Noundry Season 0 Compensation Proposal (2nd draft)

By 142, elad, nifty, and krel

This proposal aims to retroactively compensate participants of the first Noundry, including winners, runner-ups, and other contributors playing a key role in the event. Total ask of 159.6024 eth.

We believe that Noundry compensation is more than a box-ticking exercise. Pixel art is part of who we are; it’s in our bones, and adding new pixels to the Descriptor contract is a big deal. It’s an opportunity to celebrate, reinforce our culture, and create new traditions.

We want the Noundry to become a continuous event, a new tradition, and a significant driver of Nouns proliferation within artistic circles. In that light, the compensation outlined in this proposal is not just about the work that was completed, but also about future signaling.

We think one of the most exciting future outcomes of the Noundry would be if every artist in the world aspires to put their artwork into the Nouns contract (and by extension, the public domain). And while high compensation may not be the primary motivator, it can help initiate the right feedback loop and create the breeding ground needed for future Noundrys to thrive.

Proposed compensation model

Summary

• Winner compensation: 129 eth
• Runner-up compensation: 20 eth
• Committee: 9.6024 eth
• Proposal administration: 1 eth
• Total compensation: 159.6024 eth

Winner compensation

Prop 125: Integrate 8/8 Anniversary Art

Noundry Season 0 winners are compensated per winning trait. Artists with multiple winning submissions are rewarded for each trait.

Noun Head traits are more generously compensated as they are the most visually striking, tend to create the most excitement within the community, and are responsible for driving much of the Twitter discourse and enthusiasm around the Noundry.

• Heads: 15 eth / trait
  • (8 x 15 = 120 eth)
• Accessories: 3 eth / trait
  • (3 x 3 = 9 eth)
• Total: 129 eth

Note: Gremplin declined compensation for the 2 noggle traits added in the upgrade, arguing that there should be a minimum degree of effort required for compensation.

Heads

Accessories

Runner-up compensation

We recognize that the Noundry is a “co-op game” where artists iterate upon and are inspired by each other’s ideas. We think the collaborative air surrounding the Noundry is critical to its success and will continue to be so in future iterations. To acknowledge that, we want to compensate runner-ups using Coordinape, a community compensation platform.

About Coordinape

• By default, Coordinape tends to flatten the curve of compensation. The most valued contributors receive less than they deserve, and the least valued contributors a little more than they might deserve. We believe this is an undesired side-effect that can skew and corrupt incentives. One way to combat this is to make it impossible to distribute votes evenly, which is why we’ve decided to give every contributor just 3 votes to assign to their top candidate(s). We believe this will create a more top-heavy payout structure, with the majority of funding going to the most deserving runner-ups of Noundry Season 0.
• Anyone who submitted traits will receive a pool of 3 GIVE tokens to vote on their top candidates for contributing to and having a positive impact on Noundry Season 0.
• Total: 20 eth

Curation committee compensation

Furthermore, we recognize that the curation committee played a key role in making Noundry Season 0 a success. They are compensated for organizing the event, and curating and fine-tuning the winning contributions.

It’s hard to put a figure value on the efforts of the committee — in many ways it’s priceless, especially the curation work done to keep the collection coherent. We propose compensating the committee with a symbolic sum of 9.6024 eth to distribute as they see fit.

• Committee members:
  • Goldy
  • Gremplin
  • 4156
  • 9999
  • Solimander
• Total: 9.6024 eth

Prop administration compensation

Administration includes managing the Coordinape round.

• Admins:
  • Maty (1 eth)
• Total: 1 eth

Thanks for sharing!

I think the winner comp is more in line with what I expressed I’d support (100ish) last time

I want to really understand this Coordinape round since it was something I did not support last time. I don’t think the 20 ETH is necessarily a problem, but I do this the execution of something like this is very challenging and I want to understand the plan

• The pool of participants will be everyone who submit an entry into the contest? How many of them are there?
• How will they be contacted?
• Over what time period will they vote?
• How will the information they vote on be organized? Will they have a list of every entry + the name of its respective creator?
• What instructions will they be given on how to vote? Whatever they think is the ‘most deserving’ of a reward?

I still think the total comp is too high for reasons discussed previously. I would support dropping per-head compensation to 10 ETH, and cutting the coordinape round which I don’t see as effective for this use case.

The coordinape round has been improved with very few tokens per person, so that comp lands mostly with people who gave the community a lot of value.
We are suggesting this to incentivize collaboration and acknowledge that many submissions had more than one person contribute to their creation.

Are you saying rewarding collaboration is a mistaken goal? If so, why?
Or you like the goal but not the implementation still?
If so, do you have an alternative implementation?

i really understand and appreciate your intent here! i think it’s most productive if i am as direct as possible with my opinion here to eliminate ambiguity. so i really love your intent and motives but i think that a coordinape round is misguided for the following reasons:

i think organizing 100 people to vote with 3 tokens to divvy up a pool of 20 ETH is a Rube Goldberg-esque machine that creates a ton of work and doesn’t even necessarily accomplish its goal of making contributors feel they were fairly rewarded. it just creates a big complex system of getting people to do perform unnecessary work, all in the name of forced collaboration, and not to effectively accomplish a goal or solve a problem

if the goal of this is to reward runner-up contributors, then the most effective way is just to give them a little ETH

I would like to see all traits that made it receive Ξ10 per trait.

I am not sure about the coordinape part of it.

Just my 2 cents.

runner ups are one use case.
another use case: some winners were created through collabs of more than one person, seems important to give winners the chance to reward those people.

however I think it’s best that @krel and other noundry artists comment on the vibe they experienced and how they feel about rewarding the collaborative vibes.

I don’t know, I like doing coordinapes. I think they are fun and like the experience. Curious if those who participated in the process would feel the same way. Maybe they will enjoy it vs being unnecessary work.

i can only speak to my own experience in noundry, so other artists should chime in. but it was a very collaborative experience and i feel like the coordinape approach lends itself to something similar.

don’t get me wrong, i like eth as much as the next guy. but, simply getting sent some eth for my participation in noundry doesn’t match the vibe of the noundry.

what i like about the coordinape approach is that it’s almost like giving a “shoutout” to the people who made your noundry experience special. and the reason to shout someone out can be different for different folks. if it was 20 eth split between 100 people and deposited into their wallets, i don’t think it’d have the same feeling to it, and i don’t know if it’s even worth doing at all.

for me, what’s most important is to say thanks to all of the participants in a way that matches that original experience. if there’s a more efficient way to do that than a coordinape round, then i’m all ears.

if i’m overstepping here, apologies. but another thought i had was to somehow issue a special nft for all of the noundry participants as a thank you. a single piece of artwork that commemorates the original noundry and each participant gets to rep that as their badge of honor. maybe it’s even soulbound? just a thought.

re: the effort for coordinape, we’ve been tracking down all of the noundry artists over in the noundry project. and happy to share whatever resources may be helpful in making that happen.

re: comp per trait, i’m in favor of keeping it higher for this first season. i imagine it’d be easier to lower the comp for next season than it would be to increase it above a previous year’s comp.

this matches my feelings perfectly, but I was unable to put it into words — thank you

1. The amount of work has been judged by maty to be equal to his compensation. It’s as much as the 1 ETH cost to coordinate.
2. I think fair reward here is being recognized by the DAO and your Noundry peers, not necessarily the exact monetary compensation. The nice thing with coordinape is that recognition and compensation are tied.

@krel I wonder if shifting compensation slightly away from heads (13 ETH per head?) and towards coordinape (35 ETH) might be slightly better if the number of noundry participants is large. Artists like facu would likely score high on coordinape due their outsized participation, but have also been compensated via winning Head submission. A larger coordinape allows for outsized rewards while still having enough meaningfully distributed to the ‘long tail’

I don’t have much to add other than to say I think you found a nice balance between the original proposal and all the feedback that was received. You’re not going to please everyone on this project, but if I had a vote, it would be a yes.