"Into the Nouniverse" writing contest

Dear crypto writers,

We are organizing a writing contest with one of the most legendary communities in all crypto - Nouns.

Kiwi has a lot in common with Nouns. On the surface, it might not be that easy to notice since we are an Ethereum Hacker News, and they're an NFT-based DAO. However, we are both committed to Ethereum, decentralization, and creative experimentation. That's why we are happy to set the stage for this particular contest.

Nouns have been around since 2021, and in the last three years, they have been the trailblazers in building bottom-up brands, running decentralized governance, and supporting public goods. 

To this date, Nouns have shared 32,575 ETH (over $80,000,000) with hundreds of projects. These projects built Nouns-related software, designed physical and digital merch, and some were just Ethereum public goods projects. More than a few supported projects, such as Agora, Stand with Crypto, ZachXBT, Protocol Guild, and Nouns Builder protocol, play an important role in the Ethereum ecosystem.

In this Nouns x Kiwi contest, we’d like to focus on Nouns & Nouns-related concepts. The writers will be able to win 3.5 ETH in prizes and receive distribution from the Kiwi & Nouns communities.

Here’s how it’s going to work.

The contest starts on the 14th of October and ends on the 4th of November. 

The contest is called “Into the Nouniverse ⌐◨-◨” and its goal is to help the crypto community understand the achievements, potential, and vibes of the Nouns project.

Here’s how you can take part in it:

The prompts for the contest are:

• Is being 'Nounish' a state of mind, a cultural signal, or maybe a way to look at the world? What are the philosophies and unwritten rules that shape the Nounish identity?

• What can Nouns teach us about turning brand building upside down, and making it open source and steered by the community?

• From headline-making proposals to under-the-radar decisions, which moments have shaped the Nouns history most profoundly, and why?

• How has Nouns’ approach to governance reshaped the way you think about decentralized communities, and what aspects have been most surprising or eye-opening?

• What are the untapped avenues for Nouns to capture more value from their activities, beyond NFT mints? 

And a special prompt from Seneca, one of the Nounders:

• Can Nouns be the face of crypto? What would it mean for the industry at large if Nouns were to become a household name?

You can choose one or more than one of these prompts to write your essay.

Update: If you need to dive deeper into Nouns first, we asked our community member and a long-time Noun - Chris Carella - to compile a Nouns 101 Reading List.

Link to this contest announcement with the words: “This post is taking part in the Nouns x Kiwi writing contest” at the beginning of your post.

The contest is platform-agnostic, so you can post on apps such as Paragraph, Mirror, Substack, X, Warpcast, Zora, private websites, and so on. 

To submit links to Kiwi, you need to have a Kiwipass. All Nouns are entitled to receive a free Kiwi Pass. If you want one, please DM Mac on Telegram or Warpcast.

To qualify for the contest, the author must submit their post to Kiwi between the 14th of October 00:00:01 CET and the 4th of November, 23:59:59 CET.

The contest will have two tracks, with 3.5 ETH split equally to their prize pools.

The first track is called “Vox Populi,” and its winners will be determined by the number of upvotes received on Kiwi. The second track is called “Vox Judicis,” and its winners will be determined by the jury from the Nouns & Kiwi teams. 

The prizes will be divided as follows:
1st place: 0.875 ETH
2nd place: 0.4375 ETH
3rd place: 0.2625 ETH
4th place: 0.175 ETH

The "Vox Judicis" track is meant to reward posts that we consider good but didn't receive too much attention, so we are leaning into having 8 different winners in these 2 tracks. But if we see some outstanding work, it is not impossible for an author to win prizes in both tracks.

Update: Apart from the prizes, our long-time community member Riley Beans has offered to publish one of the winning posts in print in the EIC Quarterly magazine.

(The jury team is still being determined - if you’re a Noun and would like to join it, please let us know)

[Edit: in the previous version, we said we would reveal the winners on the 4th of November. We updated it to give people more time to read and vote]

For the "Vox Populi" track we will count all upvotes from Nouns owners and most active Kiwi community members*. For the “Vox Judicis" track we will let the jury decide which posts they liked the most.

If you end up being one of the winners, you will just have to send us a receipt/invoice and the wallet address to which you want the ETH to be sent.

*Most active Kiwi community members are those who before the 12th of October collected at least 3 Kiwi karma points. You can check the user's Karma score, just bear in mind that this is a real-time board, not the timestamped one.

All writers are also welcome to share their posts on X and Farcaster. Our profiles will repost the best submissions.

If you want a retweet on X, you should tag @KiwiNewsHQ and @NounsDAO.
If you want a repost on Farcaster, you should tag @kiwi, and @nouns. It might also be a good idea to post your submission in f/nouns channel.

Nouns have been one of the most impactful projects in crypto, and we are happy to run a contest together.

We hope this contest will serve as a Schelling Point for writers who want to explore Noun-ish ideas and share them with the wider crypto world. 

If you have any questions related to this contest, feel free to DM @macbudkowski on Telegram.

PS: Authors can use AI for brainstorming or editing but please don't share fully AI-written essays 🙂