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Yesterday, at Ethereum block 23642273, I minted my first Noun: 1689. From now on it will be my profile picture on all socials.

Why Nouns?

Using blockchain primitives like block number or block hash to generate art immediately clicked for me. Yes, you can mint any JPEG aka jaypeg, any digital artefact, but turning the blockchain from a ledger into a creative seed is truly novel. This was also the thought process behind my fizzling side projects @lissajous_art and @proofofgroove.

But Nouns is more than that:

• From a technical perspective: The art is generated and stored onchain. This pushes the boundaries of what a smart contract programming language can (and should?) do. We can check where the actual artwork is stored by looking at the tokenURI read function of any compatible NFT smart contract. Here is what the Nouns one looks like.
• From a legal perspective: Nobody holds any copyright over the artwork. It is CC0 licensed which means everybody can do with it whatever they want. They can print t-shirts, use it in videos, create derivative NFT projects, etc, without asking anybody for permission. The ownership of the Nouns is stored on the blockchain. Why bother with copyrights like other NFT collections do? I think this is pretty cool.
• From a societal perspective: The proceeds of minting a Noun are not making the creators aka Nounders rich directly.¹ They go into the treasury of the NounsDAO and every holder of a Noun aka Nouner (not to confuse with Nounder) can vote on proposals how to spend that money. And they do cool stuff like The Nouns Fair, art installations and sponsorships of Ethereum events like ETHGlobal hackathons and the upcoming DevConnect in Buenos Aires.

Sure, a DAO that manages a big multi-million-dollar treasury also generates a lot of drama. As happens wherever human beings are involved. The bigger the money the bigger the potential for drama. To address that, NounsDAO invented a mechanism to manage the disagreements: They invented DAO forks: If 20% of Nouners disagree, they can initiate a fork and split the treasury proportionally into a new DAO and then do whatever they want. Pretty interesting.

Why now? Aren't NFTs dead?

Hype bubbles have something interesting in common: After they burst, all the bullshit gets cleaned out but the core value and good ideas survive: The companies that survived the dotcom bubble defined what the internet is today, the ICO-bubble survivors are now the key drivers of web3, and Nouns is in my opinion one of the NFT-bubble survivors that delivers fundamental value. An open ecosystem that invites one new person to join, every day, forever.

So what?

I think profile pictures (PFPs) are actually still a great usecase of NFTs. I see a lot of my onchain frens reppin' PFPs. I think the PFP that one chooses also says a lot about that person. Think about the Bored Apes, the Punks, the Miladies, the Mfers, the Pudgy Penguins. There is immediately a picture and feeling about that person. I thought it was time for a new PFP and I started to look into different projects and just realized more and more that I like Nouns for the above reasons and I wanted to be a part of it. I started to watch the auctions a couple of days, loaded my public wallet with enough ETH and then minted mine. It sounds cheesy but when I saw it, I knew I had to mint it.

And now: I'm a Nouner, let's see where this journey will lead me.