TLDR: 224,000 USDC to launch a bid-bot network for Nouns + 3 auction-incentive experiments.

• The Nouns auction, the primary source of income for the DAO, is declining
• Arbitragers have an advantage over Nouns-aligned bidders because they use bots to scoop cheap Nouns to flip (or worse)
  • Bidding bots are expensive and hard to set up for non-technical bidders
• The daily auction requires active participation
  • DAOs looking to acquire a Noun have either a painful UX (approve each bid) or trustful solutions (send max bid to a delegate)
  • Folks outside auction time zones must stay up late and manually place bids

Nouns.sh vibes was Blur-for-Nouns, but we're reimagining it as a launchpad for bid bots, empowering nouns-aligned bidders with a mech that competes for the daily Noun. It’s an autopilot that fights on your behalf, securing your grail Nouns at the last second for the lowest price.

Our new brand draws inspiration from classic anime, big robots and space travel. We’ll make it fun to participate in the auctions and create room to expand Nouns lore.

Over 6 months we will:

• Launch a bid-bot network for nontechnical users
  • Folks in other timezones and DAOs will be able to participate more easily in the auction's final minutes and have a higher possibility of acquiring a Noun
  • Infra will be open-sourced, meaning anyone can self-host, or use our service to run their bid bot
  • We will not be making changes to the core AuctionHouse smart contract. The bots will fit into the existing auction rules and will innovate within its constraints
• Dogfood the product and align our incentives to NounsDAO
  • Nouns.sh‘s survival should be tied to NounsDAO’s health
  • We’ll launch a community-powered PartyDAO. The PartyDAO members will get early beta access, vote on Nouns.sh features, and share Nouns our DAO wins
• Launch 3-5 Bid Incentive experiments to drive higher auction prices
  • We have ~15 experiment ideas in distribution, bid-pooling, reimbursements, and collectibles
  • We’ll launch 3-5 of the most compelling, and potentially move down the list as Nouns.sh grows
• Iterate with simple KPIs as our north star
  • The majority (60%+) of top 3 bids for Nouns should original from bots in our network
  • Nouns auction price goes up over time (30-day trailing average)

224,000 USDC to fund 6 months of product, development, design, and growth work.

• USDC 120,000 for 6 months of active engineering work (2 part-time eng @ 10K/mo)
• USDC 50,000 autobidder bot development and audit budget
• USDC 36,000 user research, design, and branding
• USDC 12,000 marketing and incentives budget
• USDC 6,000 in server and infrastructure costs

How about client incentives? We believe the Protocol Rewards is a great initiative and will help keep Nouns Terminal sustainable for the long run. The innovations we are proposing here require a bigger investment, and will allow us to experiment.

• w1nt3r.eth — web2/web3 builder with 20 years of software development and product leadership experience. The original author of the Nouns Terminal, and co-founder of BasePaint. w1nt3r will provide direction, mentorship, support, and engineering.
• zherring.eth — long-term crypto-designer, former Consensys, and a co-founder of BasePaint and Nifty Apes. Zach will help with the brand identity and the design of the new features.
• yukigesho.eth — web2 fullstack engineer onboarding to web3, w1nt3r’s most talented intern. Yukigesho is very excited about Nouns and has already been making improvements to nouns.sh.

2 years ago Nouns Terminal was funded by the Nouns Clients Proof of Concepts round with 25 ETH. We focused on making a great-looking client packed with data and exploring auction bots.

nouns.sh has driven 8 sales (237 ETH) via autobidder bot prototype (1 & 2), been used by ~200 unique users/month, and maintained by w1nt3r.eth and yukigesho.eth as a side project.

• Innovating in the long-neglected Nouns auction space will bring more eyes and money to the Nouns DAO
• Value-aligned bidders will get more tools to win auctions
• Established team with a track record of shipping impactful projects, that’s also onboarding an experienced web2 dev into the Nouns ecosystem
• Just as nouns.camp improved the governance experience and became the default governance tool for nouns, nouns.sh can do the same for auction UX

TLDR: 224,000 USDC to launch a bid-bot network for Nouns + 3 auction-incentive experiments.

• The Nouns auction, the primary source of income for the DAO, is declining
• Arbitragers have an advantage over Nouns-aligned bidders because they use bots to scoop cheap Nouns to flip (or worse)
  • Bidding bots are expensive and hard to set up for non-technical bidders
• The daily auction requires active participation
  • DAOs looking to acquire a Noun have either a painful UX (approve each bid) or trustful solutions (send max bid to a delegate)
  • Folks outside auction time zones must stay up late and manually place bids

Nouns.sh vibes was Blur-for-Nouns, but we're reimagining it as a launchpad for bid bots, empowering nouns-aligned bidders with a mech that competes for the daily Noun. It’s an autopilot that fights on your behalf, securing your grail Nouns at the last second for the lowest price.

Our new brand draws inspiration from classic anime, big robots and space travel. We’ll make it fun to participate in the auctions and create room to expand Nouns lore.

Over 6 months we will:

• Launch a bid-bot network for nontechnical users
  • Folks in other timezones and DAOs will be able to participate more easily in the auction's final minutes and have a higher possibility of acquiring a Noun
  • Infra will be open-sourced, meaning anyone can self-host, or use our service to run their bid bot
  • We will not be making changes to the core AuctionHouse smart contract. The bots will fit into the existing auction rules and will innovate within its constraints
• Dogfood the product and align our incentives to NounsDAO
  • Nouns.sh‘s survival should be tied to NounsDAO’s health
  • We’ll launch a community-powered PartyDAO. The PartyDAO members will get early beta access, vote on Nouns.sh features, and share Nouns our DAO wins
• Launch 3-5 Bid Incentive experiments to drive higher auction prices
  • We have ~15 experiment ideas in distribution, bid-pooling, reimbursements, and collectibles
  • We’ll launch 3-5 of the most compelling, and potentially move down the list as Nouns.sh grows
• Iterate with simple KPIs as our north star
  • The majority (60%+) of top 3 bids for Nouns should original from bots in our network
  • Nouns auction price goes up over time (30-day trailing average)

224,000 USDC to fund 6 months of product, development, design, and growth work.

• USDC 120,000 for 6 months of active engineering work (2 part-time eng @ 10K/mo)
• USDC 50,000 autobidder bot development and audit budget
• USDC 36,000 user research, design, and branding
• USDC 12,000 marketing and incentives budget
• USDC 6,000 in server and infrastructure costs

How about client incentives? We believe the Protocol Rewards is a great initiative and will help keep Nouns Terminal sustainable for the long run. The innovations we are proposing here require a bigger investment, and will allow us to experiment.

• w1nt3r.eth — web2/web3 builder with 20 years of software development and product leadership experience. The original author of the Nouns Terminal, and co-founder of BasePaint. w1nt3r will provide direction, mentorship, support, and engineering.
• zherring.eth — long-term crypto-designer, former Consensys, and a co-founder of BasePaint and Nifty Apes. Zach will help with the brand identity and the design of the new features.
• yukigesho.eth — web2 fullstack engineer onboarding to web3, w1nt3r’s most talented intern. Yukigesho is very excited about Nouns and has already been making improvements to nouns.sh.

2 years ago Nouns Terminal was funded by the Nouns Clients Proof of Concepts round with 25 ETH. We focused on making a great-looking client packed with data and exploring auction bots.

nouns.sh has driven 8 sales (237 ETH) via autobidder bot prototype (1 & 2), been used by ~200 unique users/month, and maintained by w1nt3r.eth and yukigesho.eth as a side project.

• Innovating in the long-neglected Nouns auction space will bring more eyes and money to the Nouns DAO
• Value-aligned bidders will get more tools to win auctions
• Established team with a track record of shipping impactful projects, that’s also onboarding an experienced web2 dev into the Nouns ecosystem
• Just as nouns.camp improved the governance experience and became the default governance tool for nouns, nouns.sh can do the same for auction UX