Abstract
Gm ATXDAO fam,

First off, congrats to all members, longstanding and new, for the successful completion of the Bluebonnet round. I’m grateful to be part of such a diverse and qualified community of builders, and I’m eager to see where we go from here 🌮🚀

One project that is certainly on the horizon is “the next membership round,” or in other words, how we will continue onboarding new members to the ATXDAO familia. Austin’s crypto scene continues to grow with ATXDAO at the center, and with the Bluebonnet round behind us, there’s already new Austinites asking how they can join.

To address this growing demand, I want to propose a radical evolution to the process of onboarding new members. Rather than continuing to launch new cohorts, I propose we fork Nouns’ contracts and UI, customize and configure it to our liking (including a dynamic auction algorithm), and launch ATX Nouns ⌐◨-◨

Wait, wtf is Nouns?
If you haven’t heard of Nouns yet, please take a couple minutes to familiarize yourself on https://nouns.wtf ; While you’re soaking it in, note that everything you see is Open Source under the Creative Commons license. That means it can all be used, tweaked, or sold as we see fit. This could be us!

Tl;dr - Nouns is a vibrant and growing community dedicated to funding ideas. A noun is an NFT that represents both membership and voting power, and one new noun is auctioned off each day for anywhere from 25-613 ETH. As of today, 795 nouns have been minted, and those nouns govern a treasury of about 30,000 ETH. Armed with this treasury, the community continues to fund awesome ideas which results in an ever-evolving ecosystem of forks, pull requests, assets, apps, artwork, and most importantly, noggles of all shapes, sizes, colors, and mediums. As a result, the memes keep multiplying, awareness keeps growing, more awesome ideas get funded, and the flywheel keeps spinning.

Summary
To onboard future members to ATXDAO, I propose we fork Nouns’ contracts and UI, customize and configure it to our liking, and launch ATX Nouns. This would enable ATX DAO to tap in to the growing suite of tools, tech, and ancillaries that Nouns is cultivating. In addition to unlocking the awesome power of Nouns within ATXDAO, this gives us the ability to imbue our own weird culture into Nouns. If done right, we can help pave the way for the more nounish City DAOs as we assemble, experiment, and adapt Nouns to meet the needs of ATXDAO.

This idea has been brewing for a few months now, and I’m not the only member excited about the prospect. Although this is still in the idea phase and subject to governance, some good thought has already been put into what ATX Nouns could look like, and some initial groundwork has already been laid. Here’s a high-level overview of what we’ve done so far:

Art direction by @artichokelord (shoutout to @CrystalGravy for the brainstorm)
Super rough example version of ATX Nouns deployed on Goerli
Dynamic Auction Algorithm conceived & 0.5 ETH grant secured by @willyfox
Seed planted in Nouns forum by @512mace
Nouns web app and contracts forked by @spat, @JacobHomanics, and @willyfox
Members directory implemented in ATX Nouns fork and launched by @realitycrafter and @JacobHomanics
Spec for ATX Nouns drafted by @willyfox
ATXDAO x PizzaDAO’s Bitcoin Pizza Day Party was v nounish
Multiple discussions in Discord and IRL events between many members

Although these nounish steps have been taken, ultimately the decision on whether or not to proceed is up to the community. If we decide to move forward, there will be several other important decisions to deliberate, but before diving too deep I first wanted to make sure that we’re all aligned and on board with this migration.

Specification
The passing of this proposal will signal that the ATXDAO community is tentatively in favor of forking and launching ATX Nouns as the means by which new members are onboarded going forward. At the very least it will signal that we want to continue exploring and fleshing out this potential experiment.

On top of the 0.5 ETH already granted by Nouns, 2.5 ETH would be allocated from the ATXDAO treasury to cover all costs and labor necessary to create and launch ATX Nouns. After any necessary expenses are paid, any ATXDAO members that contributed to the ATX Nouns project will be invited to participate in a Giving Circle to distribute the remaining ETH equitably.

Prior to launching ATX Nouns, an additional proposal will be put forth to specify initial parameters for launch, give space to discuss feedback or request changes, and to ultimately ensure that the community is on board with moving forward.

One important note is that even if both proposals pass, it doesn’t mean we’re married to Nouns forever. If at any point we realize we prefer the original, cohort-based method, or if a new alternative comes around that we want to try, the community can always change course.

Project proposal:

Mission Alignment
The portion of the mission statement and related guild that this project will operate under.
Innovation Guild - bringing more local Austinites, artists, and businesses into the web3 ecosystem.

Also, building cool shit and experimenting on the frontier. wen #BuidlGuidl?

Team

Timeline
Aggressive goal to launch at Permissionless because that would be awesome. If it’s not ready by Permissionless, we should at least have some solid progress to show at that point and be ready to launch soon after.

Budget
2.5 ETH Total

Revenue
Estimating 1 ETH per week in recurring revenue; dependent on demand to join ATXDAO

Compensation Structure
Giving circle open to all members that contribute to divvy remaining funds

–
Voting:

Yay, I want to allocate 2.5 ETH to push ATX Nouns forward to launch
Nay, I do not want to allocate 2.5 ETH towards ATX Nouns
Yay, with changes (please comment)

Thanks frens, open to any feedback or suggestions and look forward to hearing y'alls thoughts.