Final Draft: Nouns Whisky

[FutureNow-Nft-Studio]

Hello Nouners

We’ve reworked the logistics of our project and we’re asking for 82 ETH.

As a turnkey creative agency that facilitates business development on various levels we have the expertise and the supply chain knowledge to execute complex projects from start to finish.

Our Web3 journey started in March 2021 and our first public offering was a digital Cool Cats Beer that was customised for each holder that bought a six-pack, we customised over 100 beers. This was a highly successful concept and introduced an intersting spin on the use of a physical product mockup in a digital community. I was then approached by OpenSea & Nate to be the first fine-artist to be featured on their homepage as they wanted to start showcasing more art related content vs pfps. Our studio interns also desingned some 4156 fan art as we have been interested in the Nouns ecosystem from inception. We decided to take our time to present a unique and innovative project to the Dao by the end of 2022.

The studio looked at the Nouns assets across the board and identified the Nouns Wine-Barrel Head as an opportuity to turn it into a physical product. As a turnkey agency this wouldn’t be hard for us to do but would require numerous meetings and research over a span of 6 months and we concluded that whisky would be a unique offering and highlight the skillset of the distiller similar to a highly skilled Web3 developer working on a Nouns project: there is a process, knowledge and patience required to create the end product. The distillery has also won awards for their whisky and this is important if we want to put the Nouns Whisky forward to various global competitions as this is a unique consumables offering that will be open to the global whisky & barrel trade markets.

In the world of whisky barrels can be traded by global collectors during the duration of the distilling process which can be directly compared to the nft trading economy. The barrels are bought at a floor price and over the span of 3 years these barrels become more valuable. With nfts moving into the alcohol world, provenance has changed the game and websites like blockbar.com have paved the way for this as a proof of concept.

The distilling process takes 3 years and at the end of this period the whisky will be bottled and auctioned off to the highest bidders. There are 40 x (500 ml, 16,9 oz) bottles per 25L barrel and each nft will be tied to a barrel that will be stored in a safe, secure & insured storage facility.

Nouns Whisky Barrel Head NFT’s on OpenSea:

• There will be 200 Nfts representing 200 Barrels of Whisky (100 guaranteed to be produced with the help of the DAO) and 100 will be owned by the distillery. Depending on the final amount of space we can add more barrels into the facility. 200 barrels is a fair estimate to get the project up and running.
• If the DAO chooses, the 100 nfts can be sold to the public or held by it’s members.
• We will customise the original Nouns Wine Barrel Head into a Nouns Whisky Barrel Head by changing the red wine liquid stream to a golden yellow liquid to represent the whisky.

Nouns Whisky PR / Proliferation:

The first phase will be to connect with newspapers, magazines & websites and a Nouns Whisky Press Release will be sent to them. This information will then be released and the public can start to engage with the Nouns.wtf website and the Nouns Whisky project. As you can see we’ve attached a mockup newspaper article. Based on the Distilleries previous PR campaigns we can expect about 20 000 to 50 000 readers to see the various articles, depending on which publications feature the story. We will also contact global Nft and Whisky news outlets to feature the project online and across various social media platforms. This is a 3 year journey with a similar roadmap to established nft projects.

Nouns Marketing Assets / Proliferation:

These items will be given away to the public at the distillery with various purchases / competitions during the 36th month period while we wait for the whisky to mature.

• T-shirts
• Drinks Coasters
• Match Boxes
• Pin Badges
• Tote Bags

Nouns Whisky Facility:

The facility will be set up in such a way that the barrels are easily accessible and welcoming to the public & potential buyers that might want to visit the warehouse to see the barrels and whisky making process. A camera is installed in the storage facility so that anyone can view the process of the barrels being set up in 2023 via the Pienaar & Son website.

Nouns Whisky Barrels:

To understand the scale, you can see a comparison here: 1 x Oak barrel = the volume of a 25L cooler box.

A 25L barrel will produce 40 x (500 ml, 16,9 oz) bottles. (taking into consideration that some of the liquid will evaporate over the 36 months)

Nouns Whisky Product:

The Whisky liquid will start being distilled in 2023 and then bottled in 2026.

To reduce the overall ask to 82 ETH, we’ve removed the below items from the previous proposal as these will only be needed in early 2026.

• Whisky Bottles & Labelling
• Whisky Packaging & Printing
• Whisky Postage / Couriers
• Alcohol Excise Tax Payments

Future Plans:

• Nouns Whisky Club DAO (worldwide)
• Whisky & Beverage Website, similar to blockbar.com
• Nouns Beverages in South Africa (Beer, Wine, Gin, Vodka, Soda, Water)
• Nouns Pop-Up Bars
• Coffee Nouns in South Africa
• Whisky Coffee / Irish Coffee

Thank-you for taking the time to read our proposal.

[AndrewLaddusaw]

If you have trouble finding a sponsor to get this on chain, let me know and I’ll be happy to put this in to Nouncil to see if they would like to put it on chain. I’ve stated before, this is really not my thing, but it’s obvious that you all have thought this through and I think you should have your shot to get an answer on this.

[FutureNow-Nft-Studio]

Hi Andrew, thanks for the kind words, that would be appreciated. I also asked Toady if I could join the next Nouncil meeting so that I can introduce myself to everyone. I noticed Profwerder post this: ‘In Nouncil voice for the next hour to chat about Prop 175’ and wanted to join but had promised my wife to switch off from Web3 work and watch a Friday night Netflix movie with her. I will definitely be tuning in to these convos when I can as I see a lot of value with the PropBox initiative. Your insightful knowledge that is spread across Discourse brings exceptional value to the ecosystem.

[AndrewLaddusaw]

Thank you so much! Hope to see you at the Nouncil meeting this week!

[crypto_techn0x]

I think the artwork is great and your whisky looks premium too.
And I think it would give Nouns some good attention as your metrics suggest.

However, my feeling is that the prop falls under the " Nouns + My Business" model which doesn’t serve the wider DAO community/ecosystem and is therefore somewhat extractive as opposed to additive. You stand to make a great dollar ROI off the funding but I can’t see a flywheel that injects fiscal value back into the Nouniverse.

I think the greatest strength of the Nouns model is the ability to utilise the DAO infra to bootstrap a community around NFT ownership and in this case a physical asset ownership like whisky - so if there was a clear indication of how you planned to use the DAO infra to create a virtuous flywheel then I think this idea would get more traction.

I am actually in the process of creating a model to utilise nounish infra such as Nouns Builder to launch a luxury spirits product. If you’d like to chat about it let me know - I’ll be discussing it on the Sharks DAO twitter space this week

[FutureNow-Nft-Studio]

Hey Crypto_Techn0x, thanks for sharing your opinion here.

1. With this final draft, the distillery and the agency won’t be making money off the 100 barrels that the DAO will be funding. It will be up to us to sell additional barrels that will fund our time and effort over the next 36 months. The 100 barrels will be owned by the DAO, they can choose to sell them to the public or hold onto them or gift them to Nouns holders that can then decide what to do with their asset. Essentially if the DAO wants to recoup their investment of 82 Eth over the span of 36 months they have the option to do so.

2. I think the main misconception about the “Nouns + My Business” model is that it doesn’t apply to Web3 builders. Essentially everyone that comes into the ecosystem runs their own business and pays tax on their income. So if a website builder receives funding, this in my mind is considered as “Nouns + His Business” regardless of the format. Almost every prop extracts dollars from the treasury to proliferate Nouns in some shape of form.

3. As the DAO is only 526 Nouns into its lifespan with only a handful of physical products available to the public I’m sure you can understand with your spirit DAO idea why it is important that builders are able to pitch in the consumables category as it is a different form of proliferation and creates a different global community. In my opinion consumables will play a large part of the DAO becoming sustainable over the coming years as the floor price drops and supply increases.

4. Down the line we will explore the possibility of creating a Nouns Whisky Marketplace where distillers from around the world will be invited to create their own version of Nouns Whisky and the public will be able to purchase bottles or barrels. This proof of concept can be seen at blockbar.com. Our end goal is to create a global community of Nouns whisky lovers and traders.

For your interest, we have 2 more versions of this pitch as it took us a while to understand how the pitching process works.

• Proposal: Nouns Whisky & Nounshine | Cape Town, South Africa
• Nouns Whisky ~ Branding, Marketing, Proliferation

[crypto_techn0x]

Apologies for the delayed response @FutureNow-Nft-Studio - I was relocating workspaces and spent the last few days in transit.

Anyway, thanks for your reply and yes I see there are quite a few pitches now Some pitches outline the DAO model more than others but this one doesn’t really touch on it…?

A few questions…

Once Nouns has acquired the whisky then who’s responsibility is it to sell the casks? Does it fall on NounsDAO or are you proposing setting up a sub-DAO to manage this? If so, who will oversee it?

Not totally sure how Nouns+My Business model “doesn’t apply to web3 builders”. Either the model incorporates a virtuous cycle that re-invests the profits back into the ecosystem to generate further attention for Nouns OR its a for profit venture that leverages the Nouns network effects and brand identity to generate attention…the latter being less attractive imho.

I think it’s great you want to foster a community around nounish behaviour and I think consumables have a bright future in the Nouns ecosystem. It’s just not very clear to me how your model’s flywheel reinvests in the Nouns ecosystem to proliferate further nounish behaviour beyond buying your whisky in the short term. I suppose it’s the future plans you mentioned where the proliferation really occurs and the IRL attention graph spikes. But how are these future initiatives funded if the budget has already been spent on buying casks? Does NounsDAO then need to allocate more funds to this? This is where flywheels mechanisms come in as these initiatives can become self funded by the DAO/sub-DAO revenue streams.

Blockbar is a great business but why go after a segment of the market that is already being cornered? Personally I would opt to use nounish public goods infra to innovate on their model and make it more nounish and therefore DAOish (which is really the key here).

Hope this feedback is helpful!

[FutureNow-Nft-Studio]

Yo! Let’s have a voice meeting next week, I think we can work together in many ways even though we have different objectives here: we still share the same vision for bringing premium spirits into the Nouns ecosystem and making it a long-lasting experience for all. Strength in numbers will move this concept forward in a great way! Let me know what time suits, I’m based in South Africa and we can get the master distiller on the call as well.

[FutureNow-Nft-Studio]

Here is the distilleries current business model and you can see their product here: Tiny Batch Whisky - Heavy Char – Pienaar & Son

Tiny Batch Whisky - Case Study

Cost to produce and store 2 x Tiny Batch Whisky Barrels = ± 2.5 Eth
(Ageing period - 4 years)
Total bottles produced = 1100

Bottle retail price = 0,032 Eth each
Gross income from bottle sales = 35,42 Eth
Time taken to sell out = 19 days

Nett profit from bottle sales = 23,20 Eth
(Ex Advertising)

ROI = 994%

Awards: World Whisky Awards - Single grain, Single cask - Bronze medal

[crypto_techn0x]

Happy to chat more about a potential collab for sure. My business partner and I have conceptualised a luxury spirits sub-DAO model that incorporates a virtuous flywheel that will enable the treasury to self fund future whisky lines by partnering with D2C spirits brands like yourself.

We’ve also got some really fun ideas around how to use NFC chips and the PBT (physically backed tokens) standard to track ownership of spirits bottles.

If this resonates with you then I’d be happy to discuss further ofc.

Here’s my twitter @crypto_techn0x

[crypto_techn0x]

Thanks for sharing your numbers…i know the community loves to denominate in ETH rather than dirty fiat but i personally find it super confusing when analysing prop budgets due to market fluctuations. When it comes to physical COGS and fixed costs i run all my excel models in USD (but don’t tell anyone lol).

ROI looks tasty tho and congrats on the awards!