We’re big fans of the Flows mechanism, vision and concept, but there are too many flaws in its current form. The net is cast far too wide, diluting the impact. System is too easily gamed, allowing low-effort props to secure funding without sufficient vetting. Until these issues are solved we cant support, sorry.

I believe in the potential of Flows, but right now it feels unfocused and difficult to rally around.

Many grants either fund things people were already doing or they lack clear follow-through (not to mention the rugs). I’ve tried coordinating with grantees, and even getting the bare minimum of engagement has been challenging.

What is the goal of Flows? What are we actually working toward? We need clear, centralized goals that leverage decentralized tools to coordinate decentralized communities. All in service of building the Nouns brand.

I want a smaller budget version of this proposal. Less funding per month to grantees and more focused goals from the Flows team.

I think its definitely +EV for Nouns to continue to support this experiment in some way. Flows is one of those products that attempt to course-correct Nouns and thats exactly the type of energy and operators we want. So ultimately I think we should give rocketman and team more rope here, im just unsure about the specifics, hence abstaining this time.

the forever problem of governance is that high quality governance is hard and painful (a lot of effort, skill, and brain damage involved) and as a result is in short supply.

companies solve this by allowing concentration of ownership and financial outcomes (large shareholders are motivated to elect the right management and go through the brain damage of corporate governance b/c they get the bulk of the financial outcome).

this doesn't quite work for nouns b/c culturally we reject the idea of a single person (or a few people) controlling the nouns treasury spending decision unilaterally and their motivation overwhelmingly being driven by personal financial profit.

that's reasonable imo. we would reject such a thing for our local city governance as well (nouns is more like a city than a company imo). but for city governance there's a degree of civic duty and lock in. when governance devolves too much (SF recently where I live), living conditions becomes unbearable and while many ppl leave (many tech ppl went to miami etc) at some point ppl like garry tan (who grew up on SF) that are never going to leave b/c it's their home and where their livelihood is built just start taking ownership b/c there's no other choice. city revenue is also raised through taxes. dues are collected from everyone and spent for everyone (though applied progressively) and it's forced.

i don't quite know how nouns governance is supposed to work long term. governance is hard and painful. you can't take over enough control of the governance to substantially privatize the financial gain b/c that would nuke the project. ppl aren't locked in and revenue isn't forced. i get why nouns could be a city ppl might love to live in. but would anyone pay to be involved in governance (something that is inherently hard and painful)?

i don't know the answer to this question. but what i do know is that any answer involves creating more leverage to ppl providing the scarce good governance. maybe they like nerding out about nouns. maybe they spent enough years and benefitted from nouns in one way or another and feel a sense of civic duty. maybe they are a nouns business and have some aligned financial incentive even if not a controlling amount. we need to take that which is given to us and SOMEHOW leverage that to govern the whole system effectively. prop house (token voting, gardeners, farcaster likes) attempted that but wasn't enough of an answer on its own. AI seems to be the only plausible new frontier to create leverage. if somehow we can determine who's providing the scarce good governance and train AI models to act on those inputs with infinite patience and attention, then maybe we have a chance. this seems to be where vitalik's thinking is going with regards to open source (public goods) funding as well.

another frontier is to reintroduce market mechanisms to aid portions of the governance decisions ("futarchy" is a buzz word ppl talk about which allows you to buy and sell each prop / governance decision). TCRs? revnets? to be honest i'm generally a bit more skeptical about this direction b/c i don't know if market mechanisms are really well suited for public funding decisions (so many pitfalls) but i do think it's a genuine additional frontier that we admittedly haven't explored much

this ended up being a super long rant but all of this is to say, i don't know the ins and outs of what's going on here but directionally i think it's exploring a super important meta problem of governance for nouns and given there aren't any projects more promising in this realm (and we're lucky to have someone as talented and earnest as rocketman leading it) i just think we need to let him cook

I appreciate the vision and contributions that Rocketman has made to the ecosystem — Flows is one of the most ambitious attempts to reimagine bottom-up funding in crypto. However, I will be voting NO on this proposal for the following reasons:

• DAO Has No Long-Term Stake in $FLOWs Token.
  Flows is moving toward a tokenized revnet system, and yet Nouns DAO — the only funding source to date — is not explicitly included in the token design.
  Without equity, protocol fees, or token allocations for Nouns, there is no structural mechanism for the DAO to benefit from Flows’ upside.
  We’ve seen this before with other projects that launched tokens after being incubated by the DAO, only to exclude Nouns from the long-term value loop. I do not want Flows to become another Agora.

• Funding Scale Requires VC Validation.
  Flows already received significant early-stage support from the DAO, well beyond what traditional incubators would commit.
  A follow-on ask of $575k should ideally be de-risked through outside validation.
  If the team can secure venture support — and I’m happy to help introduce them — I would feel more comfortable backing the next round of DAO support. VC validation would show that the tokenomics are sound and that Flows is building a market-aligned, sustainable product.

I appreciate the vision and contributions that Rocketman has made to the ecosystem — Flows is one of the most ambitious attempts to reimagine bottom-up funding in crypto. However, I will be voting NO on this proposal for the following reasons:

• DAO Has No Long-Term Stake in $FLOWs Token.
  Flows is moving toward a tokenized revnet system, and yet Nouns DAO — the only funding source to date — is not explicitly included in the token design.
  Without equity, protocol fees, or token allocations for Nouns, there is no structural mechanism for the DAO to benefit from Flows’ upside.
  We’ve seen this before with other projects that launched tokens after being incubated by the DAO, only to exclude Nouns from the long-term value loop. I do not want Flows to become another Agora.

• Funding Scale Requires VC Validation.
  Flows already received significant early-stage support from the DAO, well beyond what traditional incubators would commit.
  A follow-on ask of $575k should ideally be de-risked through outside validation.
  If the team can secure venture support — and I’m happy to help introduce them — I would feel more comfortable backing the next round of DAO support. VC validation would show that the tokenomics are sound and that Flows is building a market-aligned, sustainable product.

after four years of shots on goal(s), it is clear to me that the best of nouns is its people. having mechanisms that attract, reward and retain old and new is important! it is what keeps the wheel churning.

through building prop house and rounds, i've learned a lot -- all of which we can see in flows (and a whole lot more!). these types of systems are what allow us to continue to grow the bottoms-up community that is nouns.

rocketman and riderway are talented builders who deserve our vote of confidence to continue to do what they do best. good luck!

the forever problem of governance is that high quality governance is hard and painful (a lot of effort, skill, and brain damage involved) and as a result is in short supply.

companies solve this by allowing concentration of ownership and financial outcomes (large shareholders are motivated to elect the right management and go through the brain damage of corporate governance b/c they get the bulk of the financial outcome).

this doesn't quite work for nouns b/c culturally we reject the idea of a single person (or a few people) controlling the nouns treasury spending decision unilaterally and their motivation overwhelmingly being driven by personal financial profit.

that's reasonable imo. we would reject such a thing for our local city governance as well (nouns is more like a city than a company imo). but for city governance there's a degree of civic duty and lock in. when governance devolves too much (SF recently where I live), living conditions becomes unbearable and while many ppl leave (many tech ppl went to miami etc) at some point ppl like garry tan (who grew up on SF) that are never going to leave b/c it's their home and where their livelihood is built just start taking ownership b/c there's no other choice. city revenue is also raised through taxes. dues are collected from everyone and spent for everyone (though applied progressively) and it's forced.

i don't quite know how nouns governance is supposed to work long term. governance is hard and painful. you can't take over enough control of the governance to substantially privatize the financial gain b/c that would nuke the project. ppl aren't locked in and revenue isn't forced. i get why nouns could be a city ppl might love to live in. but would anyone pay to be involved in governance (something that is inherently hard and painful)?

i don't know the answer to this question. but what i do know is that any answer involves creating more leverage to ppl providing the scarce good governance. maybe they like nerding out about nouns. maybe they spent enough years and benefitted from nouns in one way or another and feel a sense of civic duty. maybe they are a nouns business and have some aligned financial incentive even if not a controlling amount. we need to take that which is given to us and SOMEHOW leverage that to govern the whole system effectively. prop house (token voting, gardeners, farcaster likes) attempted that but wasn't enough of an answer on its own. AI seems to be the only plausible new frontier to create leverage. if somehow we can determine who's providing the scarce good governance and train AI models to act on those inputs with infinite patience and attention, then maybe we have a chance. this seems to be where vitalik's thinking is going with regards to open source (public goods) funding as well.

another frontier is to reintroduce market mechanisms to aid portions of the governance decisions ("futarchy" is a buzz word ppl talk about which allows you to buy and sell each prop / governance decision). TCRs? revnets? to be honest i'm generally a bit more skeptical about this direction b/c i don't know if market mechanisms are really well suited for public funding decisions (so many pitfalls) but i do think it's a genuine additional frontier that we admittedly haven't explored much

this ended up being a super long rant but all of this is to say, i don't know the ins and outs of what's going on here but directionally i think it's exploring a super important meta problem of governance for nouns and given there aren't any projects more promising in this realm (and we're lucky to have someone as talented and earnest as rocketman leading it) i just think we need to let him cook

We’re big fans of the Flows mechanism, vision and concept, but there are too many flaws in its current form. The net is cast far too wide, diluting the impact. System is too easily gamed, allowing low-effort props to secure funding without sufficient vetting. Until these issues are solved we cant support, sorry.

Seems like a huge portion of yearly inflows and I don't see how it has a marked positive reciprocal impact on the treasury. At least not equivalent to what's being requested.

The tokenomics (revnets, etc) are also a bit complex considering what's being funded. Not sure recipients will fully understand what they're signing up for.

I appreciate the vision and contributions that Rocketman has made to the ecosystem — Flows is one of the most ambitious attempts to reimagine bottom-up funding in crypto. However, I will be voting NO on this proposal for the following reasons:

• DAO Has No Long-Term Stake in $FLOWs Token.
  Flows is moving toward a tokenized revnet system, and yet Nouns DAO — the only funding source to date — is not explicitly included in the token design.
  Without equity, protocol fees, or token allocations for Nouns, there is no structural mechanism for the DAO to benefit from Flows’ upside.
  We’ve seen this before with other projects that launched tokens after being incubated by the DAO, only to exclude Nouns from the long-term value loop. I do not want Flows to become another Agora.

• Funding Scale Requires VC Validation.
  Flows already received significant early-stage support from the DAO, well beyond what traditional incubators would commit.
  A follow-on ask of $575k should ideally be de-risked through outside validation.
  If the team can secure venture support — and I’m happy to help introduce them — I would feel more comfortable backing the next round of DAO support. VC validation would show that the tokenomics are sound and that Flows is building a market-aligned, sustainable product.

after four years of shots on goal(s), it is clear to me that the best of nouns is its people. having mechanisms that attract, reward and retain old and new is important! it is what keeps the wheel churning.

through building prop house and rounds, i've learned a lot -- all of which we can see in flows (and a whole lot more!). these types of systems are what allow us to continue to grow the bottoms-up community that is nouns.

rocketman and riderway are talented builders who deserve our vote of confidence to continue to do what they do best. good luck!

after four years of shots on goal(s), it is clear to me that the best of nouns is its people. having mechanisms that attract, reward and retain old and new is important! it is what keeps the wheel churning.

through building prop house and rounds, i've learned a lot -- all of which we can see in flows (and a whole lot more!). these types of systems are what allow us to continue to grow the bottoms-up community that is nouns.

rocketman and riderway are talented builders who deserve our vote of confidence to continue to do what they do best. good luck!

the forever problem of governance is that high quality governance is hard and painful (a lot of effort, skill, and brain damage involved) and as a result is in short supply.

companies solve this by allowing concentration of ownership and financial outcomes (large shareholders are motivated to elect the right management and go through the brain damage of corporate governance b/c they get the bulk of the financial outcome).

this doesn't quite work for nouns b/c culturally we reject the idea of a single person (or a few people) controlling the nouns treasury spending decision unilaterally and their motivation overwhelmingly being driven by personal financial profit.

that's reasonable imo. we would reject such a thing for our local city governance as well (nouns is more like a city than a company imo). but for city governance there's a degree of civic duty and lock in. when governance devolves too much (SF recently where I live), living conditions becomes unbearable and while many ppl leave (many tech ppl went to miami etc) at some point ppl like garry tan (who grew up on SF) that are never going to leave b/c it's their home and where their livelihood is built just start taking ownership b/c there's no other choice. city revenue is also raised through taxes. dues are collected from everyone and spent for everyone (though applied progressively) and it's forced.

i don't quite know how nouns governance is supposed to work long term. governance is hard and painful. you can't take over enough control of the governance to substantially privatize the financial gain b/c that would nuke the project. ppl aren't locked in and revenue isn't forced. i get why nouns could be a city ppl might love to live in. but would anyone pay to be involved in governance (something that is inherently hard and painful)?

i don't know the answer to this question. but what i do know is that any answer involves creating more leverage to ppl providing the scarce good governance. maybe they like nerding out about nouns. maybe they spent enough years and benefitted from nouns in one way or another and feel a sense of civic duty. maybe they are a nouns business and have some aligned financial incentive even if not a controlling amount. we need to take that which is given to us and SOMEHOW leverage that to govern the whole system effectively. prop house (token voting, gardeners, farcaster likes) attempted that but wasn't enough of an answer on its own. AI seems to be the only plausible new frontier to create leverage. if somehow we can determine who's providing the scarce good governance and train AI models to act on those inputs with infinite patience and attention, then maybe we have a chance. this seems to be where vitalik's thinking is going with regards to open source (public goods) funding as well.

another frontier is to reintroduce market mechanisms to aid portions of the governance decisions ("futarchy" is a buzz word ppl talk about which allows you to buy and sell each prop / governance decision). TCRs? revnets? to be honest i'm generally a bit more skeptical about this direction b/c i don't know if market mechanisms are really well suited for public funding decisions (so many pitfalls) but i do think it's a genuine additional frontier that we admittedly haven't explored much

this ended up being a super long rant but all of this is to say, i don't know the ins and outs of what's going on here but directionally i think it's exploring a super important meta problem of governance for nouns and given there aren't any projects more promising in this realm (and we're lucky to have someone as talented and earnest as rocketman leading it) i just think we need to let him cook

The premise of Flows is powerful, and it's worth continuing to develop. However, I still think the protocol needs to be fixed to make it "the most effective use of the Nouns treasury." I'd support a proposal to explore different ways to fix and test the protocol before committing to the proposed solution.

I believe in the potential of Flows, but right now it feels unfocused and difficult to rally around.

Many grants either fund things people were already doing or they lack clear follow-through (not to mention the rugs). I’ve tried coordinating with grantees, and even getting the bare minimum of engagement has been challenging.

What is the goal of Flows? What are we actually working toward? We need clear, centralized goals that leverage decentralized tools to coordinate decentralized communities. All in service of building the Nouns brand.

I want a smaller budget version of this proposal. Less funding per month to grantees and more focused goals from the Flows team.

I appreciate the vision and contributions that Rocketman has made to the ecosystem — Flows is one of the most ambitious attempts to reimagine bottom-up funding in crypto. However, I will be voting NO on this proposal for the following reasons:

• DAO Has No Long-Term Stake in $FLOWs Token.
  Flows is moving toward a tokenized revnet system, and yet Nouns DAO — the only funding source to date — is not explicitly included in the token design.
  Without equity, protocol fees, or token allocations for Nouns, there is no structural mechanism for the DAO to benefit from Flows’ upside.
  We’ve seen this before with other projects that launched tokens after being incubated by the DAO, only to exclude Nouns from the long-term value loop. I do not want Flows to become another Agora.

• Funding Scale Requires VC Validation.
  Flows already received significant early-stage support from the DAO, well beyond what traditional incubators would commit.
  A follow-on ask of $575k should ideally be de-risked through outside validation.
  If the team can secure venture support — and I’m happy to help introduce them — I would feel more comfortable backing the next round of DAO support. VC validation would show that the tokenomics are sound and that Flows is building a market-aligned, sustainable product.

the forever problem of governance is that high quality governance is hard and painful (a lot of effort, skill, and brain damage involved) and as a result is in short supply.

companies solve this by allowing concentration of ownership and financial outcomes (large shareholders are motivated to elect the right management and go through the brain damage of corporate governance b/c they get the bulk of the financial outcome).

this doesn't quite work for nouns b/c culturally we reject the idea of a single person (or a few people) controlling the nouns treasury spending decision unilaterally and their motivation overwhelmingly being driven by personal financial profit.

that's reasonable imo. we would reject such a thing for our local city governance as well (nouns is more like a city than a company imo). but for city governance there's a degree of civic duty and lock in. when governance devolves too much (SF recently where I live), living conditions becomes unbearable and while many ppl leave (many tech ppl went to miami etc) at some point ppl like garry tan (who grew up on SF) that are never going to leave b/c it's their home and where their livelihood is built just start taking ownership b/c there's no other choice. city revenue is also raised through taxes. dues are collected from everyone and spent for everyone (though applied progressively) and it's forced.

i don't quite know how nouns governance is supposed to work long term. governance is hard and painful. you can't take over enough control of the governance to substantially privatize the financial gain b/c that would nuke the project. ppl aren't locked in and revenue isn't forced. i get why nouns could be a city ppl might love to live in. but would anyone pay to be involved in governance (something that is inherently hard and painful)?

i don't know the answer to this question. but what i do know is that any answer involves creating more leverage to ppl providing the scarce good governance. maybe they like nerding out about nouns. maybe they spent enough years and benefitted from nouns in one way or another and feel a sense of civic duty. maybe they are a nouns business and have some aligned financial incentive even if not a controlling amount. we need to take that which is given to us and SOMEHOW leverage that to govern the whole system effectively. prop house (token voting, gardeners, farcaster likes) attempted that but wasn't enough of an answer on its own. AI seems to be the only plausible new frontier to create leverage. if somehow we can determine who's providing the scarce good governance and train AI models to act on those inputs with infinite patience and attention, then maybe we have a chance. this seems to be where vitalik's thinking is going with regards to open source (public goods) funding as well.

another frontier is to reintroduce market mechanisms to aid portions of the governance decisions ("futarchy" is a buzz word ppl talk about which allows you to buy and sell each prop / governance decision). TCRs? revnets? to be honest i'm generally a bit more skeptical about this direction b/c i don't know if market mechanisms are really well suited for public funding decisions (so many pitfalls) but i do think it's a genuine additional frontier that we admittedly haven't explored much

this ended up being a super long rant but all of this is to say, i don't know the ins and outs of what's going on here but directionally i think it's exploring a super important meta problem of governance for nouns and given there aren't any projects more promising in this realm (and we're lucky to have someone as talented and earnest as rocketman leading it) i just think we need to let him cook

after four years of shots on goal(s), it is clear to me that the best of nouns is its people. having mechanisms that attract, reward and retain old and new is important! it is what keeps the wheel churning.

through building prop house and rounds, i've learned a lot -- all of which we can see in flows (and a whole lot more!). these types of systems are what allow us to continue to grow the bottoms-up community that is nouns.

rocketman and riderway are talented builders who deserve our vote of confidence to continue to do what they do best. good luck!

I think its definitely +EV for Nouns to continue to support this experiment in some way. Flows is one of those products that attempt to course-correct Nouns and thats exactly the type of energy and operators we want. So ultimately I think we should give rocketman and team more rope here, im just unsure about the specifics, hence abstaining this time.

I believe in the potential of Flows, but right now it feels unfocused and difficult to rally around.

Many grants either fund things people were already doing or they lack clear follow-through (not to mention the rugs). I’ve tried coordinating with grantees, and even getting the bare minimum of engagement has been challenging.

What is the goal of Flows? What are we actually working toward? We need clear, centralized goals that leverage decentralized tools to coordinate decentralized communities. All in service of building the Nouns brand.

I want a smaller budget version of this proposal. Less funding per month to grantees and more focused goals from the Flows team.

I believe in the potential of Flows, but right now it feels unfocused and difficult to rally around.

Many grants either fund things people were already doing or they lack clear follow-through (not to mention the rugs). I’ve tried coordinating with grantees, and even getting the bare minimum of engagement has been challenging.

What is the goal of Flows? What are we actually working toward? We need clear, centralized goals that leverage decentralized tools to coordinate decentralized communities. All in service of building the Nouns brand.

I want a smaller budget version of this proposal. Less funding per month to grantees and more focused goals from the Flows team.

I think this proposal is taking flows in the wrong direction. Revnets is an unproven mechanism, and there's no data (neither real-world usage or simulations) to support the claim that it will bring in more funding and collaboration.

I fear that we have many insidious problems in the protocol that need to be addressed before we double down on the current design:

Transparency/readability

Flows is very opaque right now. We don't have the dashboards we need to make sense of the data, track trends and trust that it's evolving sustainably.

If anything, the feedback from several builders that they're not getting enough seems to indicate it's not sustainable. It might be best to direct more funding to fewer projects with wider impact (public goods) instead of spreading it out too thin.

Visualizing those trends is essential to make the right calls. I don't know if you have those dashboards for yourself, or if you track that data, but it should be available to the DAO.

Low curation activity

I don't think flows is being curated nearly enough. I think some design decisions impose most of the work on curators, and there's not enough incentive for them to do it:

• submissions being default approved if not challenged
• the lack of a unified dashboard to quickly review all flows you can vote on
• an in-app feed with the actual fc posts from the builders so you can review the updates they're posting. The AI summaries are noisy and not helpful IMO
• Brewing conflicts: the challenge process pits builders against curators and makes challenging flows a VERY unpleasant experience.

I think this last one is especially worrisome. I see many builders ranting about being challenged, and I think no curator wants to deal with that, so you'll see less and less activity from them.

At the end of the day, curation is A LOT of work to do, and I think more of the burden should be shifted towards people that are getting the grants.

Making it too easy to get your flow approved (only requires lack of curator oversight), and too difficult to cancel (stressful a laborious challenging process) favors the accumulation of low-quality flows and spreads the funds out too thin. I think there needs to be recurrent (monthly) opt-ins by curators to keep a flow up instead.

Conflicts of interest

Several voters are currently being funded by flows. There couldn't be a more explicit conflict of interest with the DAO than that.

Not saying we should try and fix it in the protocol, but I would at least expect as a social norm that flows grantees abstain from voting on flows props. (Nouncil included)

I would be supportive of another prop addressing those problems. I don't think this one is focusing on the core issues.

I also encourage you to split the props between one that requests more funds to keep flows going (only requires directional support from the DAO), and another with proposed updates to the protocol (more nuanced and requires more input from the DAO).

That way, it should be easier to secure the funding to ensure the continuation of flows while giving us more time to iterate and improve on the protocol. You've mentioned a lot of feedback from builders in the previous comments, but no feedback from curators at all.

Short video announcing Flows v3 and the improvements we've made:

https://warpcast.com/rocketman/0xdd137caa

GM Family !!

Why is it Important to Support Flows?

As a representative of Bless Skateshop in São Paulo, I can say that supporting Flows is essential because it creates a culture of care, recognition and sustainability within decentralized communities like Nouns.
Flows is not just about funding; it is about building relationships, encouraging creativity and recognizing the invisible work that often keeps communities alive. Through Flows, we were able to maintain Praça Margarida de Menezes, a historic space for skateboarding that had been abandoned, into a vibrant center of culture and community, which initially with the help of Gnars helped us revitalize and breathe life into a previously abandoned space.
In the Latin American context, especially in peripheral areas of São Paulo, Flows has become a critical resource for grassroots projects that would not have access to traditional funding. It allows local ideas, art and technology to thrive in more autonomous and community-driven ways.
Our social haircuts, web3 onboarding, and cryptocurrency integration into our small local business are all concrete examples of this.
Flows helps keep the ecosystem vibrant and diverse by empowering people who are contributing value in their own unique ways, creating a cycle of trust, collaboration, and mutual support. Every skater we help, every person we introduce to the web3 world, every public space we revitalize, all of this forms a network of positive impact that expands far beyond our small skateshop.
The “positive sum” proposition represents exactly what we experience in practice: when one builder thrives, the entire community benefits. This is the essence of what we build in skateboarding and what Flows is building in the web3 world.