Proposal: Nouns x Vector DAO: Secret Nouns 1/1s drop at NFT NYC

[vectordao]

Summary

Vector DAO will commission 8 artists in our community to design a series of unique Nouns artworks and print them on 200+ extra large (6ft high!) wheastpaste posters around New York City for NFT NYC. Each unique poster design will be posted in a grid of 8 (all 8 posters will be the same artwork), with different designs being posted in their own grid of 8 in different locations, creating a scavenger like hunt to collect all 8 artworks.

Each poster will have a QR code that will allow individuals to mint 1 of a limited number of editions of each artwork. 50% of primary and secondary sales will go back to the Nouns DAO treasury and 50% of primary and secondary sales will go directly to the artist. There will be 1000 total mints at a price of 0.2 ETH each. If we sell out, Nouns treasury will earn 100 ETH in primary sales revenue, covering most of their initial grant funding for this project (in addition to any secondary sale revenue in perpetuity).

Vector will provide photographers to take photos of all the posters to share on social to boost visibility (blurring out the QR code) as well as write an article about our collaboration experience with Nouns DAO to help future creators make proposals.

Sample wheatpaste posters from our vendor

What’s in it for Nouns DAO?

Spread the Nouns meme

• We’re putting up 200 giant posters (6ft tall) around nyc during a high visibility week + taking photos to share online
• The artwork will be done by a roster of top tier artists with their own audience and community
• There’s a fun game attached to being the first to find the posters and mint the limited NFTs, creating a viral loop to share back online
• A large % of the NFT proceeds go back to the Nouns treasury, cementing the culture of paying it forward to more nounish builders

Pave a path for more creatives to contribute to Nouns

• We’ll bring 8 really amazing artists into the Nouns universe, who will then talk about it with their friends, driving more high caliber builders to the Nouns universe
• This also forms a relationship with Vector DAO, a community of 80 super strong makers who are excited to further contribute to nouns
• We’ll write an article about the entire process to help onboard more makers into the community

The art concept and the artists

Artist	Past work
Shawna X	New Yorker, Academy Awards, Nike, Google
Elijah Anderson	Adidas, SNS / New Balance, Popeye’s
Lulu Lin	Adobe, MAYDAY Magazine, Migrant Journal
Adam Ho	Cash App, Beat Foundry, Airbnb, Nike
Danny Jones	Grammy’s, Nike, New Balance
Haruko Hayakawa	New York Times, Bon Appetit, Fly by Jing
Moon Collective	Saturdays NYC, Instagram, Popi CBD
And more	pending proposal approval

Art Concept
We’re commissioning 8 artists with distinct styles to create a series of posters remixing Nouns, showcasing each artist’s unique styles and perspectives (illustration, 3D, typography, color, etc). To create a consistent visual motif across the posters, the artwork must feature a Nouns artifact, but interpreted however the artist sees fit. Vector will have these artworks printed on 200+ wheatpaste posters and posted around the NFT NYC conference in Times Square and in neighborhoods like Williamsburg and SoHo.

Each poster will have a QR code where viewers can mint 1 of 125 limited edition NFTs of that poster’s artwork. Each NFT edition will have a mint price of 0.2 ETH and be sold using the Zora Protocol.

We hope the end product not only propagates the Nouns brand and reflects the power of placing goods in the public domain, but also the power of individuals to form digital communities like Vector to create across both digital and physical mediums.

Similar concept for Art Basel in 2021:

About Vector DAO
So who are we? Vector DAO is a collective of artists, designers, and developers in web3. Our mission is to give individuals autonomy over all aspects of their work from lifestyle and creative freedom to team and compensation. We believe in a future where creatives and makers aren’t tied to any one employer but can freely contribute to communities, like Nouns, that excite them. We believe in the power of working independently, together. That means members run their own independent practices but share resources, risks, and opportunities as a community, working together in groups when projects call for it, or individually at other times. Over time, Vector hopes to prove out this new model of working that other communities and builders can replicate, sustainably working for public goods and moving web3 forward.

Timeline, budget, and revenue split

We’ve designed this proposal such that if this project is successful, then the revenue split from the mints will mostly pay for the ETH asked upfront, given that 50% of the mint is allocated to the Nouns treasury.

Deliverable	Vendor	Cost
200 Wheatpaste posters	Currently evaluating several	20 ETH ($36,000)
8 Independent artists’ commission	Vector DAO Community	100 ETH ($180,000)
NFT mint mini-site design & dev	Vector DAO Community	10 ETH ($18,000)
Contribution process blog post with photos	Vector DAO Community	0 ETH ($0)

NFT mint revenue split	Recipient
50%	Artist
50%	Nouns DAO Treasury

Date	Deliverable
June 6, 2022	Artwork finished and sent to printers
June 20, 2022	Wheatpaste posters printed and posted around NYC
June 30, 2022	NFT minting closed

Artist work sample

[Benbodhi]

Some really great artists here!
And I like that the proposal essentially tries to cover the majority of funding in this way.
I did not realise the posters were that pricey to create, but that’s not my area of experience.

I wonder about the 0.2 mint price… possibly a bit of a barrier for some who would be into the scavenger hunt style collecting.

Shame I can’t be in NYC for these. Will be a fun mission to collect them all!

[vectordao]

Thank you! We’re really excited about the artists too. They’re an incredible line up of creatives that we’d like to bring into the nouns community.

Re: cost of printing

The cost includes the posting labour + location fee for some prime nyc real estate. We’re working on a relatively short timeline so wanted to make sure we’re able to compensate the vendor appropriately in case of a rush fee.

Re: 0.2 mint price

This is true! we’re open to increasing the number of mints and lowering the mint price based on feedback as long as the overall primary sale figures stay roughly the same so that we might be able to return the budget to the treasury.

[krel]

Firstly, I really like this. Great selection of artists and potentially a really fun way to depict nouns in wildly different styles we’ve never seen before.

A few things that come to mind:

• Giving back 50% of NFT proceeds to NounsDAO feels nounish (and mitigates risk)
• Is NFT NYC the best timing to do this? I get its the big NFT event this summer but iirc I’ve seen a few nouners express hesitation about nouns being an attraction at NFT NYC? just something to consider
• That said, makes sense to lean into a big event if you’re doing the ‘scavenger hunt’ minting
• Re Benbodhi concern: 250x 0.1 eth worth considering perhaps
• Random idea: You might want to give the artist additional guidance/choice to depict a specific (iconic) noun in their own style?

Lastly, I imagine those artworks could catch a pretty high price as 1/1s. Not sure what would be a good approach here, but i kinda wanna see what happens if you put them up for auction. Im aware doing editions + 1/1s is a pretty heated topic though

[vectordao]

Hey Krel, thanks for the thoughtful comment! Addressing some of the specific toughts:

Is NFT NYC the best timing to do this?

That’s a good point. Our thinking is that NFT NYC would be the highest concentration of NFT holders, and that could be a beneficial timing to hit if we’re trying to get people to mint the artists’ work. However, open to not overtly associating with that event if that’s what most nouners want.

Additional guidance for artists

We’ve kept the guidance fairly open ended, but will be working with individual artists directly to help them understand the nouns culture, so can do a lot of that there!

Auction

This is a good push. I agree that for 1/1s, auctions might be a better mechanism, however, the worry was that it would take away from the instantly actionable nature of “see a poster, mint an NFT”. Will stew on this more!

[Oni]

thanks for the proposal! I’m a fan of seeing more compelling interpretation work from artists.

Is the 100E split evenly amongst the 8 artists?

Have any of the artists minted other edition projects? What was the mint cost and quantity size?

[AndrewLaddusaw]

Since you’re doing it as a scavenger hunt, maybe bump it to 150 and the first 25 people to find it can get a free mint. That way you aren’t alienating anyone from an affordability standpoint and you also create a sense of urgency in the race to find them all. Just a thought.

Really cool project!

[9999]

Agree with the affordability standpoint, and this is an interesting idea, but if the first 25 are free then it’s easy for someone to mint many for themselves at no cost.

[9999]

I’m supportive of this idea and look forward to this line-up of artists producing Nouns-based work.

Would you be open to the idea that instead of 50% of the mint price going to Nouns DAO directly, either the artists collective and/or Vector DAO receive the funds with the aim of purchasing a Noun?

[AndrewLaddusaw]

I think you can limit purchases to one per wallet on the contract, right?

[krel]

In strong support of this tweak

[salvinoarmati]

Strong support for this proposal and VectorDAO generally (no doubt this team will deliver). Really like the tweak that @9999 suggested as well.

[brushee]

Appreciate the thoughtful proposal, @vectordao

Agree with @9999’s suggestion and really excited to see this DAO-to-DAO proposal — very ⌐◨-◨ ish

[vectordao]

Thanks for chiming in, everyone! Gonna address a few of the comments here.

@Oni: the plan is to pay all the artists evenly, pending final confirmation of their rate. However, for transparency: not 100% of the total budget is going to go to artists, since we’re also paying the Vector contributors who are coordinating this effort.

@AndrewLaddusaw: I love the spirit of incentivizing early finders with free mints, but worry that we won’t have the time to make this sybil-resistant. We’ll file this as a nice to have if we can pull it off in time, but also be willing to cut it to make the timing.

@9999, @krel, @salvinoarmati, @brushee: hear you on this. Here’s how we’re thinking about this.

1. Instead of a 50/50 split going to artists / nouns dao, we’ll propose 50/50 artists / vector dao, with the latter portion being put towards the purchase of a dao-owned noun.

2. Re: affordability. If we have time to implement a “first X mints from unique wallets free” scheme as @AndrewLaddusaw suggested, we’ll keep the same mint price, since folks who are sufficiently motivated can get it for free. Otherwise, we will lower the cost of the mint.

For next steps, we’ll be working through the final language of the proposal in this doc with the aim of submitting onchain (with @krel’s help! ) by EOD Sunday.

[AndrewLaddusaw]

Very cool project. Hope it goes through!

[Oni]

yes also a fan using that extra revenue for a vector noun!

[joshuafisher]

Have you thought about doing these as 1/1 Mints but anyone who see’s them in person can get a POAP?

[vectordao]

Hey @joshuafisher, the POAP is a great idea, and we might just add that anyway.

Re: doing 1/1 instead of editions, I worry that means only 8 people would be able to win the “real” prize, and everyone else would only get a participation trophy.

We have, however, toyed around with the idea of a 9th piece that is a unique 1/1, and only mintable by the first person who mints an edition of all 8 NFTs. It’s a bit of a stretch goal given the timing, but would provide a 100% unique collectible.

[joshuafisher]

Cool! It’s all experiments so I support doing what you feel most comfortable with.

[Oni]

Thanks!

@vectordao we had a question come up on our weekly call, what % of the 100E split will be going to artists vs operational vector DAO costs?