Proposal: Nounify the Metaverse

[Juan]

Nouns are a universal Metaverse brand, but they do not exist universally across the Metaverse. Our proposal will change this by allowing you to Nounfiy anything and everything in the broader Metaverse.

The team at BLOCKS (including fellow Nouncil Member Sam Ellis) is working on building out custom Metaverse experiences for NFT communities. We believe we can make Nouns a “Metaverse first” brand through a series of universal avatars, wearables, accessories, and environment.

The BLOCKS team has already demonstrated early prototypes of Nouns 3D elements within the platform. BLOCKS proposes to take these creations beyond the confines of the BLOCKS environment.

Our strategy is broken out into three phases, however the scope of this proposal is just on Phase 1. We are including Phase 2 and 3 for visibility into our roadmap.

1. Nouns wearables - Noggles and Blockheads

2. Universal Nouns 3D Avatars

3. Pocket Metaverse environment for all Nouns projects

All assets will be designed to be universal and interoperable across multiple platforms, not just BLOCKS. The business model around the asset distribution is designed to be self-sufficient. Other Nouns projects and sub-DAOs may utilize the assets for revenue generating opportunities, while contributing monetarily back to the Nouns ecosystem.

Phase 1 - Nouns Wearables - Noggles and Blockheads

Develop a series of wearable NFT assets that enable anyone to Nounify any 3D avatar or creation within the Metaverse.

Leveraging CC0 assets such as Noggles and 3DNouns, we can allow for the community to place Nouns glasses or heads on top of popular 3D avatars such as Meebits (Yuga Labs), CRT-S (BLOCKS), and Sandbox avatars that are currently operable on the platform.

3D wearable Noggles, 3D wearable Nouns Blockheads

In the prototypes above, the user has selected their wearable from a variety of Noggles. There is also the option to place Nouns Blockheads on their favorite 3D avatar.

Further work to be done includes:

• Dynamically sizing the Noggles or Blockheads to the scale of the underlying avatar
• Animated Noggles and Blockheads - supporting eye movement and blinking for additional effect
• Make compatible with Sandbox, Decentraland and other leading Metaverse environments as they become available

The Nouns Wearables are mintable NFT assets living on their own smart contract. Revenue share will be in place with associated asset Nouns projects (e.g. 3DNouns) on both primary sales and secondary trading fees, as we will be extending existing underlying assets and making them more universally interoperable.

Needed resources:

A team of three 3D designers, two WebGL developers, 2 front-end developers.

Time frame: 30-60 days

Requested budget: 100 ETH

Phase 2 - Universal Nouns 3D Avatars

Develop a series of extensible 3D Avatar templates that can be leveraged by multiple Nouns sub-DAOs for their own projects. Support dynamic creation by projects using the Nouns Protocol (on-chain data and Nouns SDK).

• Avatar engine that can dynamically take any Nouns NFTs that follows the Nouns API/SDK, and dynamically generates and mints an avatar
• Revenue share back with participating Nouns projects such as Lil Nouns, Side Nouns, Lost Nouns, Voadz, etc, including Nouns DAO
• Claimable Noun Avatars for all original Noun holders
• Avatars compatible with Sandbox, Decentraland, and other leading Metaverse environments as they become available

Phase 3 - Nouns Town - Pocket Metaverse environment for all Nouns projects

Develop a custom Metaverse environment for all Nouns projects, with a full rules engine that can be configured to run off of the Nouns Protocol and attributes.

• Tailor-made rules, design, elements, and naming conventions
• Rules engine reads the Nouns API/metadata and provides unique experiences based on the type of Noun in wallet
• Additional objects and access specific to Nouns lore
• Supports land sales, creating revenue generation opportunities
• Revenue share back with participating Nouns projects such as Lil Nouns, Side Nouns, Lost Nouns, Voadz, etc, including Nouns DAO
• Unique smart contract address for Land parcel NFTs, allowing for governance to be conducted at the landowner level.
• Compatible with Snapshot, DAOstack and other community governance tools.

Additionally, scenes and objects in the Pocket Metaverse environment will be designed to be portable, so that you can take your assets with you anywhere in the Metaverse

[Sam]

I of course fully support this proposal, and full transparency, am working on it.

One of the features of the BLOCKS platform is giving nounish content creators another way to generate nounish content.

As a guy who makes animated content, I can’t help but think of the content that could be made on BLOCKS.

I have more to say on this but would love to hear others’ thoughts on this proposal.

[noun22]

I have a few questions and I am a bit of a Metaverse noob so they may come off as a little uninformed

When do these Metaverses (blocks sandbox and decentraland) actually become usable? Do they exist yet? Or would we be making assets in preparation for when they launch? If launched, how many people use these metaverses? Are they basically just chat rooms with custom avatars?

Also, just to make sure I understand, the first step of this proposal asks for 100 ETH and 4 developers and they would be creating glasses that other avatars (non-Nouns) could wear?

[Sam]

Howdy @noun22,

I know Juan will answer more in-depth.

For this first step the 100 ETH will go towards paying a dedicated team of 3 Artists, 2 web GL Devs, and 2 Front End Devs, so the total of 7 folks–I and Juan will, of course, be helping but not taking any of those funds for our work.

We want to help accelerate the creation of Nounish content–one of the by-products of this project will be giving folks “tools” to generate content, if you have ever seen “Red vs Blue” by RoosterTeeth, then you will know that having “game assets” is a great way to make animated content.
Example here: Season 1, Episode 1 - Why Are We Here? | Red vs. Blue - YouTube

[Juan]

Thanks for the questions @noun22!

Sandbox and Decentraland are live now, as is BLOCKS (albeit much newer). Sandbox recently hit 2 million registered users, while Decentraland has ~800K registered users. Cryptovoxels is another platform with ~10K registered users.

The approach these 3 platforms (Sandbox, Decentraland, Cryptovoxels) take to the Metaverse is one of homogenous world building and digital land scarcity, which we believe to be inherently flawed. At BLOCKS we’re providing tools so that NFT communities (like Nouns) can create environments for themselves and customize the experience so it actually feels Nounish. The community can create as much or as little land as they want, so as the number of Nouns derivative projects grows they can each continue to add onto the “Nouns Town” Metaverse.

Right now all the platforms have basic game and chat capabilities. At BLOCKS we are focused on the social & communal aspect of the Metaverse, and one of our core features is an enhanced text/audio/video chat. We’ve had communities host their weekly townhalls on our platform, speaking to each other over video while they walk around their Metaverse environment as their avatar. Much like Discord, it serves as a venue where community members can interact with each other, but with the added benefit of greater self-expression by the community.

The scope of the proposal is for Nouns Wearables, the initial phase of our “Nounify the Metaverse” plan. In this phase we would create two types of wearables:

• Noggles - starting with the 21 glasses options (total quantity TBD)
• Blockheads - starting with the 234 head options x 21 glasses options (total quantity TBD)

Both types are NFT assets, and would contain full 3D files (GLTF format) so that users can own and take their content with them.

The Noggles (as shown on the Meebits in the proposal pictures) will be equipable on most humanoid avatars in BLOCKS. We also plan on making multiple versions so that holders can also use them in other environments. Other platforms currently take a ‘walled garden’ approach for their wearables, so we would have to create multiple formats to support that. Although we would start with the classic 21 glasses options, there are several other projects extending the design of Noggles, so we would work with them as well to bring their creations to life (and revenue share with them).

The Blockheads are designed to be worn like mascot heads on top of most avatars. Whereas Noggles are a subtle nod to Nouns, a Nouns Blockhead is what you wear when you want to yell “NOUNS” for everyone to hear. In this way you can Nounify avatars from other collections like Meebits, Cyberkongzs, Alpacadabraz, Void, Chibi Nation or anywhere else. It fits more avatar types since it does not rely on a “humanoid” face and traditional eye placement. Like the Noggles, we would extend these wearables to work in other environments. The Blockheads designs would start with the classic 234 head options x 21 glasses options, but we would also work with other Nouns projects to bring their custom designs to wearables (e.g. Side Nouns, Bored Nouns, etc).

[Coralorca]

I can see that you are using the head assets available at www.3Dnouns.com created via prop 2. While this is fun it seems to me that 100 ETH is a massive ask in order to import existing cc0 3D assets to a metaverse platform, it being the sandbox or decentraland, or your own platform. Might be good to do a detailed breakdown. From a design standpoint, there is a bit of a mismatch between the head and the body. Heads similar to what bigShot is doing would fit better than the voxels imo.

[Juan]

@Coralorca - Hey there! Yes, currently for our BLOCKHEADZ prototypes and demos we are leveraging existing assets, including from 3D Nouns and other projects. We’re using these as free unlockable items on the platform to get feedback from the community and to learn some of the pain points and limitations early on – such as asymmetric Noun heads (e.g. Aardvark), transparent Nouns heads, as well as how to best convert to the formats of other platforms. Interoperability will probably be the biggest challenge as we try to create assets that can go with you across the Metaverse.

For the Noggles we have a rough prototype going in red, but we will look to animate it so that it reacts to the animations of the base avatar, and then we would apply something similar on the BLOCKHEADZ.

These are all still just placeholders for now, but we think they serve to illustrate what we’re ultimately trying to create and where we’re heading with proliferating Nouns across the Metaverse. For example, we’re already using the Noggles with 3rd party NFT collections to expose Nouns to other communities.

Design wise, we would look to support different styles and designs, and reach out to builders across the Nouniverse like bigShots or Lil Nouns (of course rev sharing back with them).