Proposal: Proper Nouns

[jad]

A proper noun is a specific name for a particular person, place, or thing. Proper nouns begin with a capital letter.

What you are building.

Proper Nouns is a PFP project that is a derivative of Nouns. While a Noun is usually a thing (burger ) or animal (panda ), Proper Nouns are unique people. Proper Nouns are for everyone. Since Proper Nouns are unique individuals, they should also have a unique look and personality. We’ve taken all the original nouns bodies and accessories, and have created a lot of new ones. We’re also going to be introducing new traits to the layering system. (Skin color / mouth / hair and head accessories / extras / new backgrounds)

Some details of the PFP project

• The owner of the Proper Noun will be able to name their noun on-chain. This ties in with the “Proper Noun” name of the project.
• Just like Nouns, Proper Nouns will be fully on-chain. No off-chain or IPFS links.
• Proper Nouns artwork will be CC0, in the spirit on Nouns.
• There will be 500+ traits for Proper Nouns (162 are original Noun traits from body and accessories, so over 350 new and unique traits.) This allows the characters to not have too much repetitiveness when they are generated. There will also be different rarity levels to some of the traits. For instance, Noun Head Accessories will be more rare.
  
  
• 40 (or more) 1 of 1s. We wanted to add some fun call-outs to other cool projects in the NFT space, and do them in our Proper Nouns style.

Minting and Supply Details

• 8888 Proper Nouns - We think the large number allows for a lot of people to be part of the Proper Nouns community. The more people who own Proper Nouns, the more people will have their PFPs on Twitter be a Proper Noun with Nouns glasses. We also think with the larger amount of holders, it’s easier to justify / incentivize building on top of Proper Nouns and Nouns. (Also the Nouns were launched on 8/8 so we like that number.)
• .033 minting cost - We wanted to keep it relatively low so hopefully cost won’t be an issue for people. Also considering how expensive gas has been recently.
• All noun holders will be able to mint 5 Proper Nouns for free.
• 88 Proper Nouns will be reserved for the founding team. Marketing and giveaways will also come from this amount.

Profits

• 70/30 split - 70% of profits will be split evenly with the team, and 30% will go back to the Nouns treasury.
• 5% royalties - We can also do a 70/30 split for the royalties on the secondary market.

Deliverables

• Art for 8888 Proper Nouns
• Managing and building a Discord / Twitter for promoting the project / community building.
• Website and contract for minting Proper Nouns as well as a directory of all the Proper Nouns with their name/bio.

Potential Roadmap

Could be part of a second proposal in the future / not part of this initial project.

• GM / GN Generator
• Art Contest
• Games that promote Proper Nouns / Nouns
• Collab with other artists to draw Proper Nouns in their own style.
• Free mint to Proper Noun holders to claim a companion/pet.
• Maybe do the full body of the proper noun as well (allows for more traits and uniqueness with pants and footwear and other accessories)
• Since everything is on-chain, allow for customizing your Proper Noun?
• Merch for Proper Nouns

Just some explorations. Kid Noun (left) original sketch by the amazing Gremplin.

Who is building it.

• Jad - Project Lead / Artist / Community
• Devin - Frontend / Solidity Dev
• Mike - Artist / Creative Direction

The timeline you expect to complete the project.

1 month - initial PFP launch (minting will be done on a Proper Nouns website)

1 month - Directory of Proper Nouns where you can view all the Proper Nouns and learn about them with their name/bio

The funds you are requesting along with the corresponding funding schedule.

6 Ξ total (can be paid once the PFP project goes live)

• 3 Ξ for contract development and deployment costs.
• 1 Ξ for each person on the team.

Marketing support - This is probably our most important ask. If our goal is the proliferation of Nouns, then any support from the Nouns team will be great in this area. The more successful Proper Nouns become, the more funds go back to the Nouns treasury and the more that we will be able to continue to direct awareness to the Nouns brand.

Links to experience or supporting work relevant to your project.

Jad (@jadlimcaco) - Launched a successful NFT project called Nue Geo. Made different sites and resources for fellow designers. (Principle Repo / Design Systems Repo). In my previous design blogger life, I built a successful design blog called Design Informer, merged with Smashing Magazine.

Devin (@dvnabbott) - Creator of OpenPalette, a generative NFT art platform. Also created Studio 721, a free, all-in-one tool for configuring, deploying, and verifying custom NFT smart contracts. Trained the Coinbase mobile app development team, and before that, frontend developer at Airbnb.

Mike (@michalpechardo) - Freelance artist. Senior Designer at NVIDIA, previously worked as lead designer at SmugMug / Flickr and Turo.

[seneca]

Hey Jad. Thank you for taking the time to craft out this proposal. I like the artwork and concept, it shows you guys have put in time to think through the project. Personally, I’d love to see this come alive. A new Nounish community is a good thing for the Nouns.

As expressed via dms, I do have concerns wrt Nouns DAO funding a PFP project in that these projects tend to pump and fizzle out quickly simply because that is how the market behaves. Given the relative low funding cost, I’d love to hear from other Nouners to see if that matters at all.

I’d be excited to see this proposal as a “grant to start a Nounish state” of sorts. Instead of the funds going back to the DAO, have it go to the community treasury. Something like 70% for the treasury and 30% for the founders seems reasonable. All this to create something that is more likely to self-select for a community who’s interested in the long term. I totally understand if that’s out of the question though since it would potentially mean a wholly different project.

[jad]

@seneca Thanks for your response. I do understand your sentiment with a lot of PFP projects just fizzling out, and while we can’t promise that ours won’t follow what happened to other big projects, we can say that we are dedicated on working on this project and building this community and want to see it succeed long term. We really want Proper Nouns to be a way for people to feel ownership and participate in the Nouns community. and giving them a person/identity through our PFP is a great way to do it.

Just to make sure I understand, when you say to split the proceeds 30/70 between founders and community treasury, are you referring to a Proper Nouns community treasury? So essentially a new DAO formed by Proper Nouns? But with a different mission as to what we’ve seen other DAOs who have formed through Nouns do?

[joshuafisher]

This project feels really well thought out and like the founders are dedicated. Would love to see this come to fruition. Inspiring creation and supporting creators feels very Nounish to me.

[skilift.eth]

Hey Jad! Stellar proposal! From my POV this could serve a model proposal for others. Really well done and fun to read through, so thanks again!

I’m interested to hear @seneca’s clarification to your question, but overall I love this idea around Proper Nouns and given the relatively modest amount of funding to get things moving, I’m onboard

[jad]

Thank you Josh. Really impressed with what you all have done on SharkDAO and have been following to learn as much as we can about building a community around Nouns.

[jad]

I’m so happy you were pleased with the way the proposal was put together. I was so nervous to post it for some reason Thank you for your support.

[seneca]

yep, that’s what I was suggesting. Turning Proper Nouns into a full fledged community with a treasury and governance. With the potential 300 ETH raised, Proper Nouns could buy their own Noun, participate in governance and propose new projects. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a different mission, just another space and direction for the Nouns community to grow with.

cc @skilift.eth tagging for visibility

[jad]

@cryptoseneca we talked it over as a team, and we like the DAO concept a lot, but forming a DAO isn’t something that we have experience with, and we have some concerns about the potential legal implications. We’re not completely ruling out the idea, but as a team of artists and developers, we’re primarily interested in creating art around Nouns, and building a community around that.

We do think there are some unique things that this project can do around connecting people together to build around Nouns:

1. The Proper Nouns PFP offers people a sense of ownership and identity in the nouns ecosystem. Owners can name their Proper Nouns, have a fun bio, and be able to share their Twitter/Discord
2. This directory can be a source for our community to connect with others. We can have badges/filters of different types of builders: artists/developer/writers/video/etc

I think maybe once a community is formed we’ll have a better understanding of what the community wants, and we can self-organize from there.

What do you think?

[seneca]

that’s fair. i understand that my suggestion means an entirely new project. either way, i’d love to see this go live.

[jad]

@cryptoseneca Thank you! We would love to as well

How do these proposals go? Do we just wait for more feedback, or try to ask a Nouner/Nounder to help us take it on-chain? I feel like this project is a good proposal for Prop House, but that probably won’t be ready for a while.

[snape0x]

Love the proposal and will be voting yes. Could you just elaborate on the minting mechanics you’re planning for Proper Nouns? Just curious whether you have any ideas around preventing the collection being snagged by bots and avoiding other issues of first come, first served auctions.

[jad]

@snape0x as far as minting goes, these are some of the mechanics we’ve been considering:

• 5 free for the noun owners (if they claim all, that’s 500+)
• Allowlist — we approve wallets before the mint. Not sure yet about the exact mechanism that we’d use, we’ve been studying how other large projects have been doing it. We’ve seen some projects using tokens as “mint passes”
• Possibly a dutch auction for the remaining supply. Start at .33eth and reduce by .03 every 10 minutes. We’ve seen other launches recently have success with this method
• Have a limit of N (10?) mints per wallet

We’d be very interested in feedback and ideas around minting mechanics. What have you seen work well, and what do you think would be good for this?

[seneca]

to take it on-chain, you’d need a Nouner sponsor to do so.

it would be a good candidate for the Prop House but now that you mention it, this might be a good idea for the small grants fund. i’ll ping the team in discord to see what they think.

[jad]

Thank you for all your help
One thing that I just thought of with the retro-grants fund would be we wouldn’t be able to have our own channel under Projects where we can ask for more feedback/give updates to the current state of Proper Nouns. Probably not a big deal, we can always just seek for feedback/get help under #artists or #developers.

Would you be interested or @skilift.eth / @snape0x /@KingofAllNouns in sponsoring us to take it on-chain?

[snape0x]

@jad I like your thinking around minting mechanics and we could definitely brainstorm more around those. You could consider whitelisting the NounsDAO (active) discord members in a way that prevents bots or spam. It’s a natural pool of dedicated users who expressed interest in Nouns but were otherwise priced out. In any case, it would be “nounish” to innovate around the distribution method.

Regarding naming functionality have you thought about leveraging ENS vs developing it internally? ENS is shaping up to be a web3 social graph with names, avatars etc. My hunch is that plugging into the ENS ecosystem could be a cool avenue to explore. But it’s your call at the end of the day. Disclosure: I’m a big ENS fan, airdrop recipient and own several .eth domains.

Happy to take your proposal on-chain if other nowners feel it’s the best way to proceed. @seneca had some ideas about small grants fund as well. Let’s wait for his feedback but I’d love to see this happen one way or another.

[noun22]

Hey guys. I love this project’s art style. Thank you for taking the time to make an engaging and well thought out proposal! I am a member of the Nouns Small Grants and Retro Funding group, and this is the type of thing I think we would look to compensate you on for your efforts and contribution to the ecosystem. I am hugely supportive of all derivatives projects and Small Grants has given ETH (in lesser amounts) to projects before.

However, in the proposal you ask for our explicit help in marketing and promoting your project, which is something that gives me pause. I feel like it dilutes the brand value of Nouns for us to fund and promote what could be seen as “official” derivative projects. Everyone is free to create their own Nouns deriv projects, and I support them all wholeheartedly, but at the end of the day, there is only one project that I am here to explicitly promote - Nouns.

From the work samples you have provided, it is clear you guys are very talented and it is awesome to have you engaged in the Nouns ecosystem. I think this is a great project and I hope you launch it. Small Grants & Retroactive Funding is here to support your contributions to the ecosystem. But this is your project, and it is up to you to promote it.

[jad]

I really like the idea of whitelisting active NounsDAO discord members. That seems like a great way to reward participation in the community for folks who were priced out.

For the social aspect, I think tying into ENS is a great idea. We’re also big fans of ENS, especially how well their team handled the recent airdrop and governance token. I was just talking to @forager (FOMO Nouns) about how the Nouns website actually displays your ENS instead of just your wallet address — it would be great to embrace ENS where possible. Maybe it could also make sense to take a hybrid approach, where some properties come from the ENS record, and some come from the Proper Noun itself (e.g. its name, in case you own several Proper Nouns).

Thanks for the offer to take this on-chain. We’ll definitely discuss more here and want to hear from other Nouners too before we proceed.

[jad]

Thanks for your feedback @noun22. We’re thrilled that you like our art style. It’s because we used the original Nouns art style as the base .

We definitely hear you on the marketing aspect of the proposal. We can revise the proposal and remove that. Our goal is to help people feel ownership in the Nouns community even though they don’t own a Noun, but we wouldn’t want to dilute the Nouns brand in the process.

Regarding Grants & Retroactive funding, while receiving that would be awesome, I do still want to see if we could make Proper Nouns an official proposal for a few reasons:

1. Going through the process of submitting a proposal, taking in Nouners/Nounders feedback, and getting approved by the DAO feels very much in the spirit of Nouns and web3, and is a strong indicator that the project aligns with the Nouns vision.
2. On-chain approval by the DAO brings the project a lot of credibility. We think this would be super helpful for our goal of offering “ownership in the Nouns community”. That’s why we really like @snape0x’s suggestion of whitelisting active Noun members on Discord — rewarding participation in the Nouns community with ownership helps make this connection clear.
3. Approved projects get a few distinctions that would be very useful, like a dedicated Discord channel for feedback and posting updates. Also, the distinction of the “Builder” role on Discord would be amazing for our team.

In hindsight, “marketing” probably wasn’t the right ask in our proposal, and our team has experience promoting projects so we should be OK there.

What we’re really looking for is to align on the community and vision aspects. We’d like Proper Nouns to feel like an “extension Nouns community” rather than a completely separate community. The 30% of proceeds (potentially ~88 ETH) going back to the Nouns DAO could hopefully be used partly for community-building efforts, since both projects will then benefit from those. I know this would be a new model for a derivative project, but I think it could also be an interesting experiment for growing the community and attracting builders within the Nouns ecosystem.

Let me know what you think

[kxtz]

i’m in the early days of forking nouns-monorepo to create another nounish state

hmu to collaborate