Proposal: THE NOUNSVITATIONAL: Tier 1 Dota 2 Esports Event!

Hello NounsDAO!

We are Weplay, a globally recognized Esports event company who specialize in creating groundbreaking productions in the world of gaming. From weekly shows with the NFL and top Twitch Streamers, to multi-million dollar Esports events such as the (Emmy Nominated) Dota 2 Animajor, we pride ourselves on making the most memorable and exciting events in Esports.

Now, it’s time for Nouns to have one of it’s very own: THE NOUNSVITATIONAL!

Please watch our short VIDEO PROPOSAL BELOW!

Short and sweet: we believe that an Esports event can take Nouns to new heights. We don’t want to just show people some Noggles and call it a day - We want to enact a 3 step mass integration program designed around introducing (and integrating) the esports public at large into Web3, Nouns communities, and furthering the Nouns mission.

Introduction

We first learned about Nouns after your fantastic Dota 2 team entered the scene, and we got to know a few of the amazing folks over at the Nouns Esports crew. After doing our research on Nouns, we were impressed to find a group of people who were different from the normal Dota 2 Esports sponsors. In a scene plagued by Betting Companies, Scam Coins, and other nefarious evil doers, it was refreshing to find a group of people using Crypto in a positive way; One that we would be proud to partner with to spread their message. Weplay prides itself on being the best in our industry and working with the best in their industry, and we believe that this project would be one of those partnerships.

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What we Offer

What Nouns Proposals have been doing so far is great, but we believe we can do so much more for the growth of Nouns in the eyes of the general public. Many of your successfully executed Proposals in the past have focused on getting the brand of Nouns out there with general advertising methods of simply “showing the brand”. What we offer is not only brand recognition, but brand integration, on a wide and universal scale.

We don’t just want people to know what a Noggle is. We want people to know about the Nouns mission, the point of a DAO, and to get people who have never heard of Crypto or NFT’s (even people who actively dislike them) to see the Web3 world in a positive light-by having them actively participate in a system designed around a event that we know they want to watch.

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The 3 Step Plan

Our idea is simple: get viewers to come for the Dota, and stay for the Nouns.

1. ENTERTAIN

Creating a custom, interesting Dota Tournament structure with a dual purpose of getting as many viewers as possible to watch due to it’s innovative nature, world class teams, and Dota’s best Talent while also subtly introducing them to a DAO structure in a positive way.

2. EDUCATE

Once they come for the world-class Dota, educate them about Nouns with direct, custom created content which Nouns can use forever (Nouns explainers, DAO explainers, Web3 explainers, and even mini-docs about past successful proposals and interviews) which we will play in-between the games to show that Nouns are one of the good guys, and that this system is something they can be a part of

3. INTEGRATE

By possibly using a POAP system, but focusing on a “Mini Dota DAO” designed around people who have no idea what Web3 is or don’t even have crypto wallets, we aim to make the “scary world of crypto” something that viewers actively participate in-both rewardin g and fun as they collect Dota 2 themed POAPs during the event. By utilizing in-game systems, viewers can even trade these POAPs for digital cosmetics in Dota 2, giving them real value to the average viewer.

The Event

The Nounsvitational will be a world class five day Dota 2 Tournament featuring ten of the top teams worldwide with the best broadcast talent in the Dota scene held from February 14th to February 18th. This will be a Tier 1 Dota 2 event, and the first LAN in DotA since the International World Championships in October. This will be the long awaited return of Weplay to the Dota 2 scene (voted best Tournament Organizer in the scene, even surpassing Valve, the game’s creator itself), and the first non-traditional Custom Game Mode LAN in several years. Suffice it to say, this event is going to be EXTREMELY hype for the average Dota viewer.

Using our custom map makers, we will transform the Dota 2 in-game map to be a Nounish playground, full of memes, references, and general Nouns branding so that millions of viewers will see Nouns during the games themselves. Between the games, we will utilize our content creation skills to produce and air custom Nouns video content, which will educate the viewers on Noun’s culture, structure, mission, and past projects.

Held in the Weplay Studio in Los Angeles, we will bring the best teams around the world to play, and invite as many Nouners and Nounsfolk as we can to be part of the audience, for a once in a lifetime exclusive and intimate experience.

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Integrating the General Public to Web3

The event itself will get people’s attention: they will watch for the unique structure and for the world class competition. But our true goal will be to get the viewers to understand and integrate into the Nouns culture while they watch a fantastic event.

Our plan for this is also 3 fold.

1. Traditional Pre-Event marketing of Giveaways, pushing people to join the Nouns Esports Discord, follow the Nouns Social media, and even give away tickets to attend the event live. Combined with the content we create at the event, we will ensure that people WANT to watch the content we provide, so they can understand the “scary world of crypto”
2. Contacting the best artists and creators in Dota to make custom Dota 2 POAP art, which we will give away to viewers who watch the event. This will not only drive up viewership, but with a integrated system where viewers can trade POAPs for in game cosmetic items, chances to win prizes, and other benefits, we will not only subtly introduce the average viewer to the world of NFTs, we will ensure that they have fun doing it and can trade them for real value.
3. Creating a "Mini Dota DAO’’ prior to the event, which will not only advertise the event during it’s duration on Reddit and other platforms, but show the general viewers that not all NFT and Web3 projects are “bad guys” and that the Nouns protocol is something that is actually cool, using a real tangible example that makes the Dota 2 community a better place.

We believe that by letting the viewers not just watch the Event, but actively participate in the event with POAP collecting, exchanging, and voting for how to “better the world of Dota” with a Nounish DAO system will achieve the greater purpose of the event. Come for the Dota, Stay for the Nouns.

How does this Proposal Benefit Nouns?

• All video content created for the event (the explanatory videos, documentary like series, ect) and the content from The Nounsvitational itself will be usable by the Nouns community as both “proof of concepts” and general media Nouns will be able to use forever. This media, especially explainer videos on what Nouns, Web3, DAOs, have great value for future proposal endeavors.
• Fantastic way to showcase current and past Nouns projects to first time viewers in a captive audience. Can use already created media from other successful Proposals and expand on them with interviews from the people that made them happen
• HUGE viewership and outreach to a variety of new, interested viewers in the world of Esports (a community that has a lot of crossover with Web3 already) in a positive, productive way in a scene that views other projects very negatively
• Cements the Nouns brand in a very valuable space with tangible, easy to gather data showcasing sign ups, viewers, and active participants for future project proposals
• Active (and trackable) onboarding of the general public to Web3 ideas and systems in a fun and dynamic way where they feel rewarded and positive about their experience, which is one of Noun’s core goals
• Growing Nouns communities by incentivising viewers to join for access to prizes, events, and other incentives along with getting them onboard with the general Nouns ecosystem
• Come to LA! Nouns holders as well as Nouns community members can come and be part of the audience for the event, meet the players and the Talent, and have the experience of a lifetime! Great reward for your already amazing community members!

Ask and Budget Breakdown

Total Budget: 799 ETH (at $1200) $958,800

Categorized Breakdown:

Prizepool - 166 ETH $200,000
Flights, Accommodation, Food for Teams: 171 ETH $205,200
Change Dota Challenge Seeding - 10 ETH $12,000
Customization of Dota 2 Map, In-Game integrations - 40 ETH $48,000
Talent Fees - 55 ETH $66,000
POAP Integrations - 7 ETH $8400
VIP Experience for winning Nouners 10 ETH $12,000
Complete Event Fulfillment (Production, Graphics Design, Stage, Venue, Content, Staffing, Security): 340 ETH $408000

Event Timeline

Media Day: Feb 13
Group Stage: Feb 14-Feb 15
Playoffs: Feb 16-Feb 18

About Us

We are Kyle and Slacks, two prominent Dota 2 talent who also work at Weplay. SirActionSlacks has worked directly with Valve, the creators of Steam and Dota 2 in both Business Development and as an associate producer of The International, the Emmy award winning 42 million dollar Dota 2 event since 2017. He has also created the only “Alternate Game Mode” events in Dota 2 history, including Midas Mode 1 and 2, Elimination Mode, The Captain’s Draft Minor, and many others. While not making Dota 2 events, Slacks enjoys playing Dota 2 pubs and hosting/casting at events as Talent.

Kyle is also a Dota 2 Talent and former successful professional player who has been working to grow the world of Esports at Weplay behind the scenes on dynamic and groundbreaking productions such as the wildly successful Omega League and Dota 2 Animajor, a official Valve major. Kyle’s brother was recently on the Nouns Esports team, and now ironically is on Slack’s Dota 2 esports team.

As for Weplay, It’s difficult to describe a company that prides itself on spectacle in a written format, so check out some of our content!

Augmented Reality Showreel
2021 General Event Showreel

Thank you!

As we said, we are big fans of Nouns and everything you are trying to do in the space. We truly believe that this event will not only be incredible for Nouns, but also be a fantastic and unforgettable experience for the people in the Nouns community that join us live, virtually, and the Dota 2 community at large. We hope you will consider our proposal and would love to have any comments, feedback, and suggestions. We want to build this event for you, but also build it WITH you, to make sure we make it as NOUNISH AS POSSIBLE!

Thank you

Slacks and Kyle
Weplay Esports

ADDITIONAL INFO

Still looking for some more, condensed information? Then please continue reading!

On Dota 2

Currently, Dota 2 is the 2nd most played game on Steam, the biggest gaming platform in the world. It reaches a global audience with millions of active players each day, and even more viewers on it’s Esports events.

Currently, Dota 2 is experiencing a resurgence of the most viewers and players since 2013!

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While most Triple A games and Esports require multi-million dollar fee to enter into the sphere with licensing fees and IP protection, Valve allows anyone to do anything with their games, giving full mod tools to players. This allows us to create a very Nounish event for a game with one of the highest viewership numbers in all of Esports. This event would only be possible in Dota, and Dota is our specialty here at WePlay.

In terms of reach and scale of viewers, the numbers are hard to come by as China and Russia have viewership data that is not easily accessible, but viewership of top events (such as The International and the Weplay Animajor) can reach into the millions from the English audience alone.

For a full breakdown of the Viewership of Weplay’s last event, please check out this link

On the “Mini Dota DAO”

We know the mission of Nouns is to gather together and pool resources to make the world a better place. But, the concept of a DAO and the betterment of society that can be caused their-in is something completely foreign to most people. To help the viewers understand (and subtly advertise the event) we propose holding a Mini Dota DAO, a system that is modeled after Nouns itself!

The process is simple. At the start of the event, we announce that we will take a percentage of the prize pool and allocate that money to “make Dota 2 better”. Then, we will start a Reddit thread (Dota 2’s primary community hub) where people are able to offer suggested Proposals for how to spend that money to make Dota better. During the duration of the tourney we will actively check in on this thread, promote it, and encourage people to add to the charitable donation if they wish for some in-game perks like having messages appear during the game on the in-game map. At the end of the event, we will have a vote and choose which idea the community suggested to allocate funds to and announce the winner.

The point of this is for the community to be HEAVILY INVESTED in the tournament and the suggestions on their Mini DAO, but more importantly by the end of this promotion they will VERY CLEARLY understand the Nouns structure and mission, without being simply told how it works.

Hello! Here to answer any questions or to engage with any feedback! Thank you so much for reading!

Awesome to see this from conceptualization to discourse and eventually on-chain and on-stage. This proposal is one of the largest for Nouns yet. The content, proliferation, and engagement coming will be felt for years.

LFG! ⌐◨-◨

thanks a ton! It’s a big boy but we firmly believe that the benefits will be THICC as well!

A compelling presentation. As an esports events company owner myself, I definitely appreciate the thoughtfulness in this proposal. Definitely one to be considered, even though it’s the biggest Nouns has ever done. Massive potential.

Doesn’t get more endemic than Slacks with Dota. This prop would bring Nouns front & Center to over a hundred thousand Dota fans as well as a very capable operator.

Esports has a lot of crossover with Web3 so if Nouns can provide a good web3 enabled experience to web2 esport fans in a positive, productive way it would help change the negative connotations that surround crypto and web3. This prop is ambitious and I’m confident Weplay would do a great job. I attended their Animajor in Ukraine and the set was unreal. Weplay could also become a long-term partner who is utilized by Nouns to support other digital entertainment experiences besides Dota.

Hey Slacks,

Can you share any details on the DAO infrastructure you are planning on using? What smart contract you are planning on implementing? I reached out on Reddit (DM) as well if you prefer to respond in a less public forum.

Happy holidays if that’s your kind of thing.

the current plan is to do a very simplified version of a DAO so that the community can understand what they do and how it works. The idea at the moment is a simple Reddit thread where people can post their ideas on how to make the community a better place and spend that sequestered prize pool money. Simply posting a suggestion, seeing if it gets the upvotes and support, and then whoever has the most becomes the winner.

as for a system to ensure that there is no vote manipulation or bad actors, we were planning on researching the best way to go about a fair and balanced way for people to vote after the proposal is passed. We want to make this as easy to understand and participate as possible

Myself and my team have built out a number of DAOs with varrying degrees of complexity all around the world over the last 2 years. We have also sold out (developed & deployed) a number of collections and supported countless others to various degrees of success.

If you have any questions or need any help, I’d be happy to jump on a call to introduce myself and see if I can help.

Yes, Dota 2 is a world-class game. Being a supporter of such an event is a big and responsible job. What other than investment will be required from the community? It just seems to me that this integration now looks like investing in a Dota 2 tournament. Such events are attracted by the game, and sponsors, as a rule, receive an insignificant part of the public attention.

Best of luck with this Slacks, dodgy betting companies are a plague on esports but as you know there aren’t many other companies out there willing to stump up the money to sponsor a tournament.

How will you and the team go about trying to control the narrative around this tournament given the negative reaction you have already faced from the DOTA community on reddit? I have followed DOTA for a long time, even made it to TI7 and have observed that once the hivemind determines that an element of the tournament is unsatisfactory, that narrative will be the one that is pushed at the expense of all the other good that a tournament may be doing.

The below quote was pretty representative of the reaction from the people in that reddit thread so I’d be interested to hear how you will tackle the “NFTs are a scam” crowd.

“Everyone involved in this should be ashamed of themselves.” - Sticker704

Can you give a couple of examples of where a sponsor of an esports tournament has used that sponsorship to promote their brand/product?

How much they paid. How successful it was etc.

Traditionally, I would agree with you in the case of large scale esports events. When a major Esports organizer puts on a event, the sponsors are typically relegated to some sort of “name drop” status, which only goal is for the viewer to see their name and forget about them (The MONSTER ENERGY REPLAY!).

I have always been against this type of advertising, as I feel it’s inherently worthless. This tournament exists not just name drop Nouns, but it’s entire identity revolves around changing the prerogative and negative association between projects like Nouns and bad actors in the space. The tournament structure, the segments in-between games, and the viewer prize system (along with the Mini DAO) all serve the purpose to showcase the positive aspects of Nouns and to ensure that the conversation can at least begin whereas most will simply ignore anything in the Web3 space.

As for the Nouns community, they just gotta show up (both live and in person as audience members in LA!) to show people that Nouners are normal cool folks. Our job is to get people to watch with the best Esports teams in the world, and to implement systems that help viewers understand what Nouns is trying to do. Your job: BE NOUNISH! Have fun!

I think the thread on Reddit was a perfect example as to WHY something like this needs to happen for the Nouns community. At first, it was simply visceral rage as the project was associated with Web3 and NTF projects. However, as people began to dig deeper (and uncover what you guys do at Nouns-granted they dug deeper to try and find ammo to flame haha) the community in the thread itself determined that Nouns is not a typical protocol in the space.

This is basically the goal of the entire tournament. People WILL come for the Dota, even if their kneejerk reaction is “screw all Web3 things im just gonna watch for the games”, but…come for the games, stay for the Nouns.

How do I plan on changing their minds about Nouns? By telling them the truth. There is a reason I want to work with Nouns over any other NFT or Web3 company: because I actually think that what you guys are doing is not evil. I was one of these people before I did my research on Nouns as well, to which my reaction was: ok these guys don’t seem like scammers or bastards. I’m happy to show your world to people, because you are the good guys in a space of a lot of bad ones. So yeah, we are expecting people to react in a negative way. But Nouns is about doing good in a negative world, so all I think I need to do is effectively let people see what you’re all about, and they will see what I saw.

While I have hosted and worked as talent at a LOT of sponsored Esports Tournaments (one every 2 months for about 8 years?) it’s hard for me to tell you with exact numbers the cost spend and deliverables major events have had. With companies like Mercedes sponsoring ALL events a company puts on in the year, to one time sponsors for one time events, these numbers (both their spend and the successful deliverables) are typically kept behind closed doors between the organizer’s sales department and the company in question. From multi-millions to $10,000 between the scale and outreach of the event, the space is truly wild.

What I CAN tell you are the things that I, personally have run (prior to joining WePlay) in the space as a solo 3rd party tournament organizer. A good example would be my solo tourney Midas Mode, with promotions with the Kennedy Space Center, where NASA gave us a chunk of their marketing budget (about 50k per event) along with Betway, who provided about 300,000$ for prize pool and title sponsorship. After the event, feedback was extremely positive. Both had great viewership numbers and sign-ups, and both chose to do it again for Midas Mode 2.

What sets us apart from the other actors in the Esports space is that we are not out to get a sponsor then figure out how to squeeze them into the show. For us, we build the show AROUND the sponsors to identify how much valve they can have based on the deliverables we think would be the best for them. For the NOUNSVITATIONAL, Nouns IS the ONLY sponsor, an as such all of our deliverables and entire show is created around maximizing your investment. Once it’s passed, we can make sure our ideas on what Nouns needs and your ideas as a community align, then masterfully execute.

Slacks,

Guessing you will be operating within the NFT Space MO?

So,

1. Wen Twitter spaces AMA?
2. Wen public sale (asking because you said crowd funded in the video)?
3. Assuming there is a public sale, wen/how “allow list” aka white list?
4. Have you considered token gated, exclusive events at the tournament, connected to either “rarity traits” associated with the NFTs, or POAPs?
5. Is there a discord link I’m overlooking?

Exited to see where this goes my good man.

I would find it hard to vote yes on something like this without something concrete to compare to. Numbers.

Would be different if this was in a ‘new’ area where direct comparables were not possible….but this is not one of those areas. We are voting based on pure guess work here.

Considering the size of the potential ask here and the type of event it would be, it would need to be fairly convincing how this would benefit nouns which, for me, it isn’t.

It’s pretty easy for me to throw random impressive numbers at you, but personally I don’t think this is a honest way of portraying what I think we could accomplish for Nouns with this event. Telling you that a past client I have worked with spent 50k to get 80,000 new users to sign up on their website using Esports advertising sounds nice, but that campaign has wildly different deliverables, goals and marketing; hardly comparable to what we are trying to do for Nouns. If we were in a private discussion with NDAs signed, I would also be happy to provide you with direct information about our past client’s spends and their success rates-but with the open forum nature of Nouns, this is pretty hard for us to do without breaking the trust of the people we worked with in the past; unfortunately most corporations don’t operate in as open a way as Nouns does. Suffice it to say, trying to impress you by throwing around million dollar advertising budgets and multi-million view counts or website purchases from the past seems disingenuous, because our goal isn’t to just let people see the Nouns name. It’s to change their opinions.

Past 3rd party viewership statistics of our events are public, so if you are looking to see the reach we have that’s open and easy to see!! But the spends by those sponsors in the past for those events had much different goals than we do for the Nounsvitiational. They wanted traditional advertisement. We want to fulfill specific goals.

The primary goal with this event, the best thing we can do for Nouns (in my opinion) is to start a discourse with as many people as possible about what Nouns is and help them change their minds about the Web3 community and subsequently Nouns as a whole. Start a conversation with as many viewers as possible, and encourage them to participate in the fun. The fact that this Discourse Thread is one of the most viewed threads of all time on the website already, without the event even taking place yet, should be a prime indicator that our goal of getting people’s eyes on Nouns and getting the conversation started is going to work.

While there have been many sponsors in Esports before, I would say that I have never heard of a event like the one we are proposing (where the entire event is built specifically themed around 1, universal sponsor) so I would say that we are in some pretty uncharted territory here. What I CAN offer you are Numbers you are able to have forever at Nouns after this event. With our engagement ideas (the POAP integrations, the discord and socials push, general viewership statistics and website re-direct links, and Mini Dota DAO participation) you will be able to have a full baseline of what kind of reach a event such as this can have, and hopefully have a standard of which you can use for subsequent events to live up too.

This is not a traditional advertising venture, where we just throw up the Nouns name or some Noggles on a billboard and call it a day. I’m sure in past passed proposals, where you did do such advertising it would also be difficult to put into hard numbers exactly how many people “changed their minds” about Web3 and onboarded to Nouns communities because of it. What we are offering with this event is the means to actually track this in real time, with systems in place encouraging people to participate and provide those numbers to you. Viewership statistics, tracking link clicks, mesuring new users to socials and providing stats on all those that participate in the POAP and Mini DAO integration. This is the benefit of holding a online event, as everything can be tracked and quantified in a valuable way.

Should the proposal pass, we would love to know the exact deliverables you, our client, would like to see, and formulate the best methods for getting those deliverables done. Do you want people to understand what Nouns is and change their negative stigma towards Web3? Do you want people to buy Nouns? Do you want people to spread the meme? Let us know, and we will get you as many Numbers as possible.

I appreciate your replay and apologies if this response was too long, but I just wanted to make sure I covered all the bases to give you our reasoning. Feel free to reach out again and appreciate your honesty!

Being interested in gaming + crypto can be a tough gig sometimes due to the knee jerk reactions from a very vocal minority, I hope you get a chance to try change some minds.

While it is far less of a barrier than the anti-crypto gaming crowd, you should take a look at how Gnars (a Nounish sub DAO) is spreading the word in extreme sports. Extreme sports and skateboarding can have a high barrier of entry for organisations and businesses that aren’t native to the scene and a low tolerance for bullshit so you might be able to get some inspiration and even some content to show to the gaming crowd of what good is being done around the world via Nouns.

https://twitter.com/gnars_dao

(a video showing what they have achieved so far)

P.S. I appreciate the fun you’ve added to the DOTA community over the years, fails of the week was always a staple with my friends, I can’t see a dairy cow now without thinking about Licky and it is impossible to go fishing without having “many many fish, many many fish” come to mind.

E-sports has a great community and a big fanbase, however I am worried about the “Educate” part on the prop if OP doesn’t even have a crypto wallet.

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a fine concern, but I can assure you that this project is being worked on by a team of hundreds of people, many of which are very active in the crypto world! I’m not some Boomer either, with my lifetime online as a person working in videogames I know very well about the space.

Suffice it to say, our goal is to appeal to as large of a mass as possible. If viewers know about a DAO, we can teach them about yours. If they only know about Crypto, we can teach them about DAOs. If they know nothing about anything in the space, we can start from scratch. The specific deliverables I’m looking to do need to appeal in a rage from the clueless to the well informed, since we are aiming to have such a massive viewership. I think starting as clueless and moving up to informed myself sets a pretty good baseline of creatively for me to re-enact that journey for our viewers as they watch and learn.

As far as I can tell, people in this community that don’t have Nouns are still able to make pretty big changes and impact. I hope to do the same for you guys as someone who believes in your mission!

Lastly, don’t forget that EVERYTHING premiered at this tourney when it comes to pre made education content will be made closely with your community. We will shoot over any content we plan to air to ensure the Nounishness is kept where you guys want it, and field suggestions over on the Discord for what could be good content to show off. We want to make this event with you guys, as well as for you. After-all, who knows more about Nouns then the Nouners?

I thought this was a cool opportunity for Nouns and then I read Slacks comments here: https://www.reddit.com/r/DotA2/comments/zstakw/comment/j1ao1jx/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

I don’t know Slacks, and I don’t play Dota, so is this a ‘bring nouns to dota’ or ‘bring dota to nouns’ scenario. Both is a win I guess and then I saw all the negativity around nfts in the dota community. As I understand the main aim of the prop is to educate dota about nouns and it really seems like the majority of people in the reddit thread hate anything nfts, so why would they change their minds? Slacks says they come for the dota and stay for the nouns. Imo this will be a massive waste of nouns treasury if you’re trying to draw blood from a rock. And you can hear Slacks is a salesman hustling for the money and really doesn’t come across as he’s genuinely into pushing nouns if it wasn’t for the money opportunity here. Let’s be honest here guys, he wouldn’t be doing this for the love of nouns. This is a cash grab, unfortunately…

Hey there!

Appreciate you checking things out! Lemme address some of your concerns.

On your first point, that “it really seems like the majority of people in the reddit thread hate anything nfts, so why would they change their minds?” I would like to say that I think this is not just a Dota community feeling, but a general vocal minority in all of gaming feeling. More importantly this is the entire point of the tourney. The kneejerk reaction of viewers is one of both fear and hate when anything Web3 is mentioned, and we want to use this platform as a way to educate and integrate people about the positives of Nouns and other communities doing good in the space. This reaction isnt suprising, its the entire point. I would like you to note the top comment in-fact; where the user first is angry about Web3 intigration, then researches Nouns and says “oh they do this, thats not that bad…”. This is our general goal, get people to learn about your awsome community and the good you to do futher your community and space as a whole. Without this event, these people would never get this conversation started.

To “Imo this will be a massive waste of nouns treasury if you’re trying to draw blood from a rock.” I would counter with asking what you gain from promoting Nouns to people that already know about Nouns? This event will reach not only the small vocal minorty who hate NFTs, but reach massive amounts of like-minded Web3 communities as evidence of a large scale positive success. I don’t think Nouns can grow and be as massive as it should be if your goal is only to cater to people that already know and like Nouns-what do you have to gain in doing this? The only way to grow on a large scale is by introducing people to your community in a way that even people that want to destroy you cant argue with: and thats our goal here. The fact that people had no idea what Nouns was, came to tear you down, and then changed their minds WITHOUT THE EVENT EVEN HAPPENING YET is proof enough that this event will work on a large scale.

“you can hear Slacks is a salesman hustling for the money and really doesn’t come across as he’s genuinely into pushing nouns if it wasn’t for the money opportunity here. Let’s be honest here guys, he wouldn’t be doing this for the love of nouns. This is a cash grab, unfortunately…”

Emotions aside, I would like to logically point out why this doesn’t make a lot of sense. As you yourself said, if the entire community hates NFTs, why would I put myself and my brand in the center of their vitrol if I didn’t want to fight for your community? Why take a bullet with 8 years of stored up community good will for “the money” when its quite easy for me (and much more profitable) to just get a betting company sponsor who could pay x2 the amount Im requesting from Nouns? As stated in the proposal, we are running this event at Weplay for the cost of operations: we arnt making a profit here. The “profit” is working with people that we think are out there doing good in the world and are proud to be associated with.

Look, if I wanted money I could get a lot more money from traditional sponsors in the scene, and my job would be a lot easier to boot. I’ve done that successfully many times in the past. But I am here because I belive in Nouns and Im happy to showcase and spread the Nouns message. I would not put myself in a position to be the front facing rep of this event (and subsequently get relentlessly flamed by haters) If i didnt care. I wouldn’t be talking to and educating people about Nouns on my personal discord communities and twitter DMs and Nouns twitter spaces if I didnt care. I wouldnt be posting positive things about Nouns in this very thread if I just wanted a payday. We arnt even making a payday here. Im putting my ass on the line publically because I believe in you. You guys have not even voted yet and I’m out there making these conversations happen just because there are good things we can do together.

I dont blame you for your perspective: it would be foolish to NOT ask these questions, and shows that you care about your communtiy and how you guys grow. But I hope you understand that I do as well, I just have a very intimate knowledge about how this will be successful in this space and the proper way to communicate to the other side. Quite blunty, the world at large dosnt want to hear about crypto or NFTs from someone that is directly integrated in the community, because from their perspective YOU are the ones looking for the cash grab and doing things to further yourselves at their expense. If this is going to work, if we are going to show the good in Web3 and change the conversation, then you need someone whos genuinely a fan of the great things you guys do with nothing to gain from showing it off. Thats why I am here, running this tourney for the cost of making it. Communication with large scale communities is extreamly strategic if we will make this work, and if you go in there guns blazing preaching about the future of crypto and NFTs and the changing world of tech your going to get ignored or directly verbally attacked. But if we can show the good you guys do, while doing good, we can subtly change the converstation.

Thanks for reading and if you have any follow ups I would love to answer them!

I came here from the Dota Reddit thread and I’ll admit that I had no clue what Nouns is about when I first heard about them sponsoring a Dota team. I am vaguely familiar with the crypto space - I have a wallet for Bitcoin, and I know the basics about coins and NFTs - but I did not know what a DAO even was until I read about it here.

When I first heard about 4 Zoomers being sponsored, I thought that it was the creators of the NFT doing it to promote their project using their own money. I did not know that it was done by an organization that voted to do so using the community treasury. It was also interesting to see that you’ve also established an esports pod to coordinate you activities within the industry as well as looking at what projects have been funded and rejected.

The Reddit thread shows exactly why a project like this is beneficial. The vast majority of people in that thread do not know the difference between an NFT art project and a DAO. So many people associate NFTs with bad actors who treat NFTs as speculative assets that are to be hyped up and dumped onto someone else. They don’t understand that the technology has uses outside of being an indicator for ownership of digital art.

The NOUNSVITATIONAL gives a good opportunity to educate people about the space. First, on what a DAO is and how this project even was funded in the first place. Looking at the thread, you can see that most people thought that this was an announcement of a tournament and not a proposal for one. They don’t know that there is a pool of ETH that is used to fund initiatives like these and that the Nouners vote on what to do with it by using their Nouns. You can even see that some people are worried about WePlay, talent, and players being scammed even though that cannot happen with the proposal paying out the ETH upon approval. Some people even think that everyone is going to be paid with NFTs which further shows the disconnect between what people actually think Nouns is about.

As we saw with the Midas Mode Dota tournament in the past, people are interested in new game modes and they will want to look into how the tournament operates. This will be a great way to get people involved with the concept of a DAO and how its function is different than the standard NFT project they’ve heard about. I think the ‘mini DAO’ is a good way to educate people on how Nouns operates as well as get them invested on their ability to affect the tournament with their votes.

Second, I think it’s important to let people know what Nouns is trying to accomplish with its DAO. I kind of understand that the idea is to fund cool projects, but I don’t know if there is any broader goal than this. By default, most Redditors seem to think that the goal of any NFT initiative is to make easy money by scamming people who don’t know what they’re buying. This event will be a good platform to show that Nouns isn’t that.

WePlay has consistently shown that they are one of the best esports organizers in the industry and there will be many people watching because they love the game and they know the event will be amazing. Thousands of people will be watching and engaging with NFTs in a way that they never have before and, even if you’re worried about the sentiments on Reddit, this is only a small subsection of the audience that will be reached with this audience. Redditors are probably some of the harshest critics of NFTs, but not everyone is so aggressive in their opposition of NTFs. By addressing the misconceptions that you’ve seen on Reddit, it will definitely work towards creating a positive view of Nouns on the internet as a whole as well as bringing awareness to those who those who don’t know about it.

I hope that this proposal gets funded and I’m interested to see what else Nouns does in the future, especially in the esports space. Creating an event of this size will really show people what a DAO is capable of and how people can come together over Web 3.0 and create something great!

I’m sure everyone appreciates the time you guys are spending on justifying things. For the amount you’re asking for, it is expected. Unfortunately new props are going to be scrutinised with the recent debates around ROI and sustainability vs a marketing spend. This event doesn’t seem sustainable and after listening to your spaces it seems that you guys will be asking for funding again down the line?

Cash grabs don’t always have to be synonymous with lining pockets with easy money. From my understanding you guys are facing moral dilemas by working with betting sponsors and from your discord chats it reads that you can get $300,000 for a title sponsorship vs the $958,800 you’re asking for. Would a betting company spend $1 000 000 on a dota tournament, idk but it seems unlikely. So it comes across that you can’t get this amount from betting sponsors even if you’re stating that is the case. I also can’t see how you’re not making money from this to pay yourself, you guys have to be making a fee for your time and effort, which is ok but in my mind that is not at cost. It is rather a reduced fee that you’re earning, right? I also don’t understand the business model, if you get $300,000 from a betting company, then how do you make up the $700,000 to break even at a $1 000 000 and then still make a profit? The community doesn’t understand the model… and not everything imo comes down to marketing, new customers, educational videos, Nouns has enough of these already. There was a prop to spend a significant amount on Mr Beast and one could debate that $1 000 000 would be better spent on that prop vs dota.

The debates around crypto and nft sentiments on a global scale don’t really matter at this point, the entire industry had its high last year and millions of people opened various crypto wallets. I would debate that the only way for people to truly understand nouns is to actively use the nouns playground and understand that Nouns has a massive derivatives community with its own artworks. The average person will never afford a governance noun. Trading POAPS also seems small scale in your context, but I get it. I would think that turning those 2 characters in your prop into a generative 10k release on polygon and giving them away for free would be more of an onboarding experience to remember than POAPs. But that is another entire discussion and exercise. People need to make Nouns in the playground, join SubDAOs, print stickers, make stencils, draw the characters etc etc. That is how the meme is already spreading outside of the internet imo.

You guys are professionals, no one is doubting that. I think it is more of the high customer acquisition cost debate at this point as the event will be awesome.

Thanks for elaborating, its awsome to be able to talk about this stuff openly and get into the hard questions here with someone that takes the time to post em!

I personally am very happy that new props are getting more scrutinised in Nouns to show immediate, sustained value. I don’t believe in traditional marketing anymore-putting a brand infont of eyes with no explanation or onboarding ideas seems to bring little value in my experience. How many actual people saw what you funded? How many were converted? Did this actually DO anything? This is the perk of operating in Esports-everything is online, and thus everything is tracked. I would venture to say that this single event will give more info to Nouns about what can be effective engagament tools with actual usable data than any previously passed proposal in Nouns history (if this is incorrect, please let me know!) While simultaneously completing many other goals. We are VERY deliverable driven…the entire event was designed around non traditional marketing engagements. To be blunt, this event may cost more than a standard marketing venture of putting a Noun on a billboard somewhere, but the value is the evergreen content and data that you have forever to compare all future Nouns operations with for a baseline of quality.

On to your next point, “from my understanding you guys are facing moral dilemas by working with betting sponsors and from your discord chats it reads that you can get $300,000 for a title sponsorship”. First, we have no “moral dilemas” with working for betting companies, they are the primary sponsors in the Dota 2 space. Even the International worked with a betting company this year. We will work with dozens of betting companies in the future. Working with Nouns is not a “we need to do this to survive” situation, its quite the opposite. This is an attempt to work with people we think are cool situation. No one in Dota is going to outcry if we hold a event with a betting company for 3x the prize pool, but then again thats not “exciting” for us either. Working with you guys is, and we think it will be big news in the world of gaming as a whole.

On to your second note, sorry if I was not clear on this, but that 300k was for a personal tournament that I (personally) ran with my small group of friends in the dota sphere called Midas Mode 2. As I stated, this was simply an example of what I could share because this was something that I personally owned and operated. It would be a huge breach of trust for Weplay to share their clients spends and deliverable expectations on a public forum. I can assure you however, that a professional Esports event of The Nounsvitational’s calibur runs for much more than what is in our proposal. I think it would be fair to say most Tournement Operators in the space would charge double our ask and laugh you out of the room should you approach them to do so at our price point with our quality and deliverables. Would it be possible to put 2 guys in a basement and run this for 300k? Sure. Would we pass that proposal much easier? Potentially! Would this be at all effective and worth the investment for Nouns? Not at all. We have our price point and our plan for a reason: this is how it would ACTUALLY WORK. If we were here for a easy cash grab we would propose a event we knew would fail for half the price and offer to run 3 of them over time: but that is not our goal. Our goal is to do the event we know is going to actually work. Our current plan is to run one giant event that will make headlines and blow this out of the water. Im not sure where you had the idea that there would be multiple events and more funding, we simply aim to do our jobs and nail this thing in one go.

On to “Mr. Beast and the cost breakdown section”, hopefully with the info shared above you understand that the funding of a small indie project is much different than a massive event like this. Yes, we are operating off a reduced rate to make this event. We would not run this event at a loss for us, no matter how much we like Nouns as thats just bad business. I assure you however that what we are charging is the lowest you can possibly get in this sphere, and we are treating this bad boy as a investment for both you and us, rather than any short term profit.
As for Mr. Beast, quite bluntly I dont think Mr. Beast cares about Nouns. In-fact, the entire proposal was to try to convince Mr Beast to care about Nouns. In my experience, trying to pay people to allign with you is a great way to lose money for no reason. Mr. Beast and the beasty boys arnt going to stay up all night thinking about how to effectivly get you new members and followers, they dont even care enough to come to you and ask for the proposal. I think there is a good reason why that prop got dumpstered as hard as it did-because this is the exact type of spend that gets little more than advertizing and puts a person that doesn’t believe in your mission at the helm. Litterally all the things you mentioned in your earlier post, a quick buck from someone thats not on your side.

On to “The debates around crypto and nft sentiments on a global scale don’t really matter at this point” I can see where you are coming from, but I think you are viewing this as someone with intimate knowledge about the space and are actively participating in it. 99% of people are not able to see it through your point of view, as you are on the forefront of innovation here. I dont think you guys should just “give up” on changing the narrative, I thought the Nouns goal was about expanding and spreading. Again, our goal is to win this debate with a vocal minority, but more importantly spread Nouns to people already in your space and to those that are not. Crypto did have a good year last year…but then it didnt. Most main stream media cover the massive losses and folks like FTX. I do think there is value to be had in telling people about the good you guys do in this space, if not for first timers just for people that already joined and are looking for people they can get behind.

Finally, “I would debate that the only way for people to truly understand nouns is to actively use the nouns playground and understand that Nouns has a massive derivatives community with its own artworks.” My response here is that if someone is on the Nouns playground, they are already pretty interested in your communtiy. We want to make very simple, watered down versions of cool Web3 experiences so that people who have never experienced a DAO, and never seen any value in a NFT, experience these things in a very low stress high reward scenerio. My goal is not to have people make Nouns for fun in the playground, its to get people to join your community and support you. We both agree that the best way to make this happen is for people to experience it…but they wont know or want to unless they are convinced to come. Thats why they come for the Dota, and stay for the Nouns. That is the goal here.

If “The average person will never afford a governance noun” is true, why do…anything? I was alwaysbunder the impression that Nouns was more than owning a Noun, it was a entire community dedicated to pooling resources, getting together to change the world. I cant tell you how many Nouns this event will sell-but I can tell you that it will be a hell of a lot more than making Nouns marketing for people that have already seen Nouns. At least thats how I see it.

Again, thank you for your feedback. Its really refreshing to have these debates here as I think it shows the passion of your community, and hopefully the passion we have to make this happen. Truly, thank you!

In your spaces you said something like: you don’t want to feel bad about working with betting companies and indirectly telling people to make bets and therefore why you like Nouns as a sponsor. This is where I got the moral dilemma statement from. And you guys mention that if this event is successful you’ll want to work with Nouns again and have Nouner led ideas etc. so I take this as needing a second Nouns investment.

Appreciate all of the feedback. There is a lot of info in this entire thread for everyone to take in, great stuff!

If you read your own Reddit thread it seems like you are contradicting yourself here. We are sponsoring an event for $1m in advance with no guarantee of outcome to a crowd of people who actively despise NFTs to try and convince them to like nouns?

Reddit thread

With mr. Beast you have someone who actually has been involved in nfts. Also the prop only paid out IF the show happened (and it is the most watched thing on the internet)…

The audience for the esports event is far bigger than just Reddit. However, the Reddit thread has an 80% upvote ratio so it seems like the majority are open to the idea of a Nouns sponsored tournament, even if there is some vocal opposition in the comments. Most people don’t know the difference between NFT art and an NFT DAO; this event gives an excellent opportunity to address a large market and convey the ethos of Nouns to them while correcting any misconceptions viewers may have.

The difference between an event like this and a YouTube video is that the goal is to get people to interact with the event in a Nounish way with the Mini DAO. Getting people invested and using Nounish features is far more effective than just explaining or demonstrating the concept.

thanks for the reply! This is correct, typically most people that support something tend to upvote and not comment, while people who have issues take the time to leave a concern. It’s much the same in the online review industry as a Restaurant may have 5 stars but most of the comments are negative. This is pretty easily explained: if you go out to eat and have a great meal, unless you are in a incredible mood most people won’t write a review about how their needs were met to satisfaction. However, if you had a terrible meal, you are much more likely to be motivated enough out of spite to write something negative.

Things like this are much the same. If you think the idea is good enough, a upvote is fine. If you hate NFTs and are motivated to rant, then you will rant away. The goal here is to put on such a positive event and give back so many positive things to the community that even the vocal minority lacks the ammo to negatively rant.

Hey Hindsight, glad to see you here! Thanks for all your great feedback in the Discord.

I meant no offense to the original authors of the Mr. Beast prop, I just consider it a good example of a polar opposite of what we are trying to accomplish here. As you said yourself, Mr. Beast has done NTF related content before; and thus his audience already has seen these “weekly episode brought to you by…” type of shows before, specifically with NFTs. I would never recommend that Nouns does passive advertisement campaign to an audience that is already familiar with your space for this amount of money; as I said I don’t believe that type of advertising is effective. Of course, I mean no offense…if it’s good enough for Redbull I’m sure there are SOME merits to it. I would, however, argue that paying for a multi-leveled onboarding system designed around integrating new people into your space is much more worth the cost.

As to your comment about contradicting myself, I think there is a clear distinction here: In the Mr. Beast proposal, your paying a famous person to passively advertise Nouns to his audience, who see a different sponsor roll in every episode. I don’t think Mr. Beast has any incentive (or desire) to do anything but get your name out there for as little effort as possible and call it a day; and that’s to be expected because that’s what your paying him for.

In this proposal, your paying to actively educate and integrate people into Nouns. This type of event has never been done before, and viewers are not showing up for their metaphorical “Mr. Beast” and ignoring the rest of the content. In this format, it’s not possible to ignore the content as the content is the show. I am coming to you guys (rather than you coming to us) because I’m passionate about making this work and believe it will; you don’t need to pay me to convince me. The fact that I have never done an event with Crypto or NTF organizations should not be viewed as a negative, it’s a very large positive! No one has been worth presenting on a large scale until we found Nouns.

As stated before, most people that hate Web3 are a very vocal minority that actively try to sway mass opinion. Unfortunately, due to bad actors in your space, they have a LOT of ammo to do so. But as you can see in the very reddit thread you linked, once people discover what Nouns does and how they operate, the community can come to very fast conclusions that you are not like other operators in the space. All we are trying to do here is show that there can be good actors in a space with very known bad ones, and the reddit thread itself has shown that WITHOUT THE EVENT EVEN HAPPENING already positive things are happening for your community.

Mr. Beast is not going to go into Reddit threads, Discords, and twitter spaces for you and talk about why he thinks Nouns is a partner he wants to work with. I am, because I do want to work with you, and I know what will be an effective way of communicating with this audience because I am a member of it.

Ah, that makes sense! Yep, those things are true indeed: we would RATHER work with you guys than what’s prevalent in our space, and should you guys want something in the future after this event we would be happy to do so. My goal however is to absolutely slam this event and make it a worldwide success, so I doubt in the future we would be looking to do anything near the same scale as most of the goals here are about exposure to a new community, education, and integration. If we are successful, there would be little point in doing the same type of event as this in the future but there is plenty of room for different projects with different goals and on much different scales!

Again, really appreciate the discourse! Thanks again for spending your time on this!

I wouldn’t compare this effort to Mr. Beast whatsoever. I think Nouns has an opportunity here with Weplay to create a set of deliverables and KPIs that are advantageous to the DAO and doable through the event based on past statistics. Do you think Mr. Beast would accept a list of KPIs? No. He’d dictate terms and leave immediately if we didn’t agree.