Shark Labs - A Nounish initiative by SharkDAO contributors

[nick]

Collectors piece for our charity “Sharkfrens”, by Messhup

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TLDR

SharkDAO is requesting 99 ETH to fund Shark Labs, a cohort of creatives and builders from SharkDAO shipping Nounish projects, for a 3 month period.

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Introduction

As holders of 6 Nouns, Shark DAO members have created and pushed several proposals to Nouns over the past year, becoming an important and reliable contributor to the Nouns ecosystem.

Successful proposals:

• Prop 8 - FOMO Nouns
• Prop 12 - Perpetual Glasses to Kids In Need V2
• Prop 20 - Nouns Stories
• Prop 56 - FUN Noggles Stage 2
• Prop 68 - Nouns Esports
• Prop 70 - Nouns CC0 Story Foundations & Development
• Prop 104 - Free Glasses for Kids v4
• Prop 116 - Monthly Nouns Comic

The time has come to raise our contributor game to the next level by deploying Shark Labs, an open and accessible creative laboratory focused on developing and submitting deliverables to Nouns on a regular basis, brought forward by some active SharkDAO contributors.

What is Shark Labs?

Shark Labs is a cohort of SharkDAO contributors that are actively working to ship Nounish projects, operating under 3 main outlets:

• Media
• Art
• Development

SharkDAO has a unique identity as a more accessible avenue for participation in the Nouns ecosystem. We attract many builders, artists, and creatives, with more to come as a result of our upcoming PFP project. The mission of Shark Labs is to implement a structure in which we can more efficiently utilize and support contributors in deploying projects that add value to Nouns with a regular cadence.

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Excerpt from the Shark Street Comic #2, by Maty

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Outlet Details

• Art Reef: An art laboratory for nounish creatives to add content to Nouns lore, create cc0 art for both SharkDAO & Nouns DAO, as well as support emerging artists. For this period, the Art Reef is interested in offering grants for projects that add background stories and personality to Nouns characters.

• Builders Bay: Advise and support the planning, development, and implementation of open source software projects that are focused on adding value to the SharkDAO/ NounsDAO ecosystem. For this funding period, the Development outlet will operate with an emphasis on attracting more builders to the Nouns ecosystem, funding and advising projects that seek to create efficiencies in coordination and collaboration amongst Sharks & Nouners, as well as tools that streamline processes for evaluating and awarding project grants and retroactive funding.

• Media Cove: Oversee the production of various media efforts designed to promote and educate those interested in the SharkDAO/ NounsDAO ecosystem, keep Sharks and Nouners informed about the latest initiatives, and perpetuate the Nounish culture through appropriate mediums. During the funding period, the Media Cove is going to expand its team to host events on a weekly basis, as well as establish new formats to broaden the reach of Sharks and Nouns.

Operational Structure

• If passed, the funds from this proposal will be equally split (33 ETH each) between the 3 outlets. For transparency and efficiency, 5 signers will be nominated to sit on a dedicated multisig.
• Each outlet will be managed by a trusted SharkDAO contributor. The outlet managers will be responsible for keeping projects on track, providing updates to NounsDAO, and organizing the election of committee members and multi-sig signers.
  • Art Reef — Marxistmillionaire
  • Builders Bay — Nick Dodson
  • Media Cove — Cryptasha
• DAO members submit project ideas to the outlets for a committee of fellow contributors to deliberate and advise. Project funds are released following a review by the committee members.
  • Committee members (subject to change)
    • Chris Carella
    • Cryptasha
    • Marxistmillionaire
    • Sasquatch
    • Joshua Fisher
    • Yungweez
    • Nick Dodson
• Bi-weekly Shark Labs updates will be posted in the Nouns discord.

Expected Deliverables

While many deliverables will result from projects and ideas which will be surfaced as a result of Shark Labs, here is what Nouners can definitively expect to be shipped during this period.

• Art Reef

  • Shark Street Comic (issues #3 to #5)
    • SharkDAO’s very own comic series, telling the backstories of our six Nouns. More details here.
    • Budget: 15 ETH
  • Shark Art Residency
    • Incubator program for emerging artists, granting online residencies as an easy access into Shark DAO and the Nouns ecosystem. More details here.
    • Budget: 13 ETH
  • Ancillary reserve:
    • Budget: 5 ETH

• Builders Bay

  • Creator Contests
    • Retroactive funding contests for contributors. More details here.
    • Budget: 18 ETH
  • Shark Builders Residency
    Small grants program for Nounish devs and designers. More details here.
    • Budget: 15 ETH

• Media Cove

  • Shark Tank
    • Weekly twitter spaces, which will give updates on what’s happening in SharkDAO, NounsDAO and invite guests from other DAO / CC0 communities to speak.
    • Budget: 6 ETH
  • SharkDAO Podcast
    • Through various episodes, SharkDAO will share their experiences in the Nouns ecosystem by providing updates, learning materials, helpful insights, and all around positive connections in the web3 world.
    • Budget: 22 ETH
  • Ancillary reserve:
    • 5 ETH

  More details about all current Media Cove projects here.

Proposed Transactions

Transfer a total of 99 ETH to the Shark Lab multisig

• Address: 0x08F28693EE90F2262423bab709cDAE2D9c8EFb37
• Signers: Nick Dodson, Cryptasha, Marxistmillionaire, Sasquatch, Joshua Fisher

What is Shark DAO?

• A group of web3 enthusiasts that pooled together funds in order to participate in the Nouns ecosystem, proliferate Nouns culture, and ship web3 projects.
• Founded in July 2021.
• Currently holding 6 Nouns.
• Consistent NounsDAO governance participants and proposal submitters.

Find out more about us

Twitter — https://twitter.com/sharkdao

Discord — https://discord.gg/GdqBgtgK

Snapshot — https://snapshot.org/#/sharkdao.eth

POAP for our “Shark-versary Spaces”, by Messhup

[Marxistmillionaire]

Let us know, if you’re having any questions!

[noun22]

I appreciate the thoughtful proposal but i think SharkDAO (and other SubDAOs) should be self funded for their own initiatives - certainly at this scale. I think the model of Lil Nouns is interesting here - they were able to self fund many of their own initiatives to great success

I love SharkDAO and all you guys do, but a lot of the roles you are trying to fill are SharkDAO specific versions of many roles and projects we already fund from Nouns DAO, and though they may have value to Nouns, I do not think this is an effective use of capital for Nouns DAO when we could scale Nouns-specific projects instead. Simply put, $165k+ every 3 months on an ongoing basis to finance SharkDAO’s operational budget is a bit much.

A few thoughts on the specific initiatives -

• Media Cove has $12.3k a month for the SharkDAO podcast. i love this podcast and cryptasha, and I enjoyed my time on it as a guest… but that is a very large ask. We already have Noun-specific podcasts and Twitter Spaces that we fund, and I would rather scale those out with that same capital. The same applies to SharkDAO Creator Contests - i would much rather scale out the contests we do during the Noun Square Twitter spaces with that $10k a month
• I think the artist residency program is an interesting idea, but i think the first examples - free-mint NFTs launching on the Tezos network - are not something that I personally think is aligned with Nouns DAO’s model and the DAO’s preference for ETH. I would much rather fund Nouns art that innovate and experiment on the Nouns distribution model on Ethereum. So that isn’t to say that you guys couldn’t self-fund those initiatives, but just that I personally wouldn’t support funding that program from the Nouns DAO treasury
• Funding 3 issues of the SharkDAO Comic for $25k seems very steep

I don’t want to be discouraging because I understand the passion we all share for Nouns and your desire to contribute, and I think at a smaller scale I would support some of these initiatives as trials. However funding this many different initiatives as this scale doesn’t feel like the right fit at this time

[nick]

Thanks for your time & thoughts on this. A couple things…

1. I think there are some key distinctions that can be made between Lil Nouns and SharkDAO (we’ve been here since day 1, constantly shipping props, ushering talented builders to NounsDAO)

2. Funding SharkLabs for 3 months does not necessarily mean that we will return to NounsDAO after the 3 month period to refill project funds. While we could replenish funds through NounsDAO or SharkDAO, we plan to experiment with ways to make SharkLabs self-sufficient moving forward.

3. Creator Contests can be thought of as a fork of Prop House, with the key difference being that Creator Contests are used to award retroactive funding for smaller contributions to SharkDAO / NounsDAO, while Prop House is used to award grants to Nounish builders.

4. I think the Art Reef also shares preferences for deploying projects on Ethereum, although I think there are instances in which experimenting with other chains can be a powerful onboarding tool.

5. The podcast will be getting a complete makeover. Among other content changes, we plan to produce content which targets listeners outside the Nouns ecosystem and drive them to a home in SharkDAO / NounsDAO

Thanks again for your thoughts!

[Marxistmillionaire]

After getting feedback from Noun22, Nouncil and Lil Nouns, we’re reworking the prop now. I’m excited to see this on-chain soon