Play Nouns: A Fun Game UI Layer to Keep Nouns Weird
🚨IMPORTANT: PLAY GAME DEMO BEFORE READING PROP!🚨
🏃TL;DR
Hi 👋 I'm Yung Algorithm. It's my mission to use technology to help people have fun and connect with each other. I am seeking 22 ETH to complete a fun gamified frontend layer for Nouns called "Play Nouns" over the course of 3 months. The catalyst for building Play Nouns originally was this tweet by Nounish:
A fun, gamified layer for Nouns is something the Nouns community has long enthusiastically discussed. The "Play Nouns" game proposed here allows users to do everything they can do on the current Nouns frontends (like Nouns.WTF and Voters.wtf), but within a nostalgic 8-bit style web game.
This includes:
- Governance participation: including zero weight votes, proposals, and candidates;
- Daily auction bidding: for Nouns, Gnars, Lil Nouns, and any Nouns project;
- Onchain player profiles: showing onchain activity and voting history for each player;
- Multiplayer chat: chat with others around you in the game and build relationships;
- Mini-games: hyper-casual and classic games to play with friends;
- Onboarding quests: Nouns-pill newcomers into our ecosystem in an interactive way;
- Access Info: Access all Nouns resources (github, assets, documents);
- Event hosting: A hangout space during live events like TNS, Noun 'O Clock, and more.
By creating a fun, gamified layer for Nouns, we aim to best facililate the playing of Nouns as an "Infinite Game" (as defined by lil panda and index on the Let's Play Lil Nouns Podcast) for both holders and non-holders alike.
If you have time to read the full prop, please continue. If you are rushed and just want the TL;DR -- we are building a fun gamified layer for Nouns so we can do onchain activities and hang out in a game environment, and "Play Nouns" like we are playing Runescape or Pokemon -- a game-like frontend for new and exciting Nouns projects to grow and proliferate. The demo is already playable (pls play it for 1 min if you haven't already), and the ask is 22 ETH for a 3 month runway to build the demo out into a production version.
🎮 Why Play Nouns?
To further connect the community
TNS, Nounish, Gnars, and Nouns Esports are great examples of cultural outputs that signify the direction Nouns is collectively headed, and more will come as Nouns continues to proliferate. The game proposed here serves as a place to host and connect all of the Nounish outputs outside of conventional websites and social media, in a fun and truly Nounish way. More importantly, web games like Runescape and World of Warcraft allow for people connect with each other in a digital world and develop relationships outside of the game itself, and this is the main aim of this proposal -- to build a game layer abstraction to represent the 'meta-game' of playing Nouns, e.g. governance participation and auction bidding.
To "Keep Nouns Weird"
Keeping with 9999's "Keep Nouns Weird" slogan, game-like frontend UIs are a great area for exploration online, especially within web3 (see the success of DeFi Kingdoms and even AMMs like PancakeSwap). Nouns is an ideal candidate, given its brand identity, and doing onchain activities through a game-like UI is a natural next step to progress the DAO forward and lead by example. We expect UIs to become more and more gamelike in the coming years, and gaming as an industry is growing hand-over-foot. Currently, it is about three times larger than both the music and film & TV industries combined. We have already seen good success from the Nouns Esports team.
To engage new users and DAO members
New creators, contributors, and ecosystem members are the lifeblood of Nouns and its sub-DAOs, and a gamified frontend layer allows for a fun way to lure new members into the world of Nouns to engage and contribute. The game supports Candidate submission and zero-weight voting, and game loops (in-game points, items, and leaderboard high scores) can incentivize non-Nouns-holders to participate in governance. As for existing DAO members, while many power users may still opt for text-based frontends for voting, the proposed game serves as a gamified option in addition to from frontend governance UIs (nouns.wtf, voters.wtf) and social media (discord, farcaster, twitter, and discourse forums) for DAO members to have fun, create content, build relationships, and share ideas in a fun and interactive way.
To build on top of existing cc0 and funded proposals
David and Elad from Verbs recently published a post on Mirror discussing their views on why deprecating the currently unmaintained Nouns.wtf frontend is a sensible move. They argue in favor of incentivizing new alternative frontend UIs for the DAO. This proposal also builds on Prop 201, which funded the creation of Nouns spritesheets (finished product linked here). These spritesheets are used so people can select their Noun(s) as playable characters in the game (non-holders get to choose other Nouns/sub-DAO skins). This proposal seeks to build what ecosystem members are talking about, and execute on a vision of a fun layer for Nouns discovery, interaction, and gamified governance.
🏋️ Related work and Progress so far
Playable Demo is currently hosted here
Play Nouns was built to its current demo state over the course of several weekends, after initially winning a 500 USDC prize from NounsDAO at the ETHGlobal NYC Hackathon on Sept. 24, 2023 (project link here). After winning the hackathon, a dozen or so people uninitiated to the Nouns ecosystem enthusiastically played the game and asked me to continue building it and share updates.
ETHGlobal New York
Post-Hackathon Progress and Demo Iteration
After the hackathon, iterative feedback was provided by dot, index, brennen, pipe, Benjamin Latsko, and mikegood, among many, many others in the Nouns community. There were already several existing scope materials about governance games crafted by Nouns community members, describing games with similar features and functionalities to the demo. I have also chronicled the building of the demo game publicly in a tweet thread:
Overworld
Proposal House
Auction
Battle
Arcade
💸 Roadmap and Funding
22 ETH, broken up in the following way:
- 15 ETH: 3 months' compensation to Yung Algorithm to ship the roadmap below;
- 4 ETH: Game assets (commissioned from Nouns ecosystem artists);
- 2 ETH: Marketing budget for game release;
- 1 ETH: 12 months' runway for operational expenses (server costs and gas fees)
The below roadmap is broken down into a demo sprint (already completed), 3 month-long production sprints, and then a placeholder for additional sprints:
✅ Demo Sprint: Month 0
🟢 Overworld Map 🟢 8 custom-made 8-bit soundtracks for each area of the game (composed by Yung Algorithm) 🟢 School Map 🟢 Auction Map 🟢 Proposal House Map 🟢 Gnars DAO Map 🟢 Lil Nouns Map 🟢 Arcade Map 🟢 CC0 Nouns Spritesheets (e.g. the animations of Nouns NPCs in the game) 🟢 Questline 🟢 Minigames 🟢 WalletConnect (Metamask only)
🟦 Production Sprint I: Month 1
🔵 CC0 Nouns game assets (work with Nouns artists like Ilustradora, Brett, Carlos, etc.) 🔵 Onchain logic functionality (bid, vote, check ownership, etc) 🔵 Nouns player profiles (unique onchain histories of each Noun holder) 🔵 New minigames (demo only includes simple casino games + battle game) 🔵 Multiplayer Functionality (so players can see each other walking around the map) 🔵 Chat Functionality (so players can chat with each other, both directly and to a 'game chat') 🔵 In-game items and currency (eg. as rewards for onchain, quest, minigame participation) 🔵 Interactive HUD (show player health, Treasury balance, # of in-game currency, etc) 🔵 Event Space map (where people can see tweets, events, streams happen in real-time and have viewing parties) 🔵 WalletConnect Functionality (right now only MetaMask is supported) 🔵 Social API plug-in (twitter, discord, farcaster, discourse forums)
🟦 Production Sprint II: Month 2
🔵 Gather community feedback and iterate (e.g. add new areas, functionalities, features, quests, minigames, update assets) 🔵 Conceieve of launch/marketing plan to debut Nouns Game publicly
🟦 Production Sprint III: Month 3
🔵 Gather community feedback and iterate (e.g. add new areas, functionalities, features, quests, minigames, update assets) 🔵 Execute on launch/marketing plan and debut Nouns Game to web3 ecosystem
🟦 Additional Production Sprints: TBD (not in scope for this proposal)
🔵 Produce and distribute a batch of gameboy-like handheld game consoles to "Play Nouns" as a holiday drop for Christmas 2024, potentially in collaboration with Nouns ecosystem hardware builders (e.g. Tigris/Lychee) 🔵 Release Nouns Game natively on App Store (iOS) or Google Playstore (Android) 🔵 Etc...
🧑🔬 Tech Specs
Play Nouns is a React app hosted on Vercel. It talks to the Nouns Subgraph for onchain data (for proposals and Noun information) and social APIs for social integration (twitter, discord, farcaster, and the discourse RSS feed). It connects with your wallet using WalletConnect, which supports multiple wallet providers. The game assets and codebase will all be cc0 and public on github respectively.
Technical Diagram
Multi Compatibility
The game engine compiles to native android and iOS in addition to web, meaning the codebase need not need be updated or rewritten for compatibility in the future if we want to implement the handheld gaming console mentioned above, or a native iOS/android app. This also allows for exciting compatibility with handheld gaming devices which run on android (like the RG35XX pictured above).
🙋Team
Yung Algorithm
Hi 👋 I'm a hacker, developer, and artist based in NYC. I'm on a mission to build platforms and tools that serve as beacons of joy and nurture communities.
I've been into crypto ever since I wrote my senior econ thesis on Bitcoin in 2017. More recently, I've done sound design work for Zora, 77bit, and Defimons, and participated in 2x ETHGlobal Hackathons. What you should also know about me: I've also built + exited 2x tech startups since 2012, a logistics company and a data company.
Personal Website Sound Design Portfolio Twitter Zora
💭 Final Words
Thank you for reading and considering my prop, I really appreciate your time and attention. Here is a shared markdown file for constructive feedback, please add to it or share directly on the candidate. Let's build something together that's fun, unique, and totally original, in the spirit of Nouns!
Notes for Future Candidates
💡 Proposals are often drafted in HackMD, then you can copy the markdown, using this template created by Rafa Fernandez. If you do end up using this template, please link to it in your proposal if possible. That way, other people reading your proposal can find this template easier.
🚨IMPORTANT: PLAY GAME DEMO BEFORE READING PROP!🚨
🏃TL;DR
Hi 👋 I'm Yung Algorithm. It's my mission to use technology to help people have fun and connect with each other. I am seeking 22 ETH to complete a fun gamified frontend layer for Nouns called "Play Nouns" over the course of 3 months. The catalyst for building Play Nouns originally was this tweet by Nounish:
A fun, gamified layer for Nouns is something the Nouns community has long enthusiastically discussed. The "Play Nouns" game proposed here allows users to do everything they can do on the current Nouns frontends (like Nouns.WTF and Voters.wtf), but within a nostalgic 8-bit style web game.
This includes:
- Governance participation: including zero weight votes, proposals, and candidates;
- Daily auction bidding: for Nouns, Gnars, Lil Nouns, and any Nouns project;
- Onchain player profiles: showing onchain activity and voting history for each player;
- Multiplayer chat: chat with others around you in the game and build relationships;
- Mini-games: hyper-casual and classic games to play with friends;
- Onboarding quests: Nouns-pill newcomers into our ecosystem in an interactive way;
- Access Info: Access all Nouns resources (github, assets, documents);
- Event hosting: A hangout space during live events like TNS, Noun 'O Clock, and more.
By creating a fun, gamified layer for Nouns, we aim to best facililate the playing of Nouns as an "Infinite Game" (as defined by lil panda and index on the Let's Play Lil Nouns Podcast) for both holders and non-holders alike.
If you have time to read the full prop, please continue. If you are rushed and just want the TL;DR -- we are building a fun gamified layer for Nouns so we can do onchain activities and hang out in a game environment, and "Play Nouns" like we are playing Runescape or Pokemon -- a game-like frontend for new and exciting Nouns projects to grow and proliferate. The demo is already playable (pls play it for 1 min if you haven't already), and the ask is 22 ETH for a 3 month runway to build the demo out into a production version.
🎮 Why Play Nouns?
To further connect the community
TNS, Nounish, Gnars, and Nouns Esports are great examples of cultural outputs that signify the direction Nouns is collectively headed, and more will come as Nouns continues to proliferate. The game proposed here serves as a place to host and connect all of the Nounish outputs outside of conventional websites and social media, in a fun and truly Nounish way. More importantly, web games like Runescape and World of Warcraft allow for people connect with each other in a digital world and develop relationships outside of the game itself, and this is the main aim of this proposal -- to build a game layer abstraction to represent the 'meta-game' of playing Nouns, e.g. governance participation and auction bidding.
To "Keep Nouns Weird"
Keeping with 9999's "Keep Nouns Weird" slogan, game-like frontend UIs are a great area for exploration online, especially within web3 (see the success of DeFi Kingdoms and even AMMs like PancakeSwap). Nouns is an ideal candidate, given its brand identity, and doing onchain activities through a game-like UI is a natural next step to progress the DAO forward and lead by example. We expect UIs to become more and more gamelike in the coming years, and gaming as an industry is growing hand-over-foot. Currently, it is about three times larger than both the music and film & TV industries combined. We have already seen good success from the Nouns Esports team.
To engage new users and DAO members
New creators, contributors, and ecosystem members are the lifeblood of Nouns and its sub-DAOs, and a gamified frontend layer allows for a fun way to lure new members into the world of Nouns to engage and contribute. The game supports Candidate submission and zero-weight voting, and game loops (in-game points, items, and leaderboard high scores) can incentivize non-Nouns-holders to participate in governance. As for existing DAO members, while many power users may still opt for text-based frontends for voting, the proposed game serves as a gamified option in addition to from frontend governance UIs (nouns.wtf, voters.wtf) and social media (discord, farcaster, twitter, and discourse forums) for DAO members to have fun, create content, build relationships, and share ideas in a fun and interactive way.
To build on top of existing cc0 and funded proposals
David and Elad from Verbs recently published a post on Mirror discussing their views on why deprecating the currently unmaintained Nouns.wtf frontend is a sensible move. They argue in favor of incentivizing new alternative frontend UIs for the DAO. This proposal also builds on Prop 201, which funded the creation of Nouns spritesheets (finished product linked here). These spritesheets are used so people can select their Noun(s) as playable characters in the game (non-holders get to choose other Nouns/sub-DAO skins). This proposal seeks to build what ecosystem members are talking about, and execute on a vision of a fun layer for Nouns discovery, interaction, and gamified governance.
🏋️ Related work and Progress so far
Playable Demo is currently hosted here
Play Nouns was built to its current demo state over the course of several weekends, after initially winning a 500 USDC prize from NounsDAO at the ETHGlobal NYC Hackathon on Sept. 24, 2023 (project link here). After winning the hackathon, a dozen or so people uninitiated to the Nouns ecosystem enthusiastically played the game and asked me to continue building it and share updates.
ETHGlobal New York
Post-Hackathon Progress and Demo Iteration
After the hackathon, iterative feedback was provided by dot, index, brennen, pipe, Benjamin Latsko, and mikegood, among many, many others in the Nouns community. There were already several existing scope materials about governance games crafted by Nouns community members, describing games with similar features and functionalities to the demo. I have also chronicled the building of the demo game publicly in a tweet thread:
Overworld
Proposal House
Auction
Battle
Arcade
💸 Roadmap and Funding
22 ETH, broken up in the following way:
- 15 ETH: 3 months' compensation to Yung Algorithm to ship the roadmap below;
- 4 ETH: Game assets (commissioned from Nouns ecosystem artists);
- 2 ETH: Marketing budget for game release;
- 1 ETH: 12 months' runway for operational expenses (server costs and gas fees)
The below roadmap is broken down into a demo sprint (already completed), 3 month-long production sprints, and then a placeholder for additional sprints:
✅ Demo Sprint: Month 0
🟢 Overworld Map 🟢 8 custom-made 8-bit soundtracks for each area of the game (composed by Yung Algorithm) 🟢 School Map 🟢 Auction Map 🟢 Proposal House Map 🟢 Gnars DAO Map 🟢 Lil Nouns Map 🟢 Arcade Map 🟢 CC0 Nouns Spritesheets (e.g. the animations of Nouns NPCs in the game) 🟢 Questline 🟢 Minigames 🟢 WalletConnect (Metamask only)
🟦 Production Sprint I: Month 1
🔵 CC0 Nouns game assets (work with Nouns artists like Ilustradora, Brett, Carlos, etc.) 🔵 Onchain logic functionality (bid, vote, check ownership, etc) 🔵 Nouns player profiles (unique onchain histories of each Noun holder) 🔵 New minigames (demo only includes simple casino games + battle game) 🔵 Multiplayer Functionality (so players can see each other walking around the map) 🔵 Chat Functionality (so players can chat with each other, both directly and to a 'game chat') 🔵 In-game items and currency (eg. as rewards for onchain, quest, minigame participation) 🔵 Interactive HUD (show player health, Treasury balance, # of in-game currency, etc) 🔵 Event Space map (where people can see tweets, events, streams happen in real-time and have viewing parties) 🔵 WalletConnect Functionality (right now only MetaMask is supported) 🔵 Social API plug-in (twitter, discord, farcaster, discourse forums)
🟦 Production Sprint II: Month 2
🔵 Gather community feedback and iterate (e.g. add new areas, functionalities, features, quests, minigames, update assets) 🔵 Conceieve of launch/marketing plan to debut Nouns Game publicly
🟦 Production Sprint III: Month 3
🔵 Gather community feedback and iterate (e.g. add new areas, functionalities, features, quests, minigames, update assets) 🔵 Execute on launch/marketing plan and debut Nouns Game to web3 ecosystem
🟦 Additional Production Sprints: TBD (not in scope for this proposal)
🔵 Produce and distribute a batch of gameboy-like handheld game consoles to "Play Nouns" as a holiday drop for Christmas 2024, potentially in collaboration with Nouns ecosystem hardware builders (e.g. Tigris/Lychee) 🔵 Release Nouns Game natively on App Store (iOS) or Google Playstore (Android) 🔵 Etc...
🧑🔬 Tech Specs
Play Nouns is a React app hosted on Vercel. It talks to the Nouns Subgraph for onchain data (for proposals and Noun information) and social APIs for social integration (twitter, discord, farcaster, and the discourse RSS feed). It connects with your wallet using WalletConnect, which supports multiple wallet providers. The game assets and codebase will all be cc0 and public on github respectively.
Technical Diagram
Multi Compatibility
The game engine compiles to native android and iOS in addition to web, meaning the codebase need not need be updated or rewritten for compatibility in the future if we want to implement the handheld gaming console mentioned above, or a native iOS/android app. This also allows for exciting compatibility with handheld gaming devices which run on android (like the RG35XX pictured above).
🙋Team
Yung Algorithm
Hi 👋 I'm a hacker, developer, and artist based in NYC. I'm on a mission to build platforms and tools that serve as beacons of joy and nurture communities.
I've been into crypto ever since I wrote my senior econ thesis on Bitcoin in 2017. More recently, I've done sound design work for Zora, 77bit, and Defimons, and participated in 2x ETHGlobal Hackathons. What you should also know about me: I've also built + exited 2x tech startups since 2012, a logistics company and a data company.
Personal Website Sound Design Portfolio Twitter Zora
💭 Final Words
Thank you for reading and considering my prop, I really appreciate your time and attention. Here is a shared markdown file for constructive feedback, please add to it or share directly on the candidate. Let's build something together that's fun, unique, and totally original, in the spirit of Nouns!
Notes for Future Candidates
💡 Proposals are often drafted in HackMD, then you can copy the markdown, using this template created by Rafa Fernandez. If you do end up using this template, please link to it in your proposal if possible. That way, other people reading your proposal can find this template easier.
