Nouns: Building For Everybody
Charting the long-winded journey to Building an ‘Open Brand’
This post is taking part in the Nouns x Kiwi writing contest. This is a story that sheds the spotlight on Nouns’ radical approach to brand building, flipping the conventional ‘top-down’ approach in favor of an open-source, community-owned brand.
I’m writing under the prompt: “What can Nouns teach us about turning brand building upside down, and making it open source and steered by the community?”
That said, let's dive in!
“One Noun, Every Day, Forever”
I never really caught on during the 2021 NFT mania, I only watched from the sidelines as an observer. I started learning about Nouns about a year ago. What fascinates me most about Nouns was how something that began as an experiment has now grown into a strong memetic force.
I mean from a blank canvas, a vibrant community of people who share the same obsession with the Nounish culture have emerged — with individuals tying their real-life identities and meetings in different cities across the globe for it.
As pointed out in this Variant article, “Nouns has one of the most actively engaged, creative communities in all of web3”.
For those in a rush, here's what you should expect from the piece.
A look into Nouns’ bold approach to brand building, side-stepping the regular top-down playbook for a community steered brand.
The Nounish identity and culture, how far-reaching is it?
Value Capture — How can the Nouns project accrue value, given it’s open source nature?
Re-inventing the Wheel — A Community-steered Brand
“Innovation comes in many flavors”
In a world where Intellectual Property (IP) rights is a big deal, and brand identities are tightly managed. Nouns bravely flips the status quo, letting the community to stir its wheel.
At the core of Nouns’ approach is the Creative Commons Zero (CC0) licensing, meaning the art and intellectual property (IP) of Nouns are completely open to the public. If you are unfamiliar with intellectual property, Let me break down what it means.
Intellectual property (IP) is like owning an idea or a creation. Just like you can own a car or a house, people can also own things they create, like a lore, a song, a drawing, an invention, or even a brand name. These ideas are considered "property," and are protected by the law. Having ownership means others need permission to use, copy, or make money from them.
Usually, Brands are built around a name, design, color, symbol, or any artwork that serves as a cue of corporate culture, product quality, or sometimes personality. The Nouns project
By using CC0 licensing, which places the artwork in the public domain, anyone can freely use, remix, and create derivative works from Nouns without restrictions, which led to the proliferation of the Nounish lore across various media—from streetwear and skateboards to comic books, and even a SuperBowl Ad.
Estevan Vilar best captured this idea in this article. The excerpt below captures this thought well;
“Using blockchain technology and governed by online communities, open brands embrace open-source principles and harness the wisdom of the crowd to grow. This model turns the process of brand building upside down, akin to models of innovation that have moved from closed, top-down processes to open, bottom-up processes.”
The Era of of Open Brands
The image above shows how Nouns’ open, community-driven model challenges the classic "house of brands" approach where centralized entities control the brand's image and messaging. Nouns, by contrast, empowers its community to steer the brand and incentivizes participation by offering financial rewards through its treasury. This has reshaped how we think about brand ownership, participation, and value creation in the digital age.
On Identity and Culture
The need for self-expression is a core human desire.
Identity, belonging, culture — these words come to mind whenever I come across the iconic ‘square-framed’ Nouns Glasses on the internet.
Historically, people use religion and politics as mechanisms of identity. However, times have changed and we now live in a digital world — but humans remain social beings.
Today, the modern web has unlocked entirely new ‘sources’ of identity. We now use our online representations (Pixels on a screen) and the worlds we spend time in (Telegram chats and subreddits) as the basis of our identities.
In an increasingly digital world, where our relationships and social graphs are increasingly virtual, products (or communities) that taps into this need by inculcating a sense of belonging command an unfair advantage over their peers. This is how resilient communities are built.
How does this translate in the context of Nouns? At its core, the Nouns project aligns with Web3's original promise of user ownership and governance. By adapting the CC0 (Creative Commons Zero) license, which provides avenues for self-expression, people developed a sense of identity and belonging to the community. In my opinion, A real-world comparison to make here is the IKEA effect. For easier reference - here is how it is defined.
"The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias that helps explains why people place higher value on things they helped to build or create. In essence, it speaks of how we tend to like things more if we’ve expended effort to create them.
The result of Nouns’ adoption of an open-source model, is the organic proliferation of the Nounish culture across communities, projects, and subcultures. This has led to the creation of several physical goods (Noggles, NounsWatch, Nouns-branded ledger, etc.) A typical example of this is illustrated in the image below, this is a Variety Kids Xmas Party Powered by Nouns. You can read more about the current proposal here.
What Does the Nounish Influence Look Like?
Decent DAO’s “Map The Nounsverse” paints a picture of how large the Nounsverse is. For a sense of scale, the Nouns community spans over 15 groups across Asia, Latin America, and Africa, 80 Rounds.wtf communities with over 115 ETH and 1M $Degen tokens distributed, over 40 physical goods (merchandise, clothing, beverages, and five variations of Noggles) to name a few.
All of these signals one thing — NFTs are changing behavior by allowing pseudonymous individuals on the web to create a culture out of thin air in a shorter time, compared to the pre-internet era. Think of it, the speed at which a loyal community can spin up and have people connect their true sense of self to it has increased by orders of magnitude, and Nouns is a classic example of this.
It is worth mentioning, that Nouns pioneered the CC0 movement, afterwards, a couple of new NFT projects adapted this model, following the footsteps of Nouns. Today, Nouns has built a community of scale, with thousands of individuals across the globe identifying with the movement.
Value Capture
It is quite apparent that Nouns create so much brand value, but the question is, how they accrue value and achieve long-term sustainability of the brand?
Here’s what I think.
Truth is, most open-source brands barely capture the value they generate. Sadly, Nouns is not an outlier here.
Of course, Nouns has created immense value on the cultural side of things. The CC0 model, coupled with the DAO funding many public goods, has contributed to spreading the Nounish meme. The problem is that very little or none of this value flows back to Nouns.
However, one of the strongest criticisms against the Nouns project is that its DAO is wasting money, and would eventually go to zero. The chart below from Nounswap shows the gradual decline of the NounsDAO Treasury.
If you ask me, I think it’s not all gloom and doom — It’s all about getting capital to flow back to Nouns.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach to this, especially looking at how each proposition would align to the Nounish ethos and values, here are some ideas.
Collaboration with brands. I mean a sort of profit-sharing partnership, could be with a merch store, media house, or even a pastry brand. They produce or sell Nounish stuffs and share some of the profit with Nouns.
Zooming Out
To wrap things up, here's an interesting question: Can Nouns be the face of crypto? Truth is, Nouns stands as one of the most impactful DAOs in terms of cultural impact, art, and technological advances. However, the broader recognition of Nouns may depend on how well it can maintain relevance and foster a positive reputation amid the complexities of the crypto world. (I should likely dig into that in another piece.)
Signing out to touch some grass,
Oh, I forgot to mention that Nouns has a vibrant Farcaster Community. If you are looking to hang out with other amazing Nounish folks, you should check them (us) out here!