharkdao/status/1511485989667155976

What’s Next?

There are more Nouns DAO proposals waiting in the queue and new batch of prop.house proposal launching right away. On top of that, Beans DAO is right around the corner and surely there will be other daily token-governed DAOs and conceptual spin offs before you know it.

As things evolve, I’ll endeavor to update this take in one way or another.

Feel free to follow me on twitter @RylandAldrich and keep up with the @beansdaowtf team in our discord as we attempt to create more interesting experiments for someone else to try to classify.

…until we’re all finally successful enough to buy Nouns.