FOMO Nouns (FOrce Mint Our Nouns)

This would become the method of settlement. Voting for certain attributes will be scrapped and replaced with emoji consensus using the crystal ball. The mock-ups on the proposal are just demos we created internally and our new proposal will include a new mock-up of what we imagine the front end will look like

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Awesome, love the new direction.

Also, just wanted to add that @forager sent me some info on how the contract processes bids and settlements and allayed one of my main concerns. Thanks forager + excited to see this proposal progress

2 Likes

+1 the idea of a ā€œreal timeā€ multiplayer consensus game as a fun way to choose the next noun. A group of us had brainstormed around this a bit in the past and where we ended up was that the mechanism needs to be very lightweight so that participants can submit their opinions in seconds.

Will we be altering the settlement process in some way for a 10 minute (longer?) consensus window? Will we store a history of potential seeds and enable the contract to choose from those seeds? If so, how do we avoid griefing?

Obviously these are technical concerns, but just want to confirm that itā€™s possible and not overly intrusive to the core noun structure.

A couple of thoughts:

  • Glad to see positive reactions to this idea. I think it has some unknown effects, and itā€™ll be interesting to learn once itā€™s live (experimentation velocity :tada:)
  • On comp I think the community can keep iterating as well. Specifically, it would be valuable for everyone if we got more explicit on how itā€™s priced, e.g. by showing some bottom up cost structure with time estimates

What do you think?

Hey All, @rayo and I revised the proposal in the spirit of a real-time / Party Bid style site. There are definitely some added challenges and more pieces to build, but weā€™re super excited about the new direction!

We also like @4156ā€™s comp suggestion. Weā€™ve cut it down to 50 ETH and will more explicitly setup the community donations mechanism for settlement (versus asking the DAO to fund it).

Please take a look at the new proposal, and we look forward to everyoneā€™s thoughts:


Project: FOMO Nouns

What Is It?

We propose a tool that allows the Nouns community to vote on and mint the most appealing Nouns for each auction in real time.

As background, Nouns are psuedo-randomly generated for each auction based on the block when the prior auction is settled. Each block generates a unique Noun, and recent auctions have been settled on a random block when either the auction winner wants to receive their Noun or a random user wants to start the next auction.

We believe the Noun community can benefit from more deliberating selecting the next Noun for a number of reasons:

  • More appealing Nouns build the appeal of the Nouns art
  • More appealing Nouns have generally garnered higher bids in recent auctions. This helps build the Nouns treasury and influence.
  • Voting enables wider community participation in the Nouns project even for users who donā€™t hold and are unlikely to win a Noun
  • The voting and settlement setup provides even more excitement around Noun Oā€™Clock

We propose building a website that will allow community members to vote on whether to settle in a given block and mint a particular Noun, and if sufficient votes are received, immediately settle the auction in the same block to mint the desired Noun.

Origin of the Project

This idea grew out of Shark DAOā€™s interest in forcing a Shark to be minted for the DAO to acquire. After some discussion, we realized the whole Nouns community may have preferences on what Nouns to mint, and we could set this up as a platform for the community to voice their preferred attributes for the benefit of the broader Nouns ecosystem.

The builders:

Project Details

The website will allow users to see the Noun mintable in every block (approximately every 15 seconds). It will also contain relevant information and analytics (e.g. available settlement funds, whether any attributes would be the first minted).

In a short window after each block appears, users will be able to vote on whether the new Noun is attractive enough to mint. Voting may be binary (i.e. yes/no) or score based (i.e. 0-10), and it will require a threshold that adjusts based on the number of active users. MetaMask sign-in will be required to prevent vote spamming.

All features will aim to be fun, social, and interface. Ideas include voting via emoji (:nauseated_face: to :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:), social cursor interactions (ala PartyBid), a real-time vote progress bar, and/or POAP awards for some-or-all participants during voting.

Early Mock-up

Votes will be tallied in real-time on the backend. If a sufficient number of votes are received, settlement will be instantly initiated. Settlement must occur in the same-block, so Flashbots will be used to speed inclusion. This will require a contract to provide miner tips and ensure the settlement transaction is not mined in later blocks.

A contract will be also be built to store community donations and fund settlement costs.

Project Deliverables

The project will encompass the following deliverables and support for 1 year.

  • Development
    • Frontend:
      • Instant display of mintable Nouns
      • Metamask integration
      • Voting mechanism
      • Social integration for chat, emojis, other fun mechanics
      • Relevant Noun analytics & history
    • Backend:
      • Aggregate and store user votes
      • Calculate and store relevant Noun analytics
      • Secure kick-off of auction settlement
    • Contract:
      • Accept community donations to fund settlement
      • Pay for instant block inclusion (via Flashbots)
      • Ensure late block inclusion is prevented
    • E2E Speed:
      • Settlement must occur extremely rapidly to ensure inclusion requiring tuning and optimizing each component
  • Infrastructure & Deployment (1 year)
    • Frontend:
      • Domain name registration
      • Website hosting & SSL
      • Alchemy/Infura monitoring integration
    • Backend:
      • Redis (or other storage) hosting
      • Settlement infrastructure
      • Alchemy/Infura settlement integration
    • Contract:
      • Contract deployment
      • Settlement contract tests

Project Funding

We propose funding of 50 ETH to help support the deliverables above. This will be split:

  • 28 ETH to @_forager for settlement backend, contract for donations and Flashbots payment, on-chain Nouns monitoring and analytics components
  • 22 ETH to @0xrayo for the front end, back end, and analytics

Start-up deployment and infrastructure costs will be covered under development costs. The website and infrastructure will be supported for a minimum of 1 year. Support after that period will fall under a seperate proposal and/or be left for community support.

Settlement costs will not be included in this proposal. Normal settlement costs ~0.05 ETH, and fast inclusion may require additional payment for higher gas or Flashbots miner tips. Community donations will be solicited to support this expense.

Miscellanea

Project Ethos

The project code will be open sourced under GNU GPLv3 with all code shared on GitHub upon project completion. Our goal is to help the Nouns community build the best roster of Nouns possible, promote the Nouns project, and maximally expand the Nouns treasury by driving higher bids on attractive Nouns.

Limitations and Risks

Noun auction settlement can be performed by any user. While recent auctions have taken ~10 blocks (and community may accept longer), itā€™s possible for a competing tool or mischevious user to settle the auction immediately or on an undesirable Noun. However, this is possible even without this project, and we can adjust our configuration to minimize the impact of this type of activity.

Settlement on a specific block is also not guaranteed, and there may be situations where users vote for a Noun but settlement does not occur. There will be a tradeoff between settlement guarantee, time allowed for voting, and the transaction cost. We will optimize the whole system as much as possible in order to strike the best possible balance between these factors.

The project will require a balance of ETH to settle each auction. Community donations will be needed, after a brief testing period, for the tool to continue to be useful. In addition, gas fees on Ethereum are volatile, so we may need to skip settlement or pay very high fees if the network is congested at the time an auction ends.

3 Likes

+1 from me.

I love the iteration into real-time voting vs passive voting on Noun heads. Makes it much more interactive and FOMO inducing around NoC.

Would love to see more emphasis on post-win goodies for participants. I think itā€™s a real opportunity to 1) incentivize usage and 2) build a community around the FOMO Nouns app.

Either way, love the prop. Great work @forager and @rayo!!

4 Likes

absolutely.
If this passes, weā€™ll be posting updates as we develop and we welcome these kinds of suggestions

3 Likes

Just wanted to tackle a couple questions we didnā€™t cover in the proposal!


On settlement: @gremplin, @devloper

My thought is to largely leave settlement as-is. I am hoping we build a community (soft) consensus to use FOMO versus making it a (hard) requirement. One adjustment might be to add an explicit link to FOMO when an auction ends and slightly deemphasize the direct settlement (e.g. FOMO gets a bright color button, direct settlement is a smaller gray button). However, the underlying Nouns contracts can remain the same.

This preserves the current Nouns ā€œminting magicā€ and decentralization that I definitely donā€™t want to hurt. However, we can absolutely revisit this later when FOMO becomes the proven way to settle if we want to try alternate mechanics, address griefers, etc.


On technical viability: @devloper

Iā€™ve done proof of concept runs on Rinkeby (via high gas) and Gƶrli (via flashbots). This setup is very possible if we make an ā€œinstantā€ decision, but we need to explore more on how much voting time we can allow before it impacts settlement. Iā€™m actively researching answers on this now and digging into mev-geth. However, I think weā€™ll have enough time for a frantic but fun voting window.


On the goodies: @seneca

Totally agree! As 4156 suggested, I think the idea of POAPā€™s or other perks have a lot of second order benefits. We didnā€™t outright put this in the proposal since we have a lot of uncertainty on the best approach and level of effort, but as @rayo mentioned, weā€™ll look to include this type of stuff wherever we can. Weā€™ll also be happy to collaborate if anyone wants to take this super next-level with custom generative art or other really innovative perks.

4 Likes

FOMO - Fear Of Missing Out - need a new FLA!