I felt a little burned out of Nouns. I had been spending a lot of time on it, not just by traveling and representing Nouns at events this summer but through making myself available to help introduce people to Nouns and how it operates, giving feedback and making edits on props before they are candidates or once they were candidates. Then of course, there is all of the work everyone in Governance does once a proposal goes onchain. I have been doing this for almost 2 years but the amount of support I have provided really accelerated in the last year. As someone discovers Nouns or has an idea for a proposal, I'm open and easy to reach, so I field a lot of requests. Sometimes its as easy as giving feedback on a draft proposal but others it starts at correcting many misconceptions the proposer has about Nouns which often leads to a phone call. This was all very easy when my heart was filled with love of Nouns. But one day I looked up and Nouns looked a little different; there was a vibe shift. It went from supporting creators to questioning their motives. From celebrating our most committed teams to questioning their work and asking them to cut their budgets. Conspiracy theories started to pop up around the Wyoming DUNA and the supporters of $nouns. Nouncil, at times has become a hostile environment. A healthy dose of skepticism is important for a DAO but it felt like the mutual respect was fading and there were just more meanness or rude Votes with Reason. Some of this was no doubt just my own misguided interpretation from the burnout but some of it is very real.
My extreme passion is in this window of time where it feels like building a positive sum internet on Ethereum rails is possible. I've seen these kind of technology windows open and close over time since 1995. You need a squad to make impact and for a period I thought collectively, Nouns was one of the best ways to support Ethereum but I started to question if this was the best squad to make it all happen. Some people in Nouns even appear to be anti-onboarding new people to Ethereum as a goal, whichi I believe is the most important goal. Time is limited and I want to spend mine where I can have the most positive impact onchain.
As I was grappling with all of that, LGHT had this cast about Higher
and Martin had the following post on X.
There is a lot of cool stuff happening in the HIGHER community including run clubs, exercise challenges, radio stations, merch, tattoos and most recently an AI Agents who can interact with composable blockchain primitives. All done permissionlessly, without a Treasury. HIGHER might be the best execution of a headless brand we've seen to date. And then finally Nouns 40 had a Vote with Reason with the following quote inside and my love of Nouns was rekindled.
It's easy to think all of the stuff in the opening paragraph IS Nouns. It's easy to start thinking it's all about Governance and the Treasury. It's easy to ascribe some kind of made up self-importance. But when I first fell in love with Nouns, via SharkDAO, it was the CC0 headless nature of the brand that I loved. That was the grand experiment, not the Governance part. It was people doing things in the name of Nouns without a Prop. There were small grants and small retro funding programs that allowed people to just do things with Nouns or be rewarded for impact without requiring a Prop. The provenance provided by a prop was a thing but it was not THE thing. Season 1 vibes were great. Despite not having small grants and retro funding none of this has stopped. Rounds has filled some of the gap for rewarding contributors without a prop. Members of the Yellow Collective make Nounish art with no incentives. People pose with ⌐◨-◨ whenever they can.
Nouns is not its holders, the Treasury or the Governance Process. Nouns is everyone who loves it and everything they do to generate positive externalities in its name. I am likely to be less active in Governance and my availability in guiding people through the process will be limited. However my belief in headless brands using crypto to coordinate has never been Higher and my love for Nouns has been rekindled as a powerful hyperculture.
