flows.wtf development v2
tldr of the changes since our last prop
- Significantly reduced ask ($575k -> $270k)
- Commit to prioritize curation tooling, impact overviews, and accountability + capital efficiency dashboards before building revnets
- Clarified potential model for revnets + commit to split min 10% issuance w/Nouns DAO
The prop (revised)
8 months ago, we envisioned a better way to fund Nouns builders. Since then, flows.wtf has grown to continuously fund over 200 quality nounish projects. Check out our impact at the bottom of the prop.
The problem
Funding smaller, non-consensus projects in Nouns DAO is hard. Traditional voting requires majority approval, which limits innovation and doesn't scale. Small-grant incentives don’t prevent free-riders or scammers, and manual oversight isn't viable at scale.
We want to solve effective capital allocation for grassroots impact.
Our solution
Flows is an open-source protocol combining money streaming, Token Curated Registries (TCRs), AI, and Farcaster to make grant-making continuous, scalable, and financially sustainable. It reduces voter effort, rewards impactful projects, and makes it economically unviable to scam or free-ride.
Our north star is to sustainably fund 1 million quality builders every month.
Recent progress
Since our proposal 4 months ago, we built:
Beautiful project pages
Easily understand project goals and activity over time.
Dynamic bonus pools
A quorum for each flow to allocate funds more effectively.
Impact scores
Grade every builder's impact in real time.
Impact chains
Automatic reports of a project's work.
Search
Vector search over all grants
Impact summary
Summarized impact for every project over time
Sanctions checks
Implemented sanctions check like Nouns AuctionHouseV3
Curation infra
Basic curation dashboard
Farcaster agents
Welcome new projects, send reminders, and support builders on Farcaster.
Our commitment
We have adjusted our focus after feedback on our last proposal.
Our main focus for the forseeable future will be improving curator tooling, builder accountability, and impact tracking infrastructure on the website to ensure capital is allocated as effectively as possible. This includes:
- Tools to improve the curator experience
- Improved voting experience for nouners + large voting block fix
- Dashboards around Flows capital efficiency
- Better builder accountability features
- Improvements to the challenge and feedback flows
- Better verification of builder impact
- Impact summaries on flow/homepage
After we have improved the core tooling for better insights into effective capital allocation, we plan to address the larger underlying problem of Flows being zero-sum. This includes exploring:
- Revnet upgrade (with issuance split to Nouns)
- Matching pools to encourage capital input
- Contract upgrades to let anyone donate to flows
We commit to work incredibly hard until we have figured out how to sustainably fund grassroots impact onchain.
The team
rocketman and riderway. We've been actively building in and around the Nouns space for nearly three years. In that time, we have built an alternative protocol for launching Nounish DAOs, House of Nouns, and Vrbs DAO to name a few.
Questions
Have any questions? Want to discuss with us? You can reach me on Warpcast here.
What has Flows funded?
Our conviction grows every day that funding Flows is perhaps the most effective use of the Nouns treasury. Nouns is a lot more interesting if we can pay 1000 people ~$100 to go out and have local impact, vs. paying small teams large sums of money (which already happens offchain). We put together a list to highlight a small set of exciting impact funded by Flows for only $40k/mo over the last 4 months.
Esports
- Competitive Gaming Success & Support: Funded and supported multiple esports streamers and events, achieving notable wins (Majestic SSJ in Dota 2 Nounish Cup, multiple undefeated Pokémon UNITE Cup victories, Team Flame win) and qualifying for major championships (Pokémon UNITE NA/EU).
- Esports Event Hosting & Streaming: Organized and streamed various tournaments (Smash Bros in Bristol & Toronto, Starbrawl) with crypto prizes, upgraded streaming gear, and created custom broadcast elements (outro videos).
- Live Game Commentary & Analysis: Provided live commentary for competitive matches (ESL Counter-Strike, ESEA Playoffs, Dota 2 Nounish Cup) often in multiple languages (English/Spanish) featuring Nouns branding.
- Gaming Community Tools & Content: Developed resources like an educational CS2 strategy video, a Discord bot for CS match predictions, and hosted streams specifically for women gamers (Dota 2).
Environmental Action & Sustainability
- Large-Scale Beach & Coastal Cleanups: Organized numerous cleanups removing hundreds of kilograms of trash (over 1000kg total mentioned across various events) from beaches (Boqueirão, Brazilian beaches, Reserva, Praia Grande, Lagoa de Saquarema, Foz do Rio Bacaxá) and mangroves (Ypê Island), removing items like TVs, fridges, and furniture. Also included youth empowerment elements.
- Mangrove Restoration: Planted thousands of mangrove seedlings (15,000 total mentioned) in Tanzania to restore ecosystems and create jobs, documenting with GPS/video.
- Recycling & Waste Management Initiatives: Installed cigarette butt collection stations, Nouns-themed trash bins at community courts, built a greywater recycling system for irrigation, and created art from collected river waste (plastic fish sculptures, eco-puppets).
- Sustainable Product Creation: Developed and showcased eco-friendly products like recycled plastic Noggle eyewear, Noggles keychains (Bangkok), and facilitated workshops teaching kids to make puppets from recycled materials (Caracas).
Community Building, Food Security & Infrastructure
- Food Distribution & Support: Provided hundreds of nutritious meals (Jollof rice, WHO-standard lunches, homeless outreach) to children, elderly, homeless individuals, and their pets in Nigeria and São Paulo. Also restocked a local shop owner's business.
- Community Gardens & Greening: Established and expanded community food forests/gardens (planting fruit trees like pink lemons, figs, peaches, apples, cassava), implemented natural pest control, installed rainwater harvesting, built hydroponic systems (community harvest, balcony garden, vertical bottle garden), planted 150+ trees for biodiversity, and gave away vegetable plants and Noggle pot plants.
- Public Space Enhancements & Art: Created community murals (El Faro, interactive nature theme, handprints, fantasy/sports themes, crypto mural), upgraded public facilities (basketball court net, playground cleanup, safer pathways), restored historic skate spots (São Paulo's "Sopa Square", 40-year-old plaza, ramp repair), built an outdoor radio stage/art space/fire pit, and transformed a car into a mobile Nouns art piece.
- Animal Welfare: Donated food to animal shelters (feeding 100+ rescued animals) and regularly fed stray animals.
Health, Wellness & Safety
- Inclusive Fitness Programs: Launched and adapted Pilates classes specifically for seniors and those managing obesity/chronic conditions, improving mobility, daily activity, social connection, and managing health issues like high blood pressure. Also offered strength training for chronic illness.
- Water Safety & Rescue: Supported a big wave rescue team (Nazaré) with branded gear alongside major sponsors, provided water rescue certification training (distributing physical Noggles), and received official city recognition for water safety efforts.
- Safety Initiatives: Provided safety helmets for youth skaters (Kampala) and installed a recycled tire barrier to protect skateboarders near roads. Also held a child safety carnival (Medellín).
Crypto
- Nouns Interfaces & Platforms: Developed unique interfaces like the Nouns95 retro web app (governance, chat, auction bidding, history) and a Windows 95-style crypto wallet/explorer, integrated safer multisig wallets, and built software for displaying live Nouns auction data (MagicMirror).
- DAO Tools & Community Platforms: Created open-source tools for tracking Nouns DAO data (finance/governance), launched customizable token-gated community spaces ("Nounspaces" on Base), and simplified wallet connections (RainbowKit for Gnars DAO).
- Crypto Adoption & Education: Enabled crypto payments for a BMX store and a vegan skincare line, conducted Web3 workshops (seniors, skaters, women, tribal communities, creatives in Santiago), created an educational video on Futarchy, and hosted crypto mural events with wallet setup guidance.
- NFT Creation & Events: Launched various NFT collections (surf photography, DarkNOUNS merch, live TV performance auction, acoustic concert collectibles, skateboarding photo, 'Cards of Culture'), hosted NFT premiere events (surf film), and released digital Noggles for Veveverse avatars.
Skateboarding Culture
- Skateboarding Events & Workshops: Organized youth workshops (building skateboards in Kampala, painting skateboards), supported downhill skateboarders (DHNOUNS project competitions/routes, organized sessions in Bogotá), filmed events (Carnavalong), and hosted community skate sessions.
- Skate Spot Development & Restoration: Restored and improved historic skate spots (São Paulo's "Sopa Square", 40-year-old plaza), repaired ramps adding Noggles graffiti, and built a concrete skate bowl.
- Skateboarding Content & Community: Produced skateboarding films/documentaries (Rio culture, mountain skateboarding, downhill techniques), minted skate photo NFTs, provided safety gear (helmets, tire barriers), onboarded skaters to Web3 platforms (SkateHive), and offered community support (free haircuts).
Surfing Culture
- Surf Events & Films: Screened multiple films promoting Web3 for creators
- Surfer Support & Content: Provided custom Nouns/Gnars branded surfboards for a pro surfer (Bali), documented big wave surfing and safety training (Nazaré), released a vlog with Nathan Florence (Brazil), and supported youth surf mentorship (Projeto TPM, kids' first solo waves).
Art, Music & Creative Expression
- Live Music & Performances: Funded and organized live music events ("The Pond Party," blockchain concert in London with interactive elements, Caribbean fusion show, electronic music with Nounish visuals, Pablo Kappes Noggles premiere), hosted NFT-gated concerts, and ran a Nouns Music Training Camp for emerging bands (Chile).
- Physical Art & Merchandise: Created handmade items (crochet duck/Noggle plushies, custom painted denim jacket), physical Noggles (glow-in-the-dark, custom graffiti, global kits, distributed at events), eco-art (recycled sculptures, puppets), a metal "Nogglestacle" sculpture, tote bags, Noggle bookmarks, Nouns mugs, and shipped the first /noc physical product.
- Creative Workshops & Contests: Held eco-puppet workshops for kids (Caracas), a logo design contest (Nounish Tales Philippines), and distributed Noggles at creative/Web3 events (Santiago).
- Unique Brand Activations: Organized a luxury car cruise featuring noggles.
Unique Educational & Documentation Projects
- Specialized Content & Documentation: Documented an athlete's injury recovery (Naomi Metzger sprints), filmed a breakdancing documentary (Lil Gnars), created a Patagonia kayak adventure vlog, produced motivational sports videos, and created an AI song tutorial led by a child.
- Unique Workshops & Events: Taught practical tech skills to seniors, held a solar eclipse viewing event for children, hosted a metaphysics & music session exploring AI/ancestral knowledge, and organized a pickleball event
- Food education: Healthy food cooking, and shopping education for youth in Brazil
Flows made all of this happen and more. All for a relatively small amount of money compared to what Nouns has spent so far.
Funding request
$20k USDC a month to continue building Flows, split between riderway and rocketman ($10k a month per person) for 5 months.
$10k USDC to cover legal advice, Marshall Islands DAO incorporation (via MIDAO), and tax expert consultation to ensure we structure Flows compliantly. Any unused funds from this allocation will be returned to the DAO.
Finally, we are requesting $32.5k a month for the next 5 months to fund flows builders. (we will reserve $5k a month for the last 4 months to fund matching pools).
Total ask: $270k USDC
Let's bring the makers together and complete the virtuous cycle,
-- rocketman
Token Model
We've been working with jango.eth from Juicebox for a few months now slowly workshopping what a revnet enabled flows would look like. We are still unsure on the exact specifics, but are sharing some potential models below:
Check out a more in depth view on this Figma.
Another potential model with more specifics of parameters. While we are not exactly sure what the final form will look like, we hope this provides some more insights into our approach for those interested. We commit to publicly workshopping these parameters with anyone who cares to participate. We also commit to splitting a min. of 10% of revnet tokens with Nouns DAO proper.
Compliance and Legal Plan
The ethos of crypto (and Flows) is decentralization, immutability, openness, and borderlessness. Recognizing Nouns DAO's U.S. base and the complexities of global funding, we are implementing the following measures to ensure Flows operates responsibly and compliantly:
Establish DAO LLC: We are forming a DAO LLC in the RMI. This provides limited liability protection for our team and formally establishes Flows as a distinct international entity, clarifying its operational jurisdiction.
Implement Robust Sanctions Screening: We implemented automated sanctions checks to continuously screen all recipient wallets against OFAC and other relevant sanctions lists.
Pathway to Decentralized Governance: Flows currently operates as a decentralized grant giving program, with no one in charge of how funds are dispersed. We are committed to progressively decentralizing the control of Flows protocol contracts as well.
Clarify Tax Responsibility: Our system explicitly assigns the responsibility for all tax reporting and payments to the grant recipients according to their local laws. Recipients will be clearly notified of this requirement. The Flows protocol itself is not structured to manage individual tax withholding globally. We are open to working with the DUNA on this.
Commitment to Compliance: We are committed to navigating the regulatory landscape proactively and adapting as needed. We will work closely with Nouns DAO and seek guidance to ensure Flows operates responsibly while advancing towards greater decentralization.
