TL;DR

We are requesting 20,000 USC to fund the GLITCH 2025 residency, in order to: (1) Finalise and deploy Aminals, a revolutionary non-ownable NFT protocol that will be adorned with Nouns genetics, creating new revenue streams for Nouns DAO; (2) Embed Nouns into an emerging creative-tech community through active collaboration, not passive sponsorship; (3) Research new economic models for NFTs that align with Nounish values (CC0, public goods, anti-speculation)

Cross-Pollination between Nouns & GLITCH

(1) Aminals: An experiment in Non-Speculative NFTs

What are Aminals?

Aminals are blockchain-based lifeforms that cannot be owned, bought, or sold. Instead:

• They form "attachment relationships" (love) with people who feed them cryptocurrency
• They reproduce when fed enough cryptocurrency, passing genetics to offspring
  • When two Aminals reproduce, an auction decides the newborn’s genes.
  • Voting power in this auction comes from the “love” felt by the two parents towards the voter (love-o-cracy): If the parents are deeply attached to you, your vote on its child’s genetics is very powerful. If parents barely know you, your vote is weak.
• The new Aminal is born with the 8 winning genes.
  • At the moment of birth, it receives its inheritance: 10% of Parent A’s treasury + 10% of Parent B’s treasury.
  • This inheritance is immediately and automatically divided into 8 equal shares and distributed as a royalty payment to the on-chain owners of the 8 winning Gene NFTs.
• Genetics owners earn royalties when their traits are inherited—creating sustainable funding without speculation

Why This is Nounish:

• CC0 spirit: Aminals can’t be owned, eliminating speculation and exploitation
• Proliferation through reproduction: Akin to Nouns’ daily auctions
• Community governance: Love-o-cracy prioritize earned participation over plutocracy
  • In a love-o-cracy, voting power comes from care, not token holdings: the more you feed an Aminal, the more the Aminal loves you, giving you more influence on its behaviours and evolutionary dynamics
  • Every action that you request from an Aminal costs you their love (because Aminals will like you less, every time you ask them to do anything)
  • Love is also necessary in order to vote on the traits that will be inherited by the baby Aminal when two Aminals reproduce: the more love the parents have for you, the greater the influence you have on their progeny
• Revenue without ownership: Genetics royalties as new funding model for public goods

During GLITCH, we will:

• In- person development sprint to finalise Aminals with input from the best artists and engineers in the space
• Deploy Aminals with Nouns genes (e.g. Noogles)
  • NB: we are in touch by e-boy (early Nouns designers)
• Assign Nouns gene NFTs to Nouns DAO
  • Nouns DAO benefits because it gets a direct cash royalty every time the community uses its collective “love” to vote for Noggles to be inherited by a newborn Aminal.
  • This turns the Nouns brand into a perpetual, automated revenue stream powered by the Aminals ecosystem.
• Open-source the entire protocol for other DAOs to fork and experiment with
• Document the economic model in a public research brief (see below) Code Status: Deployment ready (see GitHub), awaiting community testing and genetics design.

(2) Bring two Nouns delegates embedded full-time during the residency

• Ivo Entchev
• TBD

More details about the GLITCH residency can be read on our previous proposal

Deliverables:

• Real relationships: 2 weeks of co-living = genuine bonds, not transactional networking
• Run workshops on Nouns governance, CC0, and public goods funding
• Facilitate collaborations between Glitchers and Nouns projects (rounds.wtf, flows.wtf)
• Documentation for the Nouns community (weekly updates, video diaries)
• Bring Glitchers to Nouns: Invite artists/builders to Nouns Cons or other Nouns events

(3) Research: New economic models for crypto-art and NFTs

Deliverable: A public research brief analyzing Aminals as a case study for:

• Anti-speculative NFT economics (royalties without ownership)
• Care-based governance models (love-o-cracy vs. token voting)
• Proliferation strategies (reproduction vs. minting)
• Sustainability for public goods (revenue without extraction)

Academic Validation:

• Co-authored with researchers at BlockchainGov
• Peer-reviewed working paper submitted to DAO/governance conferences
• Acknowledgment: “Supported by Nouns DAO” in all outputs

Practical Value:

• Gives Nouns community new mental models for thinking about NFT economics
• Maintain Nouns as leader in innovative NFT design

Budget Breakdown (20,000 USDC)

• GLITCH sponsorship fee: $10,000 = Access to residency, lodging, meals for 2 delegates

• Smart contract audit: $4,000 = Security review before mainnet deployment

• (e-boy) Nouns genetics design: $3,000 = Custom Nouns-themed traits for Aminals

• Research/documentation: $2,000 = RA time for brief, video editing, community content

• Contingency: $1,000 = Travel, unexpected technical costs

  

Team:

• Primavera De Filippi: Legal / governance scholar at CNRS and Harvard University, exploring the intersection between law, governance and technology, focusing specifically on the legal and political implications of blockchain technology. Co-author of the books “Blockchain and the Law” (published in 2018 by Harvard University Press) and “Blockchain Governance” (published in 2024 by MIT Press). Principal Investigator of a 5 years long European-funded project “Blockchain Gov” (https://blockchaingov.eu) aimed at investigating the governance dynamics in blockchain communities from a legal, governance, and ethnographic lens.
• Jake Hartnell: Co-Founder of Layer and DAO DAO (previously start Juno Network and Stargaze). Obsessed with governance, building “Intelligent Protocols” and using AVS to facilitate AI-based computation for blockchain systems.
• Will Papper: Co-founder of Syndicate Protocol. Previously Product Manager at Proxy. Passionate about Ethereum since the 2014 presale.

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Response to Previous Concerns

This proposal is a follow-up to a previous proposal. We address the comments below:

• Noun 40’s comment: “Are Nouns fans falling in love with Glitch? Are Glitch fans falling in love with Nouns?”
  • Yes, because we’re building something together that neither community could build alone. Aminals is Nounish in spirit (CC0, proliferation, governance) but designed at Glitch (experimental, artistic, boundary-pushing). The royalties flow back to Nouns DAO. The research informs future Nouns strategy. The relationships last beyond the residency.
• “The prop doesn’t explain clearly what Nouns would get for 20k USDC.”
  • Revenue via genetics royalties + open-source protocol + research brief + embedded delegates
• “I’ve seen zero attempt for any cross pollination… so I’m against."
  • We’re committing to updates during residency, post-residency AMA, integration plan with measurable outcomes, and 2 full-time delegates embedded for co-creation.
• “The two communities aren’t a great fit / merging didn’t quite happen.”
  • We believe the two communities have very aligned values and ideologies. Nouns DAO has always been about experimentation, proliferation, and public goods. GLITCH - and Aminals in particular - embodies these values in a radically new way: removing speculation while creating sustainable revenue, replacing plutocracy with care, and open-sourcing everything for others to build on. Together, we want to co-develop infrastructure for post-speculative NFTs that will benefit Nouns and the crypto-art ecosystem as a whole
• “Would be all for it if it were a bit more robust on deliverables.”
  • Hopefully, we have articulated much clearer deliverables !