“How did you end up in Nouns?”
I get asked this question a lot. And my answer always starts with: I came in through the Side(noun) door.
SideNoun is an extension of Nouns with cute isometric Nouns “looking highly suspicious” that launched in December 2021 supported by a small grant from Nouns DAO. I found Sidenoun via another project I was involved with called POAPathon – Sidenoun had a bounty up to create a POAP for the Sidenoun community. I had been following Nouns a bit but hadn't really dove in too much.
And upon finding Sidenoun, I minted my first nounish thing: the HODL piano vent. Yes, the head trait is a vent but when I first looked at it, I thought it was a piano. I was quickly corrected by nonother than David Horvath, a Sidenoun fan I met in the discord. And thus began my obsession with Nouns traits. AND the way the glasses hit on the vent, it also looks like it says HODL – hence the HODL piano vent! I went on to collect a few others from Sidenoun. The project got a bit caught up in bull hype of the moment but it was a great beginning of my crazy nounish journey.
Sidenoun received one of the first small grants from Nouns DAO to help deploy the collection. And he was using a tool called Factoria – an early no code platform for minting. It was pre Manifold and Zora and there weren’t many options available.
This gave me an idea: I had just launched my blockchain class and really wanted to see if we could create an NFT project as part of that class. But I would have to cover the costs myself and I also realized that we would not be able use our own college mascot and logo. But I could use the cc0 Nouns assets. And maybe we could also get a small grant to assist?
So I asked Sidenoun about his process and ended up doing just that. FloriNouns received a small grant courtesy of Noun22 and we launched on Factoria, the same platform as Sidenoun, with his help and advice. Which also led me to joining Nouncil in the second group who joined, joining Nouncillor #1 – Sidenoun himself.
I still love these highly suspicious sidenouns – there’s something so fun about them. And the HODL piano vent is my forever sidenoun, the one that started it all.
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It’s really interesting to hear about how different nounsfolk ended up in the Nouns ecosystem. Everyone has a different journey. As I started writing about mine, I realized this was going to take a while. This is merely part 1 of many chapters. A few more to come:
Brewski (it was for the noggles) ⌐◨-◨ Toga Time (Welcome to Nouncil) ⌐◨-◨ Eres mi Flamingo (FloriNouns) ⌐◨-◨ It’s Noun o’ Clock somewhere (NFT NYC 22/VeeCon) ⌐◨-◨ Airhorns and FOMOnouns (TNS) ⌐◨-◨ Milk & Cookies (ode to FoodNouns) ⌐◨-◨ A Lil Flamingo and Lil Sisters ⌐◨-◨ UGLY ⌐◨-◨ One Click DAO (Nouns Builder and more flamingos) ⌐◨-◨ Beyond Basel ⌐◨-◨ Bowling, Nounders and a tiara: The Rose Parade ⌐◨-◨ Proliferatoooor (Miami NFT Week, OPJ and Prop House) ⌐◨-◨ Pigtail maxi (The Boneys, PeeperToadz and Cryptoadz) ⌐◨-◨ Bagels & Builders (NFT NYC 23) ⌐◨-◨ FarCon (and a debate about DAOs) ⌐◨-◨ OPJ and Pengus ⌐◨-◨ What time is it in Australia? ⌐◨-◨ Nouniversary and a painted cake ⌐◨-◨ One Year of Builder ⌐◨-◨ Lil Basel
These may end up out of order – may need to jump around a bit. But I want to unpack all the crazy fun of these past couple years. So we do a lil writing . . .
to be continued… ⌐◨-◨