Now anyone can create an Ethereum NFT DAO with Zora’s noun builder

Ethereum project Noun created a new type of chain organization using a daily NFT auction to cultivate community and open source IP – and has raised tens of millions of dollars worth of ETH to date.

Now, NFT platform Zora extends this model, allowing almost anyone to create an NFT-powered one DAO for almost all projects.

Noun builder is Zora’s new tool for creating a Noun-like Web3 organization, using auctions of NFT artwork, collectibles, and access cards to raise money for a treasury that buyers control. It is a turnkey, no-code solution that is open source and free to use, with the intention of making it easy for Ethereum DAOs to get up and running.

The development of Nouns Builder is very much in line with Web3’s decentralized ethos: The nouns themselves started as a branch of Zora’s auction house system, Zora co-founder Jacob Horne told Decrypt. Now Zora has taken the noun model and made it more accessible to creators without requiring an engineer to share and modify existing code (like other projects have done).

Noun launched in August 2021 such as the NFT market reached new heightsauctions off a single pixel profile picture (PFP) grade every day. What was initially exciting about the platform was the new once-a-day cadence and eye-popping auction prices, with some of the NFTs selling for hundreds of thousands of dollars in ETH as collectors bought in.

Buying an NFT gave each owner membership in the DAO – or Decentralized Autonomous Organization, essentially a tokenized community with a shared treasury. Over time, Nouns have cemented their greater focus on promote an open source intellectual property and has used the abundant funding to put pictures on nouns in a Bud Light commercial and indie filmfor example, among other socially approved measures.

Substantives proved the NFT-driven model at a high level, which Horne credits for being “very tightly incentive-aligned.” Owners are responsible for working to promote the Nouns brand to build and maintain value. Horne quoted “developers do something” meme which has spread on Twitter; in the noun model, members cannot rely on an external development team to put in the work.

Horne believes that the model “answers many structural problems” with large profile picture projects — such as, for example. Bored Ape Yacht Club, CryptoPunksand Doodles– each spanning 10,000 NFTs. He also suggested that gradual expansion and NFT-based membership enables smoother growth and increased activity than a typical token-driven DAO model.

“I have seen many tokens. I don’t see many organizations,” Horne said of the DAO landscape, noting low chain participation in proposals with many such communities. “We’ve seen the term DAO used a lot, but in practice I don’t know if we’ve really seen any. “

“My hot take,” he added, “is that maybe Nouns is actually the first working DAO in the truest sense.”

Most DAOs are not likely to raise tens of millions of dollars by selling NFTs, which Nouns havebut Zora believes the model still makes sense for a wide range of organizations – including social groups, DAOs that collect artwork or other assets, communities that support a protocol or platform, and substantive DAOs that focus on spreading a meme.

Noun builder takes flight

Nounbuilder launched on the Ethereum mainnet last week and has already attracted some new creators. One example, Purple DAOis a community focused on promoting Farcaster, a decentralized social media protocol. Every day, purple DAO auctions a single, identical purple block as an access card to that community.

It’s not about the art in that case, of course: buyers raise funds for community proposals meant to advance the Farcaster ecosystem in the process. Horne said Nouns Builder is widely customizable to accommodate different types of projects with varying auction cadences and incentive adjustments, making it suitable for potentially any purpose.

Zora has also launched the Builder DAO, which not only uses the noun builder, but also allows members to control the tool’s protocol going forward. The team launched a proposal for Noun DAO today for financial support, hoping to provide a grant of 1,000 ETH ($1.57 million) to launch Builder DAO and enable further development and support for Noun Builder.

Zora was founded in 2020 by a trio of Coin base veterans and recent raised $50 million in May at a value of 600 million dollars. The platform’s protocol has been used to create more than 1.1 million NFTs to date, and the startup has long focused on helping creators build communities through Web3. Noun builder is the latest development of it.

“We want to help bring as much creativity to the chain as possible,” Horne said. “This is helping communities themselves get into the chain in ways we’ve never seen before.”