Nouns, Delivery At Dawn, and Collectible Media
Nouns, Delivery At Dawn, and Collectible Media
Also: Mystery in World Building, When Is Your Audience, and Some Cool New Art
For this week’s newsletter, I’m writing for Nouns x Kiwi writing competition. There’s one particular project I want to highlight as it blends many of the scenes I’m into: Delivery At Dawn.
I’m writing under the prompt: “From headline-making proposals to under-the-radar decisions, which moments have shaped the Nouns history most profoundly, and why?”
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What is Nouns?
Nouns combines a lot of what I’m interested in: experimental economics, generative art, and media production.
Each day, it automatically sells an onchain NFT collectible through an auction. The funds go into a reserve where the all the NFT owners then are able to vote on the usage of the funds. It’s got art (onchain at that, my favourite kind), automated smart-contract mediated auctions, collectibles, and a glorious experiment in governance.
After Nouns forked last year (with the fork taking almost ~17,000 ETH (about ~$28m at the time) with it), the original Nouns currently sits on a treasury ~4337 ETH (~$11m USD). While I believe that pure membership voting organisations like this isn’t the best mode for DAOs, it’s still had great success in proving that from simple mechanics, it can actually create a headless brand *and* make an impact in the market more broadly.
It’s done things like:
But the one I find the most interesting, is Delivery At Dawn.
Delivery At Dawn
The Protocol Guild, an organisation that helps to direct funding to open source developers in the Ethereum industry, proposed to Nouns to fund a short animation to celebrate the arrival of EIP 4844) an infrastructure improvement that led to cheaper scaling). They asked for $400,000 from Nouns.
Once production completed, the animation could be seen publicly and was sold as an open edition NFT Collectible through Zora. Proceeds were split 80/20 between The Protocol Guild and Nouns. From early March to April 1st, anyone could mint a copy as a collectible, paying .004844 ETH (about ~$15-$20) at the time.
In total, over 31,000 collectors raised about 200 ETH. After the platform fee for Zora, at the time, $529,000 were sent to open source developers and $130,000 were paid back to Nouns.
Thus, in essence, while Nouns didn’t make all its money back, it helped promote Ethereum, Nouns, and the support of open source developers.
While this model isn’t new, it’s one of the more successful ones. The short gist or idea is:
produce a work,
make it free to consume,
sell the media as a collectible
In fact, entire networks and platforms now work on this premise. Zora slow pivoted to a feed based network where likes are replaced with mints.
It’s currently doing about 5m+ mints a month, netting creators about $1m/month.
(Graph via PandaJackson)
On the one side, platforms like Zora are growing, and on the other side, you have projects like Delivery At Dawn, that’s larger and thus it presents an interesting, ongoing question.
The collectible media model has users, but what is its ultimate medium?
Do you separate the media and treat the collectible as merchandise? (as I experimented with my own studio?)
Is it a feed, as with Zora?
A more traditional production studio and distribution separation as with Delivery At Dawn and Nouns?
With a piece of media there’s multiple layers of interaction, parts that one could likely collect (and pay for) and the right abstraction has either already been found, OR it’s still waiting to be unearthed. A question I always had with this, is that if it’s treated at the level of merchandise, a film ticket, or a feed, could be it done at a large scale?
For example, in the extreme: fund a $150 million movie and earn more from it *not* by theater tickets, but through open distribution and minting alone. The format might not make sense as the medium is inappropriate, but with Nouns and Delivery At Dawn, it feels like it is proof that the scale at least *can* be more than just cheap memecoins and smaller scale media. Perhaps it means that in order for collectible media to exist at that scale, it needs to have a secondary function (like funding open source)? Who knows? But now we have some proof.
So while Delivery At Dawn shaped the history of Nouns, I also believe it’s a milestone for what the production of collectible media could look like. It shows a promise of being able to use the collectible media model for larger scale works. The continued exploration of new media and new finance owes a hat tip to Nouns for willing to fund such experiments.
Bonus Content!
Been super nice to just relax again this week, settling back into routine after a lot of travels.
✍️ Writing - Novel #2
Been great to also get back to writing on my novel again. Slowly but surely taking shape. I must admit: even though it’s much simpler in scope, it’s been much harder to write than my first novel. Ultimately, because there’s only really 4 people and their relationships that book center on and so it’s a lot more detailed and nuanced as a result.
🏃♂️ Running
First week in a long while where I’m ramping back up to my old weekly mileage of 35km+. Running autumn is damn nice. So pretty too!
📚 Reading - Caroline Kepnes - You
📺 Watching - Inside Out 2 & Wild Robot
Wanted something easy to watch this week. Loved both films. Very heartfelt.
💾 Links
A World Not Desperate To Explain Itself
Thoroughly enjoyed this take on a core appeal of certain fantasy and sci-fi.
It’s the appeal of world-building that leaves questions unanswered. It’s tips of icebergs of much larger worlds that creates a sense of presence and awe. It’s a pill that gives you a sense of scale. Another video that I’ve touched upon before shares the sentiment (that Rings of Power isn’t fantasy).
Sometimes the fantastical comes from the glimpse of something much larger that won’t ever be explained. It’s why I also adored Scavenger’s Reign so deeply. A constant exploration of an ecosystem that boundless.
When Is The Audience?
Whilst grinding under algorithmic pressure, it’s easy to fall into the trap of chasing the now. Whether it’s jumping on the latest trend, reacting to the news cycle, the focus is almost always immediate. What to make this week, how to get more views this month, or boost downloads this year.
and later:
When you embrace atemporality, the question “When is the audience?” becomes liberating. The answer is simple: You don’t know. You’re no longer tied to hitting metrics or chasing trends. You’re free to create for an audience that will might not find you for months—or even years.
I feel like it’s packaging the idea of “do your own thing long enough and people will follow you” into a different framing. Nice way to stop being hyper focused on immediate growth metrics.
Crypto Art Corner
Three projects caught my eye this week.
Miragenesi’s One. The artwork is randomly generated from its collectors. When one of the 140 pieces changes hands, the artwork in turn gets modified. I like the idea of being constantly surprised at what the artwork might look like, only knowing that somewhere someone transferred their version of it to someone else.
I wrote about Rothko on Pennies before. But Takens Theorem has a great write-up on the artwork, how it was “vandalised” digitally, and what the end result was.
Memento of a Dialogue
Joyce Lai scoured the Ethereum blockchain in search of messages inscribed in it. Using these transaction hashes, she created generative artwork that links the messages to the present. I enjoy bringing forth this concept, almost turning the art into colourful collectible tombstones for past messages.
Some of the messages are sweet, like:
Posted Feb 2022 - “Dear my lovely wife Here's a little gift for you,It's a bit complicated to use , but I hope you like it.Happy valentine's day from now until forever.Your lovely husband!!...”
to a memorial posted August 2023:
“John Doe January 1, 1950 - August 1, 2023 It is with a heavy heart that we announce the passing of our beloved John Doe, who left us on August 1, 2023, surrounded by his loving family. John was a devoted husband, father, grandfather, and friend, and his presence will be deeply missed by all who knew him.”
🎶 Music
Bullion - World_train (ft Charlotte Adigery)
Honestly uncertain what genre this yes? Western electronic krautrock? All that I know it’s a huge groove. Enjoy!
That’s it for this week, folks. Hope you enjoy a nice sunset!
Simon