# A Path Forward for Public Nouns

The following is a presentation of information related to the Public Nouns ecosystem.

Much of it has been discussed within various groups, chats and channels over the past few months. I am aiming to provide a detailed summary here that helps bring it all together.

The idea is that it is a gathering of different ideas to help position Public Nouns to become a lasting force in the Public Goods space.

Comments and suggestions are welcome.

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## Outline:

1) State of Public Nouns
2) Growing Public Nouns into a lasting force in the public goods space
a) Leveraging capital
b) Potential Migration to Layer 2
c) Expanding PN orgs
d) Growth, marketing and reputation
3) The future of Public Nouns

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## Details:

### 1) State of Public Nouns

The idea for Public Nouns was developed and created over many months by a bunch of DAO and Public Goods luvrs and then launched in September 2022 with 7 founding orgs:

- MetaCartel
- MolochDAO
- Gitcoin
- Panvala
- Optimism
- CLR Fund
- Radicle

Over the past 1.5 years, Public Nouns has raised over 200 ETH to be used to fund experiments in the Public Good space. Public Nouns has funded 22 public goods experiments via DAO governance.

As of 28 March 2024,

Public Nouns has brought in 218.279 ETH
This was $312,729 at the time it came in.
The current value of all ETH brought in would be $785,807.

Public Nouns has given out grants of 90.26 ETH to 22 experiments
This was $174,940 at the time given out.
The current value of all ETH given as grants would be $$324,936.

You can see the grant activity here:
https://publicnouns.wtf/vote

You can find a past summary of the creation and activity of PNs here: https://mirror.xyz/skywtf.eth/gJUmiUcwbgDZmlKKNbJnb-dUjxxXUp6RiDKd0RIgQ2I

You can also learn about how special the Public Nouns community is here:
https://twitter.com/0xSkyMine/status/1723053603370541201

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### 2) Growing Public Nouns into a lasting force in the public goods space

Now that Public Nouns has proven to create value in the Public Goods space, the next step would be to expand and strengthen this force.

#### a) Leveraging capital

- From the start Public Nouns has been existing and growing based on the gracious support of individuals
- Public Nouns has always aimed to use 100% of the funds in the DAO for funding experiments in Public Goods.
- The idea has always been to gather separate capital to fund operational and growth costs under Public Nouns Operations.
- In the beginning, this capital was to come from Giveth and Gitcoin donations and QF rounds but was small. At the start of this year, Public Nouns Operations participated in and received funding from Optimism’s RetroPGF Round 3. Now Public Nouns has some decent capital to use.

Current Ideas for RetroPGF reward:

Though this is a retroactive reward, it would be powerful to break it into Retroactive and Future. This would hopefully create a culture of pro-active contributions, and still provide capital for future ideas, growth and experiments.

##### 1) Retroactive rewards:

###### Retro Contributions:

- Some portion of the PGF will go toward retroactive contributions (plan is to compile a growing list of contributions since the early beginnings of Public Nouns).
There would also be an open submission period where anyone can put forward contributions they have done for Public Nouns.
- Reimbursement of costs

###### Retro Governance Gas Refunds
- One really good thing that is likely necessary is to provide governance gas refunds to all wallets that have spent ETH on gas allowing Public Nouns to run)

- This will include a breakdown of mainnet txns for:
- Deployments/other
- Auctions (bids, settlements)
- DAO proposals (creation, voting, queue, execution)
- As of Mar 28th 2024, Total Refunds would be: ETH 5.3296 to 210 wallets

This is an important first step to retroactively "reward" (meaning payback the gas) those who spent ETH helping Public Nouns function on Mainnet.

##### 2) Future rewards

###### Streaming/Dripping to Dependencies:
- Want to make sure all the costs that happen to allow Public Nouns to run and be maintained are taken care of (this includes devs work and the site, etc.)
- Also include things like our social media managers and the PN's Twitter Bot running that Adam built
- Site and infra costs
- Others

###### Future contributions
- Establish a system for rewarding future contributions
- via delegation or other

#### b) Potential Migration to Layer 2

There has been talk about a move away from Mainnet Ethereum in a migration to an L2.

This comes with positives and negatives.
When you start to debate the changes, the issue becomes a little complex.
There doesn’t seem to be a great reason to simply move the existing DAO to L2 and leave as is.

One reason to do a migration would be to make PNs more open to more people (probably by making PNs starting price cheaper)

It also makes sense to line this up with expanding the orgs that are part of PNs. Bringing more people from these communities into the mix.

It is not likely gas fees alone determine what communities people will be a part of. However, if we have lower gas fees, it's easier to have a lower minimum threshold like 0.11 ETH.

There are some people that want to be a part of PNs but don't want to spend 0.33 eth but would spend 0.11 eth. However, the high sacrifice is also an important barrier sometimes. MetaCartel was 10 ETH (it curates a certain type of commitment).

If a move to L2 happens, what would be the goals? Let’s look at a couple scenarios.

Public Nouns Expansion/Move to Layer 2
1) Move DAO to L2
2) DAO contracts are on L2
3) Treasury is moved into DAO on L2
4) Governance is done all on L2
5) Auctions all happen on L2
6) Current Public Noun holders receive a mirror ‘Governance Copy’ of L1 Public Nouns on the L2
7) If minimum price is lowered, L1 PN holders will receive additional L2 PNs (like a stock split)

Separate from L2 migration, there has been talk to at some point have an expansion of PN orgs (we have 7 now) - we could expand this.

This could very well make sense WITH the migration to L2 - the reason being:

On L2, we would have the opportunity to lower the starting price to something like 0.11 eth (cut in third from 0.33 ETH)

If we did that, all mainnet PN holders would get two additional PNs. (like a share split)

There are a number of mechanisms we could use for how to give the additional two L2 PNs to each mainnet PN holder.

Let’s say there are 100 existing PNs.
We mint an additional 200 PNs on L2 to a “distribution” MS. This would include all the new orgs as well. Then we have a sheet/mechanism for current PN holders to "draft" from the new pool. The order could be based on “Price paid for your PN” (highest goes first down to lowest).

So all mainnet public Noun holders would end up on L2 with:

1) Their OG PN
2) Two new ones (they were able to draft)

So three votes instead of one. If the PN holder does not participate in the draft, then the two new ones will be assigned.

###### Some separate questions:
- Should Public Nouns remain an independent Nouns fork on L2 or join the nouns.build infrastructure (like Purple DAO as an example)?
- Get to leverage the tools built for that platform?
- The nouns.build set-up has certain parameters to choose from and not sure this additional minting would be supported.
- We also have the ability to switch to a dynamic auction as ATX DAO has created.

#### c) Expanding PN orgs

Bring on 7-15 more Public Goods focused orgs to be a part of Public Nouns. We would need head art for each org. We would also like a commitment to share and push the expansion into their communities.

Public Nouns Growth -> It seems that one of the best methods to grow the Public Nouns community would be to bring on additional organizations into the Public Nouns arena.

Currently, the list of organizations that make up the Public Goods Community (“PGC”) is 7 organizations.

- MetaCartel
- MolochDAO
- Gitcoin
- Panvala
- Optimism
- CLR Fund
- Radicle

The majority have a shared theme of funding.

It would be great to expand the types of orgs to other verticals such as building or education and more.

So far, we have gathered the start of an initial list.

Start of Potential List to be reviewed and then possibly voted on:
1) Giveth -(https://giveth.io/) has an aligned mission with significant proofs of supporting public goods).
2) Buidl Guidl (https://buidlguidl.com/)
3) Token Engineering Commons (https://tecommons.org/)
4) Protocol guild (https://protocol-guild.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html#)
5) ultrasound.money (https://ultrasound.money/)
6) Shapeshift (https://shapeshift.com/)
7) Raid Guild (https://www.raidguild.org/)
8) dOrg (who dropped daodrops) (https://www.dorg.tech/ / https://daodrops.io/)
9) OpenData Community (https://opendatacommunity.org/)
10) DAOstar (https://daostar.org/)
11) …

Also, the process to: Propose a new Public Good Community (PGC).

New art added to the contract will become available for minting forever, so curation is important.

Requirements per PGC:
Mission to align with manifesto
3 Heads to introduce as new attributes (PN artists can help)

New communities don't have to solely be operating in public goods but should be able to provide a proof of significant public goods support (creation, funding, and/or advocacy) that aligns with our manifesto, as well as having strong memes/art that will enhance propagation of the Public Nouns meme/mission itself.

PGC Community Proposal Requirements:
- Title
- PGC Name
- PGC Mission
- PGC Proof of Public Goods support
- 3 Head Variants (.png) per PGC

#### d) Growth, marketing and reputation
- Social Media presence - Increase
- Cross Collaborations - Increase
- Delegation -
- Implementation of Hats (Easier on L2 than on mainnet or cross-chain)
- Leverate Hats to allow for more clear delegation.
- The PN DAO can elect Operators and other positions who then have delegated powers for a period of time.
- Evaluation - Karma GAP is being used. We need more participation.
- X Space - Thanks to the initiative of Jimi and Luciano, we have started a Public Goods Saturdays on X. We’ve had two so far.
- IRL Events - Idea for Public Nouns to lead a Public Goods focused day or half day at a highly aligned event in the next 6 months. (Farcon, MCON 3, Devcon, etc.)

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### 3) The future of Public Nouns
Overall, Public Nouns is funding experiments in the Public Goods space.

Now, we want to establish Public Nouns as a lasting force in this space.