# Nouns x Farcaster Review

## Pros

- Lots of attention towards Nouns. I'd guess some of the applicants were new to Nouns, which is cool. It's a decent inbound mechanism, especially if Nouns can retain builders following the 3 months build cycle.
- Experimenting on top of farcaster is great for the crypto ecosystem at large. Even if no real, enduring products come out of this cycle, it's money well spent to experiment and attach the Nouns name to that experimentation.
- I've enjoyed the collaborative spirit in the /nounsfarcaster channel. It's cool to see folks coming together to help provide feedback, suggest ideas, etc.

## Cons

- I worry Seneca's RFP might have anchored too many applicants towards a specific set of ideas. Probably 90% of the ideas are some flavor of a reddit client or a custom algorithm/feed creator.
- Not many proposals listened to advice to focus on one thing and to do that one thing well. Many proposals are trying to "boil the ocean" and have a laundry list of features they are going to build.
- "Client" anchors the ask. Some of these products I would like to see as public goods that could be used by other products building in the same space. For example, it would be great if someone spent 3 months building the best possible custom algorithm creator that other apps could plug into, rather than someone diluting their effort building a custom algorithm tool _and_ a client. This would let teams work on what they are best at, and their efforts could be combined.
- I don't love the idea of funding folks with no specific product in mind. I think theres a time and place for Nouns to fund this type of work (funding the person, not the idea) but it feels wrong to host a round of proposals specifically asking for client ideas then to select folks with no specific client in mind as the winner.

## Who I would vote for

#### Nounspace
- Really fun product experience, I think there is an opportunity to make something whimsical and entertaining.
- Nice large team, I trust their ability to actually execute on what they are claiming they will build.
- Allllmost leaning into being too broad of a feature set. I would lean 100% into being a fun customizable profile page, but leave out things like notifications across ecosystem, wallet activity etc. These are just not problems I'm looking to solve. Focus on fun.
- I like ourspace > nounspace

#### Expansion packs
- Zero weight is super cool, how did I not know about this?! This is a great example of a project that is well defined and executing extremely well. I can feel myself excited to try out zero weight.
- I'm not excited to be funding specific users without super clear product proposals, but zero weight is a step in the right direction and I trust index card's ability to execute.

#### Noggled
- I appreciate the team's commitment to solving a narrow problem extremely well.
- Dedicated to solving a problem that many people want solved (feed).
- I want my Noggled profile to be a pfp I can customize and I want a noggled passport to show my badges + activity :) https://warpcast.com/frog/0x1d82b931

## Things I noticed reading almost 40 proposals
- If you're proposal can highlight one thing you do well you are already above 90% of the applications.
- High level mocks are great, it's nice to see the vision. Demos are good too, but I worry that with a demo, if it's half backed, you might anchor expectations on something that isn't a true representation of the product. Mocks let the imagination run wild.
- I like when people make videos of themselves talking about their proposal. "Doxxing" yourself is useful because it builds trust and puts a face to the builder.
- Technical spec is useful. Even if I don't read the whole thing it's nice to see you are thinking about the problem in depth. For some of the proposals I wasn't sure I could trust that the team would execute on the task or that they'd thought in any depth about what it would actually take to build what they were describing. Listing a bunch of high level technologies (vercel, next, airstack) does not count as a technical spec.
- Make sure your links work