ProposalsProposal 304
ProposalsProposal 304
Last year post-Merge, there was a meaningful public concern around the rising level of censorship in Ethereum due to the (then dominant) Flashbots relay censoring OFAC transactions. At its peak, block censorship reached ~80%.
In response to the public concern, the Flashbots team accelerated open sourcing their relay code and many teams sprinted towards building non-censoring relay alternatives.
Two such relays succeeded in gaining meaningful traction—the ultra sound relay and the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team—resulting in the dramatic reduction of censored blocks earlier this year.
(screenshot from mevboost.pics)
It's worth noting that such gains in relay market share was not attained simply by launching a copy-paste non-censoring fork of the Flashbots relay. The ultra sound relay team had to actually build a lower latency relay through innovations of their own such as optimistic relaying and various devops optimizations.
ultra sound relay's market share has been capped around 33% lately because the team is committed to self-cap its dominance to 1/3 of Ethereum blocks to foster relay diversity. They are also working closely with Mike Neuder from the EF to help accelerate R&D for enshrined PBS that would eliminate the need for relays entirely.
1. To continue to express our alignment with Ethereum and its values.
Nouns is a headless brand. There is no PR head that builds coherent brand identities. Instead, we are what we do.
So far our track record is strong:
It's important to continue these things. To have an identity. To be who we are.
Ethereum-aligned public goods we've funded so far in our history:
We should be proud of what we've done so far but we must continue. Ethereum-aligned public goods are the substrates of our onchain world and funding them is an important expression of who we are and what we stand for.
2. To reach prospective DAO members that also care about Ethereum and the onchain world.
Charismatic giving towards public goods creates news and generates viral attention like anything else we might fund in an attempt to proliferate our brand and attract the attention of prospective DAO members.
Funding Ethereum public goods is particularly useful in this regard since ETH holders and onchain world enthusiasts who care about Ethereum public goods are also (at least currently) our primary prospective DAO member demographic.
Who is on the ultra sound relay team? AlphaMonad leads the dev effort, with support from alex and Justin Drake.
Does the ultra sound money team need the funding? This proposal is meant to recognize what has been accomplished (more like an award) not necessarily fund future work so the proposal does not focus on this aspect. However, the team communicated that funding is currently very tight, cloud bills alone costing ~$15k per month, so the funding would be very welcome.
What other funding sources does ultra sound relay team have? A 10 ETH per month no-strings-attached donation from a top MEV-boost builder is the primary funding source according to the team.
Any conflict of interest? The proposer (Noun 40) has no prior (or planned future) personal or business relationship with anyone on the ultra sound relay team. Reaching out to ask for permission to make this proposal was the first and only connection.
Why not also fund the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team as well? The ETH prize felt a bit superflous given that the Gnosis DAO has a $260M treasury of their own but they definitely deserve high praise for stepping up and maintaining a successful non-censoring public good relay as well!
A noble cyberpunk prop. And this sort of funding can be a beacon-like inspiration and reminder that braveness in crypto counts. +1 from a non-holder
The work by ultra sound relay is to be applauded. It was bold and critical work at the right time to matter. I am voting Against however because I think in context of the large requested sum of 100 ETH, Nouns DAO should normalize going though Discourse discussion process to flesh things out, as per the docs. This will encourage thoughtful applications of capital, esp. where the proposed funding seems more remotely related to Nouns` brand and purpose. Further, given the grant already given to Protocol Guild (500 ETH), this would seem to overlap and open Nouns up to many such requests on top of its existing, demonstrated commitment to ETH protocol support and public goods. Nouns should insulate itself from political and legal risk through things like PG curation. All this being said, 100 ETH seems fair to cover dev support for next year, as the 10 ETH monthly donation team already has can cover stated infra costs.
Nouns DAO was built on Ethereum. If we take the public goods thesis seriously, we need to be thoughtful leaders in the support of Ethereum development and community. We need to lean into this direction hard.
I appreciate the thorough explanations and links in this prop. Telling the story and identifying its importance is just as valuable as the donation. A proposal like this serves as a press release, a piece of history, and the story we tell lasts far longer than the ETH we donate.
In terms of storytelling this proposal is a serious step up from Prop 184 (ZachXBT). It makes it all much more meaningful to me. I would like to see future proposals continue this trend, striving towards thoughtful documents that people actually share.
we will continue to vote for necessary public goods that add value to the Ethereum ecosystem
My thesis as a delegate is: “Nouns has a unique role in the ecosystem as a gathering place around public goods.”
I am strongly in favor of this proposal. Ethereum’s core values include censorship resistance, and that is something very few groups are willing to fund. Ensuring that MEV relayers are neutral is key as more and more organizations consolidate on a small number of relayers.
In addition, Ultra Round Relay is a good example of something that other organizations won’t fund. Nouns is the perfect group in the ecosystem to fund this.
One detail of the prop that I would have liked to see is some kind of promotion that Ultra Sound Relay gives Nouns. This could range from a simple “Sponsored by Nouns ⌐◨-◨” to something fun, like special callouts for blocks with Nouns Graffiti. The prop points to goodwill and attention generated by these donations, which is true but attention is often brief. I’d love to see something more ongoing in collaboration with Ultra Sound Relay. Given that Noun 40 has been in communication with the Ultra Sound Relay team, I don’t see this as necessary in the prop, but it would be nice to follow up when the prop is completed. This kind of promotion is a way to continue to attract people with Ethereum’s values to Nouns, and it is important for ideological alignment.
One important note: Given the liability considerations around OFAC, I am voting “Abstain” rather than “For.” DAOs badly need solutions to limit liability for voters, but the aggressive interpretation taken by regulators makes it harder to take this risk. Allowing voters to freely express speech without significant concerns for the liability surrounding those actions is important, and something I’ve been personally researching and would love to bring to Nouns. While I continue this research, I will vote “Abstain.” I sincerely hope that we can figure out approaches that would allow me to freely vote “For.”
FOR - 39 VOTES
AGAINST - 4 VOTES
EltonPenguin | "Not enough direct benefit for Nouns"
ABSTAINS - 5 VOTES
I agree with the sentiment that Nouns should continuously be signaling our alignment with Ethereum core values; this is a great way to do so. This will benefit the DAO and community over time in ways we might not perceive yet.
Our root layer is Ethereum. We should make sure we support the ecosystem that makes nouns operations possible. In return, I just hope that team (AlphaMonad, Justin and Alex) can relay the nounish vibe to their community / friends / followers. To quote Alex' twitter bio "You loose, I loose. You win, I win".
Voting against - borrowing parts of my reasoning from my discord conversations.
I'm a fan of the whole ultrasound money site + relayer, but im trying to understand why our eth donation makes sense here. it seems like its just a random donation, without any benefits to the nouns ecosystem, nor is it as if the core team asked for it. I'm generally in favor of supporting public goods software, but this seems like its just a one time payment for nothing in return. It’s not that I don’t support “goodwill”, it’s just that I’m not sure how one measures that, which makes it hard to justify. By the above logic, why not donate 500E or 1000E? Or why not send 100E to vitalik for all of his contributions to public goods?
Part of the appeal of a dao to me is to be able to coordinate groups of ppl to do things they couldn’t normally do individually- when it comes to things like pure donations, its not clear to me why people couldn’t just donate to the specific causes in the specific amounts they prefer.
There's a maxim "Price is what you pay, value is what you get." My concern with props where we are "giving back to the ecosystem" without any detail or plan is that if feels like blanket spend based on the hope that it ends up being valuable in some nebulous way. There's nothing wrong with funding ideas with potentially high but unclear value, but that becomes a slippery slope to spending increasing amts b/c "theres no way to measure the upside anyways".
Should the ultrasound team have approached us for some kind of funding (sponsorship, or funding some new project, etc) I would be in support of that, but as a matter of principle I don't think I am in favor of just giving something away.
At this point in the vote it looks clear to pass, and I'm happy to disagree and commit, but I still want to memorialize my reasoning on chain as a reference for future votes.
you can talk about being aligned with ethereum all day long but at the end of the day for it to really mean something you have to pick up the bill to support ethereum's most important public goods.
I love that nouns is continuing to double down on our commitment and support of ethereum and its decentralization even through the depths of the bear market. this a group that I'm truly proud to be a part of.
Gm nounsfolk,
A famous Maya Angelou quote applies here. While I’m in favour of the WHAT, the HOW lacks imagination and is therefore forgettable.
At the end of the day people won't remember what you said or did, they will remember how you made them feel.
Let’s regroup and do something absurd that achieves same outcome.
Sent from my iVote
Nouns is Ethereum. Nouns is decentralization. This proposal highlights our commitment to Ethereum through our support of its communal resources. Ethereum 'good will' is a critical brand differentiator, capable of yielding subtle future benefits, as demonstrated by the positive reputation Nouns has within the Ethereum community. That Noggles have been proliferating their way though the ecosystem from Rainbow to Coinbase further underscores the impact of our alignment. ⌐◨-◨
Hey guys, wilsoncusack.eth actual Noun owner address here. Voting with 0 votes because, embarrassingly, I queued up a transaction with my actual hot wallet while testing voter.wtf stuff and voted against!
In fact, I am For this proposal. I am eager to continue a regular cadence of proposals that indicate our support and alignment with the broader Ethereum ecosystem values. Censorship resistance is a super important part of that.
As a follow on, I'd love to hear from the team on how these funds will be used/what exact difference Nouns can make here.
sent from voter.wtf
I appreciate the underlying concept of supporting efforts around creating censorship resistant systems but can't support this prop without a legal opinion from our Foundation. I do hope that the Foundation is reviewing this and all props and would veto if there were any potential legal consequences, but at this time Nouns has not established any method of this type of review being done and provided for members prior to voting.
So I must vote against and hope this early against vote may spark additional review so some clarity can be provided to other voters.
Nouns should celebrate outstanding achievements in our immediate ecosystem.
Last year post-Merge, there was a meaningful public concern around the rising level of censorship in Ethereum due to the (then dominant) Flashbots relay censoring OFAC transactions. At its peak, block censorship reached ~80%.
In response to the public concern, the Flashbots team accelerated open sourcing their relay code and many teams sprinted towards building non-censoring relay alternatives.
Two such relays succeeded in gaining meaningful traction—the ultra sound relay and the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team—resulting in the dramatic reduction of censored blocks earlier this year.
(screenshot from mevboost.pics)
It's worth noting that such gains in relay market share was not attained simply by launching a copy-paste non-censoring fork of the Flashbots relay. The ultra sound relay team had to actually build a lower latency relay through innovations of their own such as optimistic relaying and various devops optimizations.
ultra sound relay's market share has been capped around 33% lately because the team is committed to self-cap its dominance to 1/3 of Ethereum blocks to foster relay diversity. They are also working closely with Mike Neuder from the EF to help accelerate R&D for enshrined PBS that would eliminate the need for relays entirely.
1. To continue to express our alignment with Ethereum and its values.
Nouns is a headless brand. There is no PR head that builds coherent brand identities. Instead, we are what we do.
So far our track record is strong:
It's important to continue these things. To have an identity. To be who we are.
Ethereum-aligned public goods we've funded so far in our history:
We should be proud of what we've done so far but we must continue. Ethereum-aligned public goods are the substrates of our onchain world and funding them is an important expression of who we are and what we stand for.
2. To reach prospective DAO members that also care about Ethereum and the onchain world.
Charismatic giving towards public goods creates news and generates viral attention like anything else we might fund in an attempt to proliferate our brand and attract the attention of prospective DAO members.
Funding Ethereum public goods is particularly useful in this regard since ETH holders and onchain world enthusiasts who care about Ethereum public goods are also (at least currently) our primary prospective DAO member demographic.
Who is on the ultra sound relay team? AlphaMonad leads the dev effort, with support from alex and Justin Drake.
Does the ultra sound money team need the funding? This proposal is meant to recognize what has been accomplished (more like an award) not necessarily fund future work so the proposal does not focus on this aspect. However, the team communicated that funding is currently very tight, cloud bills alone costing ~$15k per month, so the funding would be very welcome.
What other funding sources does ultra sound relay team have? A 10 ETH per month no-strings-attached donation from a top MEV-boost builder is the primary funding source according to the team.
Any conflict of interest? The proposer (Noun 40) has no prior (or planned future) personal or business relationship with anyone on the ultra sound relay team. Reaching out to ask for permission to make this proposal was the first and only connection.
Why not also fund the Agnostic relay by the Gnosis team as well? The ETH prize felt a bit superflous given that the Gnosis DAO has a $260M treasury of their own but they definitely deserve high praise for stepping up and maintaining a successful non-censoring public good relay as well!
