Looking back at the day at Nounstown Secret Walls, it's clear to me that Nouns' core is made up of fans of various subcultures and underground movements — a segment that typically lacks access to straightforward funding means like venture capital or charitable grants.

Spending time with the community helped me realize that the Nouns model is uniquely positioned to support underfunded subcultures, and that, in return, fans of subcultures can provide Nouns with a path to grassroots, sustainable growth.

I imagine a future where Nouns have a more defined direction and reason to exist. One that goes beyond crypto yet leans into our distinctive strengths. I believe Nouns as a superbrand for supporting subcultures have something very real to offer the world, and in this essay, I want to explore the idea further.

I base my thinking on the following core hypotheses:

• The Nouns model is well positioned to support subcultures

• Fans of subcultures provide a grassroots way to sustain Nouns

Additionally, I believe there are positive downstream effects, including:

• Better data to inform the success of proposals

• A model of how to bring more people to Nouns

• Healthier day-to-day governance

Synergy with subcultures

I've always been reluctant to stake out a direction for Nouns. Mostly out of fear that it would put a cap on the type of ideas people bring to us. Fear of making it less magical. A big part of what makes Nouns so fascinating is its undefined nature. The idea that Nouns can be anything, fund anything.

But as with most things open-ended enough to be anything, it often turns out to be nothing. As I've grappled with this duality, I've come to believe that, while a top-down definition feels antithetical to the project, we want individual community members to define, package, and make the strongest case possible for the version of Nouns they believe in.

This can be Nouns as a media house that Jacob has argued in the past, a push for further automatization and reduced governance a la Wilson, or Nouns as a vehicle for charity that Wag and Wylin are driving towards. These ideas resonate with me to varying degrees, but fundamentally I encourage all of them. I appreciate that there is a voice, a champion, and a bold vision staking out what Nouns should be. [1]

I want to make a case for why the subculture direction is an especially interesting one.

Most importantly, it defines our audience. It tells us who Nouns is for — fans of subcultures. Looking at Nouns through this lens helps us get away from a common pitfall where building for everyone often is synonymous with building for no one.

Yet, the definition is open-ended enough not to create an awkward relationship with our past actions and funding decisions. On the contrary, many of our biggest bets and budget items fit within this framing and add proof and conviction to the idea. In the context of Nouns, projects like Esports, Gnars, or NounsFest are all success stories.

I believe the subculture path gives us a compass to direct our energy and efforts, but that's just half the picture. Nouns also have something unique to offer fans of subcultures, something they struggle to obtain — funding. Especially funding without predatory partnerships or misaligned incentives baked in.

Nouns is a perfect fit here. Our model is specifically set up to convert attention and deep cultural resonance into revenue. A model that has struggled to take off, yes, but I argue that it's due to a product/audience-fit problem more so than a fundamental flaw of the flywheel design.

Grassroots revenue generation

I've always assumed Nouns would be financially supported by institutions or, to a lesser degree, crypto-rich individuals. It's not that I adore either of those options, but it just seemed like the most plausible solution to our inflow concerns and a natural end-state to sustain Nouns at scale.

Thinking about subcultures led me to consider another path. Grassroots crowdfunding. A Patreon-style funding model that also allows supporters to dollar-cost-average (DCA) into Nouns feels maximally aligned with Nouns open, community-owned ethos. [2]

The big question with the grassroots approach was always 'Well, who's buying Nouns?', and the answer is that most people can buy $10 worth of Nouns a month. The TAM of people who are into subcultures is very large.

Roughly speaking, out of 8B people, half live in relative wealth, and out of those let's say a quarter are into some form of subculture, giving us a total audience of 1B worldwide. At $10/month, that's $120B in treasury inflows yearly. Sure, that's magical Christmas land where Nouns is the biggest brand in the world, but even if we only reach 0.1% of our potential, that's still a respectable yearly inflow of $120M.

So, if we agree there is a big audience who can afford DCA'ing into Nouns, one crux still remains: Why would they be motivated to do so? I believe the answer is that Nouns can provide a service (funding and coordination) that allows their subculture — the thing they care about most — to grow and thrive.

The consumer crowdfunding model is well established with Kickstarter and Patreon as known household names. These products, however, tend to support specific creators or projects, rather than wholesale subcommunities. Nouns would admittedly have to break new ground here and find the right product configuration.

That may not be easy, but I suspect it is more of a search-for-PMF problem than a fatal strike against the underlying idea. Offshoots like Gnars and Esports provide precedence for how to successfully attract fans and create traces of a sub-economy in their respective communities.

'But krel', you say, 'if I want to support my subculture, why would I support Nouns instead of giving to my subculture directly?' This is a common pushback that I think has a straightforward solution.

I envision a model where NounsMain functions as a parent organization to hundreds or thousands of subculture-specific offshoots. As a fan of surfing, I will DCA $10/month directly to NounsSurfing. These funds will be earmarked for NounsSurfing to use and reinvest. NounsSurfing will essentially function as a subdao with its own budget and distribution process, and the same would be true for every other subculture.

As part of the 'DCA into Nouns product user flow' the surfing fan would be asked to pledge an additional 10% ($1) to NounsMain, and a portion of subscribers would accept. These funds would not be earmarked for any specific subculture but instead used to spin up experiments in new verticals or pay for NounsMain operational costs. Similar to how our treasury is used today.

This may sound like a giant Rube Goldberg machine but as far as product strategy goes, I don't think it's all that complex. We have a hypothesis and general product idea that we can test and tweak until it works. There is a vast design space available here and I'm excited to explore it.

Downstream effects

Better ways to inform the success of proposals

We've always struggled with metrics. In most cases, it's hard to deduce anything of relevance from the performance of a proposal. Even when a project (seemingly) does well we're left wondering 'Compared to what?'. We have nothing to benchmark against.

I don't think this approach will stand the test of time, and I've realized I'm bearish on any direction or approach to scale Nouns that don't include a plan for how to better measure performance. Holding ourselves to high governance standards is good and necessary but not sufficient.

The subculture direction allows us to collect meaningful data by looking at how many fans subscribe to each vertical.

When SurfingFan asks for a seed grant from NounsMain to do something meaningful within the surfing subculture, they are also indirectly creating the NounsSurfing offshoot and implicitly tasked to bring more surfing fans to subscribe to NounsSurfing. Their success can be traced back to how well they manage to penetrate and resonate with other surfing fans. Moreover, the surfing subculture can be benchmarked with other verticals to get a sense of how well-suited Nouns are for this specific community.

Naturally, there would be room for confounding factors, like initial funding size and quality of execution, but it would still be a night-and-day upgrade to how we operate today.

A mandate to grow and expand each subculture

...implicitly tasked to bring more surfing fans to subscribe to NounsSurfing.

Building upon the last section, this also provides us with an optimistic model for how to bring more people to Nouns. Today we scurry about haphazardly singing its praises, hoping it will resonate and bring someone new to the community. It would be a bold claim to say we have a blueprint for Nouns-pilling.

With the subculture direction, everyone gets a clear mandate and the product tools to bring more people from their respective communities to Nouns. If someone is a Smash Bros fan and appreciates what Nouns have done for their community — ask them to subscribe. Even just a dollar per month is meaningful, measurable growth.

And maybe they don't care about having ownership and a voice or to help direct the future of NounsSmash funding. But maybe they do.

Healthier day-to-day governance

Going further down the stack of downstream effects, I believe the subculture direction will improve our day-to-day operations.

By pushing the majority of funding decisions out to subcommunities, where Smash fans vote on Smash things with earmarked Smash budgets, we can get away from the opinion-based and often political, overly PVP-ish nature of our current governance procedures.

Furthermore, when major decisions are made in NounsMain and we are tasked to vote on things where we don't always have subject expertise, we'll have better metrics to fall back on and inform us.

I believe this would lead to a healthier governance environment where core contributors run less risk of burnout and voter fatigue, effectively improving our member retention.

Next steps?

I don't aim to solve every aspect of the problem space with this essay. What I want to do is lay down a sketch that can serve as a kickoff point for the community to improve and refine.

Open questions

How to define a subculture?
A subculture can refer to a category like Esports, or a more granular community like Smash Bros. It is not fully clear how and where we draw lines, but out of necessity (we can't realistically enforce 'categorization' top-down) I think this will have to be fluid/organic and solved on the product level.

Ill-fitting proposals?
While a lot of past proposals fall neatly into the subcultures packaging, some notable projects might not, including playgrounds, schools, and perhaps also things like the Nouns Movie. I don't know how to reconcile this, but it's possible that people who care deeply about pure public goods can subscribe and donate directly to those causes, and the same goes for film buffs. Or maybe 'people who care for public goods' is a pretty well-defined and passionate subculture and the assumed tension here dissipates.

Will the Patreon model work for subcultures?
It's not clear whether fans are motivated to support an entire subculture (eg surfing) or if the Patreon model relies heavily on emotional attachment to a single creator, like an artist or podcaster.

That said, there are numerous examples where fans of tech, tabletop, or video games fund larger teams or organizations via Patreon/Kickstarter. Perhaps there is also a parallel to be made with sports fans buying team merch and seasonal tickets, or even the act of supporting a political or cultural movement.

I believe the best way to find answers to those questions is to run a product MVP on the subcultures hypothesis and be open-minded about results, positive or negative.

Thoughts on product

On the product side, there are a few key factors that should be addressed, but don’t have to be perfected before testing the hypothesis.

An interface to accept subscriptions
A Patreon-like user experience where the crypto rails are barely noticeable. Make it easy for each subculture to dig deep into their fanbases, crypto-literate or not. For example, we can provide the option to pay with a Credit Card, and ways to custody or donate the tokens. That being said, an MVP can likely test the basic hypothesis on a more crypto-native audience first.

A functional erc20 token to provide ownership
DCA'ing into Nouns should feel like a subscription, with a focus on what you give to your subculture, not on the tokens you get in return. The ownership is a unique benefit only possible with crypto, and an important one, but not the primary focus of the product and user experience.

I also suspect (loosely held) the idea works better if every community makes use of a common Nouns token, backed by the Nouns NFTs, rather than having an $esports, $tabletop, and $surfing coin for each subculture.

Drive initial momentum on the social layer
There is a cold-start problem here and the solution is likely to lean into features that can drive momentum via social status. This could be a leaderboard of top patrons, or something more complex. Maybe a subscription comes with perks such as access to NounsTown 20XX, a guest appearance in Quack & Lola, or a surfing lesson with Sunny. Whatever it looks like, solving the cold start is likely a major catalyst for success.

Nouns is currently in a state of stagnation and we need new ideas and experiments to play with if we are to make it out. I believe there are enough promising elements to the subculture idea to feel hopeful and excited about the potential. But whatever the future holds, my main takeaway from writing this essay is that the key to Nouns' success and survival lies in understanding what we are and who we are for.

Notes
[1] It's worth noting that this is what 4156 and the Foundation have been doing with the DUNA path. However, DUNA feels more like a blank canvas for others to paint upon. It doesn't quite solve any of our problems by itself, but it sets us up for eventual success.

[2] If Nouns succeed at some level, it's plausible that institutions will want to associate and contribute with meaningful capital. In a world where Nouns generate $120M via grassroots means, realistically that brings in another 500M to 1B from institutions.