I don't love traveling to conferences. I have two small kids, live in Latin America and its a huge burden on the people I love the most when I leave. To convince me to travel, I have to believe I can provide real value to the organizations I'm affiliated with, the event and its attendees. This is a high bar and where the story begins.
When Nouns Cares reached out to me about Prop 559 (Nouns at EDCON 2024 in Tokyo ⌐◨-◨) they let me know that Edcon was interested in the work Nouns was doing, wanted Nouns to attend and then had a short-list of people they would invite to Ethereum Quorum and I was on the list. Ethereum Quorum was a private invite only event within Edcon of about 25 delegates from different parts of Ethereum and by extension the world, who would present the most pressing problems they are currently working on. It would include the Ethereum Roundtable with Vitalik. The event was highly curated and even after I was told all of this, it was all subject to an interview. After meeting with them, they were happy for me to join.
Game on.
All credit goes to Nouns Cares and their collaborators in getting the Prop passed. Without a Nouns presence I would not have gone to Tokyo. I would not have been adding enough value to my projects to put the burden of travel on my loved ones. Its worth noting that none of the budget from the Prop was going to me, my travel or my accommodations, I was on my own. I am grateful and fortunate that Prof Werder thought there would be value to Builder Protocol, in sending me and The Park as ambassadors to teach people about Nouns.build.
Fast forward to arriving in Tokyo, making it to the Nouns area and meeting Bigshot Klim. As a side note, Klim is a Nounish treasure worthy of his own post but he is one of the world's top toy designers. Maybe we all know that. Maybe we need a reminder. But Klim is the real deal.
Klim came up to me immediately, we hugged and then he showed me the Golden Noggles that he had brought for Vitalik, should I get a chance to meet him. He has been thinking about this moment for 2+ years and he instructed me on exactly how I should present it to him respectfully and how to open the box to have a reveal moment. We rehearsed it. None of us were sure the moment was going to happen. Once we arrived in Toyko, information was guarded with extreme secrecy and we were not given any of it.
The week continued.... I was on a panel about Nouns Public Goods at Funding the Commons, co-hosted the Farcaster Meetup, gave a Grants presentation at the Hackathon, was a judge, presented my art at Nox Gallery and participated on a panel on the Edcon Main stage about Public Goods, Network Goods and CC0. Phew. I was not here to chill. I was trying to add value.
Ethereum Quorum was great. Learning about the diverse set of problems people are working on within the Ethereum Community, from promoting good behavior amongst liquid staking protocols to the challenges faced by the crypto communities in Africa, Vietnam and Malaysia was incredibly eye opening. My presentation titled, Universal Project Identity using EAS Attestations, was about my current works supporting the Optimism Foundation's Project Profiles which are designed to give projects and the people working on them onchain reputation. Vitalik was not at the event but his gold noggles where in my bag. Towards the end of Quorum we were told he would be coming for the last hour for a Q&A.
The delegates were reminded that we had been personally selected for our professionalism and not to breach that trust. Quorum was a serious event and what I wanted to do was extremely discouraged. I was going to make a faux paux and was told it was going to affect my reputation (it probably did). Additionally, Japan has a culture of respect and decorum and I nervously did not want to violate that.
I was hoping to shield myself in the goodwill earned by Nouns DAO but it felt risky. Why would I do this?
I have been involved with Nouns, via SharkDAO since September 2021. Getting Vitalik to wear Nouns was something that was talked a lot about in the days of Discord and beyond. I felt like this was a long term goal of the Nouns community and I had a good opportunity to deliver. This goal came from a genuine place of love and appreciation of Ethereum and the work Vitalik has done. This was not a marketing stunt.
Vitalik entered through the back door and was on the opposite side of the room from me. There was not going to be a chance to bump into him and present it to him.
To speak briefly about my emotional state... I was NERVOUS. At some point I decided I wasn't going to do it. It wasn't the right moment. I was going to violate too many norms. This was a serious event and the Q&A was asking serious questions. Luckily I was sitting next to Nouns Delegate and Morph Co-founder, Azeem, who was encouraging me to do it. The conversation was something like, "You are going to do it right?", "No", "You have to do it", "OK". Azeem and I are IRL friends who bond more over hip hop than crypto, so imagine an interaction where your friend is egging you on.
I formulated my strategy to ask the last question of the QA. The QA was great with Vitalik answering thoughtfully off the cuff on everyone's diverse interests and questions. When the event was ending and they said he would not be taking anymore questions, I grabbed the mic and asked if I could ask one final, quick and fun question. They agreed.
My question was, "Can I present you a gift from Nouns DAO?" I could see the organizers get tense and then Vitalik said "Sure".
I walked towards him with the box in hand, you can hear the nervous clapping from the participants. I was far from him so while I was walking up he took another question, I waited for him to finish answering.
I presented him the Noggles in the way Klim and I had rehearsed. He very graciously received the Noggles and said, "I actually appreciate the work that you guys do, and trying to be both Public Goodsy and to be fun at the same time. We need more of that."
He put the Noggles on and then you hear the audience break out in genuine applause. He hung around for a few more minutes, then put on his hat and exited through the back door.
It all lightened the mood in the room. We took some group photos and many of the delegates thanked me for doing it, asked me more about Nouns and just generally made me feel like taking the risk was worth it and appreciated.
This one was for Nouns. A gift from hundreds of Ethereum loving creative technologists and misfits in Nouns DAO to Vitalik. Big thanks to Bigshot Klim, Nouns Cares, the Park, Azeem, Nouns eSports, SharkDAO, evav.eth and Nouns for making this happen.
While in the end I was the last mile, this was Klim's vision and the work of all the Nouns who have supported him to make it come true.
