Proposal: THE NOUNSVITATIONAL: Tier 1 Dota 2 Esports Event!

a fine concern, but I can assure you that this project is being worked on by a team of hundreds of people, many of which are very active in the crypto world! I’m not some Boomer either, with my lifetime online as a person working in videogames I know very well about the space.

Suffice it to say, our goal is to appeal to as large of a mass as possible. If viewers know about a DAO, we can teach them about yours. If they only know about Crypto, we can teach them about DAOs. If they know nothing about anything in the space, we can start from scratch. The specific deliverables I’m looking to do need to appeal in a rage from the clueless to the well informed, since we are aiming to have such a massive viewership. I think starting as clueless and moving up to informed myself sets a pretty good baseline of creatively for me to re-enact that journey for our viewers as they watch and learn.

As far as I can tell, people in this community that don’t have Nouns are still able to make pretty big changes and impact. I hope to do the same for you guys as someone who believes in your mission!

Lastly, don’t forget that EVERYTHING premiered at this tourney when it comes to pre made education content will be made closely with your community. We will shoot over any content we plan to air to ensure the Nounishness is kept where you guys want it, and field suggestions over on the Discord for what could be good content to show off. We want to make this event with you guys, as well as for you. After-all, who knows more about Nouns then the Nouners?

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I thought this was a cool opportunity for Nouns and then I read Slacks comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/zstakw/comment/j1ao1jx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I don’t know Slacks, and I don’t play Dota, so is this a ‘bring nouns to dota’ or ‘bring dota to nouns’ scenario. Both is a win I guess and then I saw all the negativity around nfts in the dota community. As I understand the main aim of the prop is to educate dota about nouns and it really seems like the majority of people in the reddit thread hate anything nfts, so why would they change their minds? Slacks says they come for the dota and stay for the nouns. Imo this will be a massive waste of nouns treasury if you’re trying to draw blood from a rock. And you can hear Slacks is a salesman hustling for the money and really doesn’t come across as he’s genuinely into pushing nouns if it wasn’t for the money opportunity here. Let’s be honest here guys, he wouldn’t be doing this for the love of nouns. This is a cash grab, unfortunately…

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Hey there!

Appreciate you checking things out! Lemme address some of your concerns.

On your first point, that “it really seems like the majority of people in the reddit thread hate anything nfts, so why would they change their minds?” I would like to say that I think this is not just a Dota community feeling, but a general vocal minority in all of gaming feeling. More importantly this is the entire point of the tourney. The kneejerk reaction of viewers is one of both fear and hate when anything Web3 is mentioned, and we want to use this platform as a way to educate and integrate people about the positives of Nouns and other communities doing good in the space. This reaction isnt suprising, its the entire point. I would like you to note the top comment in-fact; where the user first is angry about Web3 intigration, then researches Nouns and says “oh they do this, thats not that bad…”. This is our general goal, get people to learn about your awsome community and the good you to do futher your community and space as a whole. Without this event, these people would never get this conversation started.

To “Imo this will be a massive waste of nouns treasury if you’re trying to draw blood from a rock.” I would counter with asking what you gain from promoting Nouns to people that already know about Nouns? This event will reach not only the small vocal minorty who hate NFTs, but reach massive amounts of like-minded Web3 communities as evidence of a large scale positive success. I don’t think Nouns can grow and be as massive as it should be if your goal is only to cater to people that already know and like Nouns-what do you have to gain in doing this? The only way to grow on a large scale is by introducing people to your community in a way that even people that want to destroy you cant argue with: and thats our goal here. The fact that people had no idea what Nouns was, came to tear you down, and then changed their minds WITHOUT THE EVENT EVEN HAPPENING YET is proof enough that this event will work on a large scale.

“you can hear Slacks is a salesman hustling for the money and really doesn’t come across as he’s genuinely into pushing nouns if it wasn’t for the money opportunity here. Let’s be honest here guys, he wouldn’t be doing this for the love of nouns. This is a cash grab, unfortunately…”

Emotions aside, I would like to logically point out why this doesn’t make a lot of sense. As you yourself said, if the entire community hates NFTs, why would I put myself and my brand in the center of their vitrol if I didn’t want to fight for your community? Why take a bullet with 8 years of stored up community good will for “the money” when its quite easy for me (and much more profitable) to just get a betting company sponsor who could pay x2 the amount Im requesting from Nouns? As stated in the proposal, we are running this event at Weplay for the cost of operations: we arnt making a profit here. The “profit” is working with people that we think are out there doing good in the world and are proud to be associated with.

Look, if I wanted money I could get a lot more money from traditional sponsors in the scene, and my job would be a lot easier to boot. I’ve done that successfully many times in the past. But I am here because I belive in Nouns and Im happy to showcase and spread the Nouns message. I would not put myself in a position to be the front facing rep of this event (and subsequently get relentlessly flamed by haters) If i didnt care. I wouldn’t be talking to and educating people about Nouns on my personal discord communities and twitter DMs and Nouns twitter spaces if I didnt care. I wouldnt be posting positive things about Nouns in this very thread if I just wanted a payday. We arnt even making a payday here. Im putting my ass on the line publically because I believe in you. You guys have not even voted yet and I’m out there making these conversations happen just because there are good things we can do together.

I dont blame you for your perspective: it would be foolish to NOT ask these questions, and shows that you care about your communtiy and how you guys grow. But I hope you understand that I do as well, I just have a very intimate knowledge about how this will be successful in this space and the proper way to communicate to the other side. Quite blunty, the world at large dosnt want to hear about crypto or NFTs from someone that is directly integrated in the community, because from their perspective YOU are the ones looking for the cash grab and doing things to further yourselves at their expense. If this is going to work, if we are going to show the good in Web3 and change the conversation, then you need someone whos genuinely a fan of the great things you guys do with nothing to gain from showing it off. Thats why I am here, running this tourney for the cost of making it. Communication with large scale communities is extreamly strategic if we will make this work, and if you go in there guns blazing preaching about the future of crypto and NFTs and the changing world of tech your going to get ignored or directly verbally attacked. But if we can show the good you guys do, while doing good, we can subtly change the converstation.

Thanks for reading and if you have any follow ups I would love to answer them!

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I came here from the Dota Reddit thread and I’ll admit that I had no clue what Nouns is about when I first heard about them sponsoring a Dota team. I am vaguely familiar with the crypto space - I have a wallet for Bitcoin, and I know the basics about coins and NFTs - but I did not know what a DAO even was until I read about it here.

When I first heard about 4 Zoomers being sponsored, I thought that it was the creators of the NFT doing it to promote their project using their own money. I did not know that it was done by an organization that voted to do so using the community treasury. It was also interesting to see that you’ve also established an esports pod to coordinate you activities within the industry as well as looking at what projects have been funded and rejected.

The Reddit thread shows exactly why a project like this is beneficial. The vast majority of people in that thread do not know the difference between an NFT art project and a DAO. So many people associate NFTs with bad actors who treat NFTs as speculative assets that are to be hyped up and dumped onto someone else. They don’t understand that the technology has uses outside of being an indicator for ownership of digital art.

The NOUNSVITATIONAL gives a good opportunity to educate people about the space. First, on what a DAO is and how this project even was funded in the first place. Looking at the thread, you can see that most people thought that this was an announcement of a tournament and not a proposal for one. They don’t know that there is a pool of ETH that is used to fund initiatives like these and that the Nouners vote on what to do with it by using their Nouns. You can even see that some people are worried about WePlay, talent, and players being scammed even though that cannot happen with the proposal paying out the ETH upon approval. Some people even think that everyone is going to be paid with NFTs which further shows the disconnect between what people actually think Nouns is about.

As we saw with the Midas Mode Dota tournament in the past, people are interested in new game modes and they will want to look into how the tournament operates. This will be a great way to get people involved with the concept of a DAO and how its function is different than the standard NFT project they’ve heard about. I think the ‘mini DAO’ is a good way to educate people on how Nouns operates as well as get them invested on their ability to affect the tournament with their votes.

Second, I think it’s important to let people know what Nouns is trying to accomplish with its DAO. I kind of understand that the idea is to fund cool projects, but I don’t know if there is any broader goal than this. By default, most Redditors seem to think that the goal of any NFT initiative is to make easy money by scamming people who don’t know what they’re buying. This event will be a good platform to show that Nouns isn’t that.

WePlay has consistently shown that they are one of the best esports organizers in the industry and there will be many people watching because they love the game and they know the event will be amazing. Thousands of people will be watching and engaging with NFTs in a way that they never have before and, even if you’re worried about the sentiments on Reddit, this is only a small subsection of the audience that will be reached with this audience. Redditors are probably some of the harshest critics of NFTs, but not everyone is so aggressive in their opposition of NTFs. By addressing the misconceptions that you’ve seen on Reddit, it will definitely work towards creating a positive view of Nouns on the internet as a whole as well as bringing awareness to those who those who don’t know about it.

I hope that this proposal gets funded and I’m interested to see what else Nouns does in the future, especially in the esports space. Creating an event of this size will really show people what a DAO is capable of and how people can come together over Web 3.0 and create something great!

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I’m sure everyone appreciates the time you guys are spending on justifying things. For the amount you’re asking for, it is expected. Unfortunately new props are going to be scrutinised with the recent debates around ROI and sustainability vs a marketing spend. This event doesn’t seem sustainable and after listening to your spaces it seems that you guys will be asking for funding again down the line?

Cash grabs don’t always have to be synonymous with lining pockets with easy money. From my understanding you guys are facing moral dilemas by working with betting sponsors and from your discord chats it reads that you can get $300,000 for a title sponsorship vs the $958,800 you’re asking for. Would a betting company spend $1 000 000 on a dota tournament, idk but it seems unlikely. So it comes across that you can’t get this amount from betting sponsors even if you’re stating that is the case. I also can’t see how you’re not making money from this to pay yourself, you guys have to be making a fee for your time and effort, which is ok but in my mind that is not at cost. It is rather a reduced fee that you’re earning, right? I also don’t understand the business model, if you get $300,000 from a betting company, then how do you make up the $700,000 to break even at a $1 000 000 and then still make a profit? The community doesn’t understand the model… and not everything imo comes down to marketing, new customers, educational videos, Nouns has enough of these already. There was a prop to spend a significant amount on Mr Beast and one could debate that $1 000 000 would be better spent on that prop vs dota.

The debates around crypto and nft sentiments on a global scale don’t really matter at this point, the entire industry had its high last year and millions of people opened various crypto wallets. I would debate that the only way for people to truly understand nouns is to actively use the nouns playground and understand that Nouns has a massive derivatives community with its own artworks. The average person will never afford a governance noun. Trading POAPS also seems small scale in your context, but I get it. I would think that turning those 2 characters in your prop into a generative 10k release on polygon and giving them away for free would be more of an onboarding experience to remember than POAPs. But that is another entire discussion and exercise. People need to make Nouns in the playground, join SubDAOs, print stickers, make stencils, draw the characters etc etc. That is how the meme is already spreading outside of the internet imo.

You guys are professionals, no one is doubting that. I think it is more of the high customer acquisition cost debate at this point as the event will be awesome.

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Thanks for elaborating, its awsome to be able to talk about this stuff openly and get into the hard questions here with someone that takes the time to post em!

I personally am very happy that new props are getting more scrutinised in Nouns to show immediate, sustained value. I don’t believe in traditional marketing anymore-putting a brand infont of eyes with no explanation or onboarding ideas seems to bring little value in my experience. How many actual people saw what you funded? How many were converted? Did this actually DO anything? This is the perk of operating in Esports-everything is online, and thus everything is tracked. I would venture to say that this single event will give more info to Nouns about what can be effective engagament tools with actual usable data than any previously passed proposal in Nouns history (if this is incorrect, please let me know!) While simultaneously completing many other goals. We are VERY deliverable driven…the entire event was designed around non traditional marketing engagements. To be blunt, this event may cost more than a standard marketing venture of putting a Noun on a billboard somewhere, but the value is the evergreen content and data that you have forever to compare all future Nouns operations with for a baseline of quality.

On to your next point, “from my understanding you guys are facing moral dilemas by working with betting sponsors and from your discord chats it reads that you can get $300,000 for a title sponsorship”. First, we have no “moral dilemas” with working for betting companies, they are the primary sponsors in the Dota 2 space. Even the International worked with a betting company this year. We will work with dozens of betting companies in the future. Working with Nouns is not a “we need to do this to survive” situation, its quite the opposite. This is an attempt to work with people we think are cool situation. No one in Dota is going to outcry if we hold a event with a betting company for 3x the prize pool, but then again thats not “exciting” for us either. Working with you guys is, and we think it will be big news in the world of gaming as a whole.

On to your second note, sorry if I was not clear on this, but that 300k was for a personal tournament that I (personally) ran with my small group of friends in the dota sphere called Midas Mode 2. As I stated, this was simply an example of what I could share because this was something that I personally owned and operated. It would be a huge breach of trust for Weplay to share their clients spends and deliverable expectations on a public forum. I can assure you however, that a professional Esports event of The Nounsvitational’s calibur runs for much more than what is in our proposal. I think it would be fair to say most Tournement Operators in the space would charge double our ask and laugh you out of the room should you approach them to do so at our price point with our quality and deliverables. Would it be possible to put 2 guys in a basement and run this for 300k? Sure. Would we pass that proposal much easier? Potentially! Would this be at all effective and worth the investment for Nouns? Not at all. We have our price point and our plan for a reason: this is how it would ACTUALLY WORK. If we were here for a easy cash grab we would propose a event we knew would fail for half the price and offer to run 3 of them over time: but that is not our goal. Our goal is to do the event we know is going to actually work. Our current plan is to run one giant event that will make headlines and blow this out of the water. Im not sure where you had the idea that there would be multiple events and more funding, we simply aim to do our jobs and nail this thing in one go.

On to “Mr. Beast and the cost breakdown section”, hopefully with the info shared above you understand that the funding of a small indie project is much different than a massive event like this. Yes, we are operating off a reduced rate to make this event. We would not run this event at a loss for us, no matter how much we like Nouns as thats just bad business. I assure you however that what we are charging is the lowest you can possibly get in this sphere, and we are treating this bad boy as a investment for both you and us, rather than any short term profit.
As for Mr. Beast, quite bluntly I dont think Mr. Beast cares about Nouns. In-fact, the entire proposal was to try to convince Mr Beast to care about Nouns. In my experience, trying to pay people to allign with you is a great way to lose money for no reason. Mr. Beast and the beasty boys arnt going to stay up all night thinking about how to effectivly get you new members and followers, they dont even care enough to come to you and ask for the proposal. I think there is a good reason why that prop got dumpstered as hard as it did-because this is the exact type of spend that gets little more than advertizing and puts a person that doesn’t believe in your mission at the helm. Litterally all the things you mentioned in your earlier post, a quick buck from someone thats not on your side.

On to “The debates around crypto and nft sentiments on a global scale don’t really matter at this point” I can see where you are coming from, but I think you are viewing this as someone with intimate knowledge about the space and are actively participating in it. 99% of people are not able to see it through your point of view, as you are on the forefront of innovation here. I dont think you guys should just “give up” on changing the narrative, I thought the Nouns goal was about expanding and spreading. Again, our goal is to win this debate with a vocal minority, but more importantly spread Nouns to people already in your space and to those that are not. Crypto did have a good year last year…but then it didnt. Most main stream media cover the massive losses and folks like FTX. I do think there is value to be had in telling people about the good you guys do in this space, if not for first timers just for people that already joined and are looking for people they can get behind.

Finally, “I would debate that the only way for people to truly understand nouns is to actively use the nouns playground and understand that Nouns has a massive derivatives community with its own artworks.” My response here is that if someone is on the Nouns playground, they are already pretty interested in your communtiy. We want to make very simple, watered down versions of cool Web3 experiences so that people who have never experienced a DAO, and never seen any value in a NFT, experience these things in a very low stress high reward scenerio. My goal is not to have people make Nouns for fun in the playground, its to get people to join your community and support you. We both agree that the best way to make this happen is for people to experience it…but they wont know or want to unless they are convinced to come. Thats why they come for the Dota, and stay for the Nouns. That is the goal here.

If “The average person will never afford a governance noun” is true, why do…anything? I was alwaysbunder the impression that Nouns was more than owning a Noun, it was a entire community dedicated to pooling resources, getting together to change the world. I cant tell you how many Nouns this event will sell-but I can tell you that it will be a hell of a lot more than making Nouns marketing for people that have already seen Nouns. At least thats how I see it.

Again, thank you for your feedback. Its really refreshing to have these debates here as I think it shows the passion of your community, and hopefully the passion we have to make this happen. Truly, thank you!

In your spaces you said something like: you don’t want to feel bad about working with betting companies and indirectly telling people to make bets and therefore why you like Nouns as a sponsor. This is where I got the moral dilemma statement from. And you guys mention that if this event is successful you’ll want to work with Nouns again and have Nouner led ideas etc. so I take this as needing a second Nouns investment.

Appreciate all of the feedback. There is a lot of info in this entire thread for everyone to take in, great stuff!

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If you read your own Reddit thread it seems like you are contradicting yourself here. We are sponsoring an event for $1m in advance with no guarantee of outcome to a crowd of people who actively despise NFTs to try and convince them to like nouns?

Reddit thread

With mr. Beast you have someone who actually has been involved in nfts. Also the prop only paid out IF the show happened (and it is the most watched thing on the internet)…

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The audience for the esports event is far bigger than just Reddit. However, the Reddit thread has an 80% upvote ratio so it seems like the majority are open to the idea of a Nouns sponsored tournament, even if there is some vocal opposition in the comments. Most people don’t know the difference between NFT art and an NFT DAO; this event gives an excellent opportunity to address a large market and convey the ethos of Nouns to them while correcting any misconceptions viewers may have.

The difference between an event like this and a YouTube video is that the goal is to get people to interact with the event in a Nounish way with the Mini DAO. Getting people invested and using Nounish features is far more effective than just explaining or demonstrating the concept.

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thanks for the reply! This is correct, typically most people that support something tend to upvote and not comment, while people who have issues take the time to leave a concern. It’s much the same in the online review industry as a Restaurant may have 5 stars but most of the comments are negative. This is pretty easily explained: if you go out to eat and have a great meal, unless you are in a incredible mood most people won’t write a review about how their needs were met to satisfaction. However, if you had a terrible meal, you are much more likely to be motivated enough out of spite to write something negative.

Things like this are much the same. If you think the idea is good enough, a upvote is fine. If you hate NFTs and are motivated to rant, then you will rant away. The goal here is to put on such a positive event and give back so many positive things to the community that even the vocal minority lacks the ammo to negatively rant.

Hey Hindsight, glad to see you here! Thanks for all your great feedback in the Discord.

I meant no offense to the original authors of the Mr. Beast prop, I just consider it a good example of a polar opposite of what we are trying to accomplish here. As you said yourself, Mr. Beast has done NTF related content before; and thus his audience already has seen these “weekly episode brought to you by…” type of shows before, specifically with NFTs. I would never recommend that Nouns does passive advertisement campaign to an audience that is already familiar with your space for this amount of money; as I said I don’t believe that type of advertising is effective. Of course, I mean no offense…if it’s good enough for Redbull I’m sure there are SOME merits to it. I would, however, argue that paying for a multi-leveled onboarding system designed around integrating new people into your space is much more worth the cost.

As to your comment about contradicting myself, I think there is a clear distinction here: In the Mr. Beast proposal, your paying a famous person to passively advertise Nouns to his audience, who see a different sponsor roll in every episode. I don’t think Mr. Beast has any incentive (or desire) to do anything but get your name out there for as little effort as possible and call it a day; and that’s to be expected because that’s what your paying him for.

In this proposal, your paying to actively educate and integrate people into Nouns. This type of event has never been done before, and viewers are not showing up for their metaphorical “Mr. Beast” and ignoring the rest of the content. In this format, it’s not possible to ignore the content as the content is the show. I am coming to you guys (rather than you coming to us) because I’m passionate about making this work and believe it will; you don’t need to pay me to convince me. The fact that I have never done an event with Crypto or NTF organizations should not be viewed as a negative, it’s a very large positive! No one has been worth presenting on a large scale until we found Nouns.

As stated before, most people that hate Web3 are a very vocal minority that actively try to sway mass opinion. Unfortunately, due to bad actors in your space, they have a LOT of ammo to do so. But as you can see in the very reddit thread you linked, once people discover what Nouns does and how they operate, the community can come to very fast conclusions that you are not like other operators in the space. All we are trying to do here is show that there can be good actors in a space with very known bad ones, and the reddit thread itself has shown that WITHOUT THE EVENT EVEN HAPPENING already positive things are happening for your community.

Mr. Beast is not going to go into Reddit threads, Discords, and twitter spaces for you and talk about why he thinks Nouns is a partner he wants to work with. I am, because I do want to work with you, and I know what will be an effective way of communicating with this audience because I am a member of it.

Ah, that makes sense! Yep, those things are true indeed: we would RATHER work with you guys than what’s prevalent in our space, and should you guys want something in the future after this event we would be happy to do so. My goal however is to absolutely slam this event and make it a worldwide success, so I doubt in the future we would be looking to do anything near the same scale as most of the goals here are about exposure to a new community, education, and integration. If we are successful, there would be little point in doing the same type of event as this in the future but there is plenty of room for different projects with different goals and on much different scales!

Again, really appreciate the discourse! Thanks again for spending your time on this!

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I wouldn’t compare this effort to Mr. Beast whatsoever. I think Nouns has an opportunity here with Weplay to create a set of deliverables and KPIs that are advantageous to the DAO and doable through the event based on past statistics. Do you think Mr. Beast would accept a list of KPIs? No. He’d dictate terms and leave immediately if we didn’t agree.