ProposalsProposal 241
ProposalsProposal 241
New text has been highlighted for easier differentiation between this prop and Prop 238.
This is a resubmission of Prop 238, with a better explainer of the pros taking into account feedback, including two additional deliverables (and a bit higher ask for this reason).Now includes a Pull Request into the nouns.wtf front-end to allow for a better UX when proposing NFT distributions.Now includes a Pull Request into the nouns.wtf front-end to allow for better UX when proposing range or milestone funding.Cool tech, cool experiment. But how is it useful?
Historically, all DAO proposals have had binary outcomes (pass or fail). The time has come to invent tooling for DAOs to allow for non-binary outcomes on votes, and for Nouns to lead the way on this.
Take Prop 239 (comic book purchase) as an example. The DAO could be in agreement that it makes sense to purchase comic books, but not necessarily 5,000 of them. If the prop’s voting outcome were non-binary, the DAO would have had a way to simultaneously decide if it makes sense, and also how many comic books to print. Maybe the prop wouldn’t have had to be canceled.
For both NFT distribution and funding it’s a more efficient way of achieving “middle ground”; a form of consensus.
Think about it as a way of taking an on-chain average of all opinions.
The current alternative is an attention-deprived off-chain back and forth between proponent and community to arrive at a proposal price point or distribution number.
Past props where functional props would have been usefulProp 236: Wizard’s Hat — determine the mint price of our NFT together at vote time, from a range.
Prop 223: House of Nouns — Implement milestones instead of all or nothing. Milestones are mapped to voting tiers. The more popular the prop is at vote time, more funding is sent and more features get implemented.
Prop 217: Stake an additional 5,000 ETH in LIDO — instead stake between 1,000-5,000 depending on the level of support for the prop.
Prop 206: Nouns on the Ground 2023 — Do tiered funding (5, 10, or 15 IRL events) instead of all or nothing.
Prop 202: nouns.eth set reverse record — in addition to executing, do we also send 1 ETH to Jacob? Depending on the popularity of the prop, we send between 0-1ETH.
Prop 184: Nouns funding ZachXBT — fund within range 50-100 ETH, instead of all or nothing.
Prop 167: Nouns Builder — seed the Builder treasury within a range (e.g. 500-1,000 ETH).
Prop 125: 8/8 anniversary art — only change existing traits if the vote is unanimous.*
Answers to common doubts on functional fundingWhat if a proposer that is willing to do work for 30 ETH proposes a range of 30-50 ETH to squeeze out more from the DAO?A proposer is disincentivized to do so, as it increases the likelihood of the prop being defeated. It could also be argued conversely, that if functional funding wasn’t possible, the proposer could have proposed an all-or-nothing 50 ETH instead of a range where the DAO could save money if the prop passes, but barely. We can’t be certain if functional funding will make overall payouts larger or smaller, but we can be sure that funds will be allocated more efficiently as more granularity allows for concentrating capital where it needs to be.
If I support a proposal getting the lower part of the range, but not the upper part, how am I supposed to decide how to vote before the very last second?Granted that this is a tricky aspect of functional funding. I give a two-part answer:
1. The question doesn’t apply to all props where functional funding could be useful. For example, take the hypothetical use for Prop 217 (staking in LIDO). If you are OK with staking 5,000 ETH, you are OK with staking 1,000. In this case, you it doesn’t really matter to you if you vote early or later. If you aren’t comfortable with staking up to 5,000 ETH, you vote against. You would have voted against Prop 217 in its non-functional funding incarnation anyway.
2. Granted that those who vote later have more information than those who vote earlier. However, those that vote earlier likely are OK with the entire range. Those that vote later will have more influence over the outcome. This is a net positive: a. those who are OK with the entire range are happy. b. those who want to control the range, can do so by voting later.
Even though the tech is innovative, I don’t see it being widely adoptedRefer to the section above where I highlight some use cases that make Nouns a more agile decision-making DAO.
The main mechanics of the DAO should stick to the KISS principleThe concern is that it should be made as simple as possible for Nouners to vote. I agree that simpler is better. Most props will not make use of functional funding and will stick to KISS. However, for those that it makes sense to make outcomes functional, if it’s more efficient for the DAO, it’s worth the marginal complexity.
Before functional funding comes functional NFT distribution.
I am the dev and proposer behind Prop 199 which passed 226 : 9. Prop 199 was a successful experiment to distribute 50 Nouns Vision Glasses from our Treasury to Nouners at random.
I have developed (inspect code here) a generalized version of the Nouns Vision Glasses distributor that allows for any proposer to propose random distribution of any ERC-721 in our Treasury to Nouners. This included development of a generalized version of the BatchTransfer contract 9999.⌐◨-◨ deployed for Prop 185.
As this deployment is not a one-off and meant to be a primitive the DAO can leverage at any time, plus the code is more complex, it requires more extensive testing. In addition, it requires a more complex custom front-end for the distribution claims.
Why do we need a generalized NFT distributor?The Nouns DAO treasury continues to hoard NFTs as subDAOs such as Lil Nouns and Nouns Builder are “paying backwards” in the form of governance tokens.
It is likely that as the Nouns meme proliferates, more and more subDAOs will continue to do the same.
Historically, we haven’t used these NFTs to govern these subDAOs and to this date haven’t reached consensus as to whether it’s something we are interested in doing as a DAO.
There is no point in having NFTs in our treasury that we don’t plan on using. If we are to go down the alternate path, who better than Nouners to receive them and participate in subDAO governance in an individual, more decentralized manner.
The generalized NFT distributor has a new distribution mechanism baked in that allows the proposer to set the maximum number of NFTs to distribute. Then, if the prop passes, at execution time, the distribution contract calculates the number of NFTs to randomly distribute as a function of the vote (for, against, abstain) counts.
The proposer also selects the distribution amount calculation mechanism. This code extract shows the possible distribution rules the proposer can select from:
Proposer can select among the following distribution rules: Total turnout per Noun, Total Turnout minus abstain per Noun, For Votes, For Votes per Noun, For minus Against Votes, For minus Against Votes per Noun.
For example, the proposer might want to propose a distribution of some LilNouns in the treasury. The proposer is unsure of how many LilNouns the DAO is willing to distribute so he/she selects VotesFor as the distribution mechanism. Thus, the higher “For Vote” turnout (the more popular the prop was), the more LilNouns will be distributed.
Here’s how proposing and execution works:
I call “functional props” proposals that are self-referential at prop execution time. Initially I’m interested in exploring props that use vote counts (i.e., how many for/against/abstain) as inputs and take actions as a function of those inputs. We could imagine going beyond that to enable props that pull from a larger voter input-space such as vote reasons*.
Functional funding is a subset of functional props that enables an efficient way for the DAO to price proposals. The mechanism works as follows:
For Proposers:
For Voters:
For Nouns DAO:
For the first time, allows the DAO to vote on proposals that need to pass unanimously to executeUI on [nouns.wtf](http://nouns.wtf) similar to the USDC converter, that allows proposers to select and input parameters for functional NFT distributions or funding.Positive feedback on Prop 238The innovative approach to Human Organization presented here is a promising addition to the Nouns toolkit, which continues to lead the way with innovative public goods. I support the continued exploration of fresh governance approaches, such as the "Function Props" concept, which can leverage the benefits of large group decision-making.
I'm in favor of experimenting to find better mechanisms we can use to reach non-binary outcomes for proposals and for that reason I'm voting in favor. Even if this isn't used much or is used and we discover what the shortcoming is, that would be a plus in my book.
I think that it is important for the DAO to continue to explore new ways to use governance to resolve conflict, and I see "Function Props" as a promising direction here. They could offer a way to take advantage of the concave decision making advantage of large groups: where any point along the spectrum from 0 to 1 is higher value than either a 0 or 1 outcome.
innovative price discovery
Great way to put the NFTs in the treasury to work!
Sounds like this can be implemented, so I'm in full support. More than reasonable cost.
Digitaloil is demonstrably dedicated, creative and aligned with Nouns long term and wants to try and build a useful Nounish primitive. Let's see how he impresses.
i think the cost is fair, and it could also lead to new ideas to improve or offer alternatives to the current proposal constraints.
Nounish dev building nounish things - hopefully having funding methods like this save the dao money in the long term
nounishly positive
The range funding is the killer app here imo. Gives proposers with that flexibility the option to potentially get more vote support than a fixed rate.
38 ETH sent to me, DigitalOil.
If only I could propose a functional funding range 🤷♂️.
3 ETH — Pull requests into [nouns.wtf](http://nouns.wtf) front-end for a better UX and reduce friction when proposers choose to submit a functional prop instead of a binary prop.*Note that using vote reasons as inputs to functional props would require a change to the governance contract as vote reasons are currently not introspectable at execution time.
FOR - 44 VOTES
RobotFishGirl | "DigitalOil is a brilliant builder and I believe the tools outlined in this prop will be a valuable add- it's why I also said yes to the first prop. The changes made in v2 have only reaffirmed that belief and choice."
NO - 3 VOTES ABSTAIN - 7 VOTES
Imagine a world where voting does not exist. In this world, we would have no need for rules or principles. But in our world, voting is a reality. So we have a simple rule: we only vote against. We use a “Squad Vote” for each proposal. If more people vote against than vote for or abstain, we vote against on-chain. Otherwise, we abstain. This is our rule.
According to the “squad vote” result for proposal 241, which is 5 for, 24 against and 15 abstain, we choose to vote against.
We abstained in the last proposal, because we appreciated DigitalOil’s exploration of dynamic range for community fundraising tools. The reason for the change in the outcome of the two rounds of proposals is that the new proposal became more and more difficult to understand, especially the second part.
We support the exploration of dynamic funding. The content of the second part belongs to a direction that is correct, but proposes an overly complicated experimental scheme. The new proposal itself did not improve, and requires a philosophical dialectical understanding to enter the context of the proposal, which is a good idea, but not a product that people need.
Although DigitalOil absorbed everyone’s opinions and made improvements. The financial and team parts of the proposal still did not improve, making the evaluation more difficult. We suggest implementing the first part of the product and applying for a “Small Grant”.
Although we vote against, we recognize DigitalOil’s product philosophy, and the mechanization of dynamic financial governance is a very important direction. Nouns’ funding support means are limited (on-chain proposal, Small Round, Prop House), and it is difficult to fund governance thinkers and developers like DigitalOil.
When the product is just an early personal idea, and has not reached the stage of being needed by the community, it should not use On-chain Proposal. Maybe we can open a round of “dynamic funding” Prop House to explore this path?
general distro is cool but unsure about leveraging binary yes/no votes as a way to scale prop compensation
Full reasoning on my newsletter: https://cbites.substack.com/p/active-governance-noun-582-3
I'm actually changing my vote to an against from last time.
it's partly b/c my concern around voters not really knowing what they are voting yes to has not been addressed. "those who want to control the range, can do so by voting later" is bad voter UX imo. if I care about an outcome I need to make sure to set an alarm right before vote end. I care a lot about nouns gov but don't want my schedule to be run by various vote end times.
another (main) reason for the change of vote is that I voted yes last time b/c I'm pro gov experimentation, but this prop now feels more like making it a part of the canonical gov mechanisms (embedded into the nouns.wtf UI).
I mostly disagree that functional props with parameter ranges based on yes/no voting splits would have been the right (constructively additive) way to approach many of the props noted in this prop so I feel less comfortable voting it in as one of the main ways to create a proposal in the main UI.
i am a fan of DigitalOil and would vote yes for them to work on ideas that would benefit the DAO. my opinion remains unchanged though in that i do not believe that functional props will lead to better governance for the DAO at this time.
This is innovative Public Good for Human Organization and I look forward to seeing it used as part of the Nouns governance toolkit.
Come and listen, friends, to this tale I'll tell, Of a new way to reach consensus that's swell, No more choosing just between black or white, Functional props allow for shades of light.
These proposals hold the key, To unlock a new form of democracy, Where opinions can truly be expressed, And progress can be made with greater finesse.
Gone is the limited choice that leads us astray, No longer a binary path that holds sway, Functional props usher in a world of grey, And pave the path for a better future today.
So let us cast our votes for functional props, And usher in a future that pops, Where diverse opinions can have their say, And chart a new course in every way.
For in this world of nuanced shades, We find endless possibility cascades, A place where progress can truly play, And shape a future that's bright and gay.
Voted Yes last time and it's been clarified, focused, and improved. My comment last time:
"Digitaloil is demonstrably dedicated, creative and aligned with Nouns long term and wants to try and build a useful Nounish primitive. Let's see how he impresses."
Appreciate digoil taking their time to re-submit but don't think this is a good direction for governance.
I'm into it. I think various funding mechanics are a good thing and the ability to fund via treasury owned NFTs is also cool.
New text has been highlighted for easier differentiation between this prop and Prop 238.
This is a resubmission of Prop 238, with a better explainer of the pros taking into account feedback, including two additional deliverables (and a bit higher ask for this reason).Now includes a Pull Request into the nouns.wtf front-end to allow for a better UX when proposing NFT distributions.Now includes a Pull Request into the nouns.wtf front-end to allow for better UX when proposing range or milestone funding.Cool tech, cool experiment. But how is it useful?
Historically, all DAO proposals have had binary outcomes (pass or fail). The time has come to invent tooling for DAOs to allow for non-binary outcomes on votes, and for Nouns to lead the way on this.
Take Prop 239 (comic book purchase) as an example. The DAO could be in agreement that it makes sense to purchase comic books, but not necessarily 5,000 of them. If the prop’s voting outcome were non-binary, the DAO would have had a way to simultaneously decide if it makes sense, and also how many comic books to print. Maybe the prop wouldn’t have had to be canceled.
For both NFT distribution and funding it’s a more efficient way of achieving “middle ground”; a form of consensus.
Think about it as a way of taking an on-chain average of all opinions.
The current alternative is an attention-deprived off-chain back and forth between proponent and community to arrive at a proposal price point or distribution number.
Past props where functional props would have been usefulProp 236: Wizard’s Hat — determine the mint price of our NFT together at vote time, from a range.
Prop 223: House of Nouns — Implement milestones instead of all or nothing. Milestones are mapped to voting tiers. The more popular the prop is at vote time, more funding is sent and more features get implemented.
Prop 217: Stake an additional 5,000 ETH in LIDO — instead stake between 1,000-5,000 depending on the level of support for the prop.
Prop 206: Nouns on the Ground 2023 — Do tiered funding (5, 10, or 15 IRL events) instead of all or nothing.
Prop 202: nouns.eth set reverse record — in addition to executing, do we also send 1 ETH to Jacob? Depending on the popularity of the prop, we send between 0-1ETH.
Prop 184: Nouns funding ZachXBT — fund within range 50-100 ETH, instead of all or nothing.
Prop 167: Nouns Builder — seed the Builder treasury within a range (e.g. 500-1,000 ETH).
Prop 125: 8/8 anniversary art — only change existing traits if the vote is unanimous.*
Answers to common doubts on functional fundingWhat if a proposer that is willing to do work for 30 ETH proposes a range of 30-50 ETH to squeeze out more from the DAO?A proposer is disincentivized to do so, as it increases the likelihood of the prop being defeated. It could also be argued conversely, that if functional funding wasn’t possible, the proposer could have proposed an all-or-nothing 50 ETH instead of a range where the DAO could save money if the prop passes, but barely. We can’t be certain if functional funding will make overall payouts larger or smaller, but we can be sure that funds will be allocated more efficiently as more granularity allows for concentrating capital where it needs to be.
If I support a proposal getting the lower part of the range, but not the upper part, how am I supposed to decide how to vote before the very last second?Granted that this is a tricky aspect of functional funding. I give a two-part answer:
1. The question doesn’t apply to all props where functional funding could be useful. For example, take the hypothetical use for Prop 217 (staking in LIDO). If you are OK with staking 5,000 ETH, you are OK with staking 1,000. In this case, you it doesn’t really matter to you if you vote early or later. If you aren’t comfortable with staking up to 5,000 ETH, you vote against. You would have voted against Prop 217 in its non-functional funding incarnation anyway.
2. Granted that those who vote later have more information than those who vote earlier. However, those that vote earlier likely are OK with the entire range. Those that vote later will have more influence over the outcome. This is a net positive: a. those who are OK with the entire range are happy. b. those who want to control the range, can do so by voting later.
Even though the tech is innovative, I don’t see it being widely adoptedRefer to the section above where I highlight some use cases that make Nouns a more agile decision-making DAO.
The main mechanics of the DAO should stick to the KISS principleThe concern is that it should be made as simple as possible for Nouners to vote. I agree that simpler is better. Most props will not make use of functional funding and will stick to KISS. However, for those that it makes sense to make outcomes functional, if it’s more efficient for the DAO, it’s worth the marginal complexity.
Before functional funding comes functional NFT distribution.
I am the dev and proposer behind Prop 199 which passed 226 : 9. Prop 199 was a successful experiment to distribute 50 Nouns Vision Glasses from our Treasury to Nouners at random.
I have developed (inspect code here) a generalized version of the Nouns Vision Glasses distributor that allows for any proposer to propose random distribution of any ERC-721 in our Treasury to Nouners. This included development of a generalized version of the BatchTransfer contract 9999.⌐◨-◨ deployed for Prop 185.
As this deployment is not a one-off and meant to be a primitive the DAO can leverage at any time, plus the code is more complex, it requires more extensive testing. In addition, it requires a more complex custom front-end for the distribution claims.
Why do we need a generalized NFT distributor?The Nouns DAO treasury continues to hoard NFTs as subDAOs such as Lil Nouns and Nouns Builder are “paying backwards” in the form of governance tokens.
It is likely that as the Nouns meme proliferates, more and more subDAOs will continue to do the same.
Historically, we haven’t used these NFTs to govern these subDAOs and to this date haven’t reached consensus as to whether it’s something we are interested in doing as a DAO.
There is no point in having NFTs in our treasury that we don’t plan on using. If we are to go down the alternate path, who better than Nouners to receive them and participate in subDAO governance in an individual, more decentralized manner.
The generalized NFT distributor has a new distribution mechanism baked in that allows the proposer to set the maximum number of NFTs to distribute. Then, if the prop passes, at execution time, the distribution contract calculates the number of NFTs to randomly distribute as a function of the vote (for, against, abstain) counts.
The proposer also selects the distribution amount calculation mechanism. This code extract shows the possible distribution rules the proposer can select from:
Proposer can select among the following distribution rules: Total turnout per Noun, Total Turnout minus abstain per Noun, For Votes, For Votes per Noun, For minus Against Votes, For minus Against Votes per Noun.
For example, the proposer might want to propose a distribution of some LilNouns in the treasury. The proposer is unsure of how many LilNouns the DAO is willing to distribute so he/she selects VotesFor as the distribution mechanism. Thus, the higher “For Vote” turnout (the more popular the prop was), the more LilNouns will be distributed.
Here’s how proposing and execution works:
I call “functional props” proposals that are self-referential at prop execution time. Initially I’m interested in exploring props that use vote counts (i.e., how many for/against/abstain) as inputs and take actions as a function of those inputs. We could imagine going beyond that to enable props that pull from a larger voter input-space such as vote reasons*.
Functional funding is a subset of functional props that enables an efficient way for the DAO to price proposals. The mechanism works as follows:
For Proposers:
For Voters:
For Nouns DAO:
For the first time, allows the DAO to vote on proposals that need to pass unanimously to executeUI on [nouns.wtf](http://nouns.wtf) similar to the USDC converter, that allows proposers to select and input parameters for functional NFT distributions or funding.Positive feedback on Prop 238The innovative approach to Human Organization presented here is a promising addition to the Nouns toolkit, which continues to lead the way with innovative public goods. I support the continued exploration of fresh governance approaches, such as the "Function Props" concept, which can leverage the benefits of large group decision-making.
I'm in favor of experimenting to find better mechanisms we can use to reach non-binary outcomes for proposals and for that reason I'm voting in favor. Even if this isn't used much or is used and we discover what the shortcoming is, that would be a plus in my book.
I think that it is important for the DAO to continue to explore new ways to use governance to resolve conflict, and I see "Function Props" as a promising direction here. They could offer a way to take advantage of the concave decision making advantage of large groups: where any point along the spectrum from 0 to 1 is higher value than either a 0 or 1 outcome.
innovative price discovery
Great way to put the NFTs in the treasury to work!
Sounds like this can be implemented, so I'm in full support. More than reasonable cost.
Digitaloil is demonstrably dedicated, creative and aligned with Nouns long term and wants to try and build a useful Nounish primitive. Let's see how he impresses.
i think the cost is fair, and it could also lead to new ideas to improve or offer alternatives to the current proposal constraints.
Nounish dev building nounish things - hopefully having funding methods like this save the dao money in the long term
nounishly positive
The range funding is the killer app here imo. Gives proposers with that flexibility the option to potentially get more vote support than a fixed rate.
38 ETH sent to me, DigitalOil.
If only I could propose a functional funding range 🤷♂️.
3 ETH — Pull requests into [nouns.wtf](http://nouns.wtf) front-end for a better UX and reduce friction when proposers choose to submit a functional prop instead of a binary prop.*Note that using vote reasons as inputs to functional props would require a change to the governance contract as vote reasons are currently not introspectable at execution time.
