Nouns DAO

TL;DR

• Fund a one-time $10,000 USDC research grant to the Intelligent Futures Lab (IF Lab) at the University of Oregon to advance rigorous, public research on DAO governance.
• Outputs: peer-reviewed papers, public working notes, and a Nouns-focused research brief—all open-access and acknowledging Nouns DAO; one public talk + AMA for the Nouns community.
• Lead investigator: Dr. Alex Murray (Assoc. Professor; Director, IF Lab), published in Organization Science, AMR, Research Policy; active DAO researcher and community participant.
• Why Nouns: strengthens our role as a governance R&D hub, creates credible external scholarship we can cite in future proposals, and deepens ties with academia for efforts like NounsCon.

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Background: What is IF Lab?

The Intelligent Futures Lab (IF Lab) is a student- and faculty-led research group at the University of Oregon that studies how emerging technologies (AI, agents, blockchain) transform organizing, collaboration, and governance. Focus areas relevant to Nouns:

• Human–AI collaboration in decision-making and coordination
• Agentic representation (autonomous agents, synthetic stakeholders)
• Decentralized governance (DAOs, tokenization, decentralized AI)

Director: Dr. Alex Murray

• Research at the intersection of decentralized governance, algorithmic organizing, and entrepreneurship
• Publications include: Academy of Management Review, Organization Science, Academy of Management Annals, Research Policy, Business Horizons

Lab site: https://uoiflab.org/

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Why Nouns DAO should fund this

1. Governance as public good: Independent, peer-reviewed research helps Nouns (and other DAOs) avoid cycles of folklore and purely anecdotal governance arguments.
2. Practical guidance: We’ll receive actionable briefs synthesized from field studies/experiments—useful for parameter setting, contributor incentives, delegation programs, and cross-DAO collaboration.
3. Signal & legitimacy: Acknowledgment in academic outputs puts Nouns in the footnotes of governance history, complementary to our goal of being a living testbed for DAO theory and practice.
4. Bridges to Researchers: This creates a pipeline of scholars and content for future DAO research conference, workshops, and poster sessions.

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Deliverables

1. One empirical study: preprint/working paper + methods appendix; share anonymized dataset or simulated data where IRB/policies allow.
2. Public talk/AMA with slides + recording for the community.
3. Acknowledgment: “This research was supported by a grant from Nouns DAO” in outputs from this grant period.

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Budget & Payment

• Amount: $10,000 USDC, one-time grant.
• Use of funds: RA time, data collection, research assistance, IRB/participant costs, open-access fees, hosting/pinning.

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Alignment with Nouns Vision

• Positions Nouns as a governance R&D leader, not just a grant-maker.
• Creates repeatable interfaces between DAOs and academia.

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Contacts

• IF Lab: https://uoiflab.org/
• Dr. Alex Murray (Director, IF Lab; Associate Professor, University of Oregon): amm16@uoregon.edu