Lil Nouns Veto Props 162 & 163

On November 6th 2023, Lil Nouns DAO used the veto on two props; one to escrow 16 Nouns and kick off the fork process, and one to send 16 Nouns directly to the fork should we miss the escrow period.

The decision didn’t come lightly, with two days of deliberation and 24hrs+ on community calls, the community weighed the facts and spoke with the Lil Nounders about potential risks. 

Lil Dot (Lil Nounder) made this announcement in the Lil Nouns Discord: “I have voted to exercise my veto authority in my capacity as lil nounder on the basis that proposals 162 and 163 pose a non trivial risk to lil nouns dao including by enabling persons to unequally withdraw the treasury for personal gain.”

Some History

Historically, we’ve had large voting blocks that have pushed to only acquire Nouns using an autobidder. As a community, we had therefore been obliged to lean into this as our main value prop, with such messaging as; “Come to Lils and we can sponsor you up to Nouns if you get enough support.” We have come to see ourselves as the on-ramp to Nouns for newcomers and for those who can’t afford Noun tokens of their own. 

When Nouns implemented v3 it was a turn-off for many in our community, there was an extreme focus on BV and then the burn mechanic upset even more Lil Nouners. Those same large blocks who had been pushing to buy Nouns suddenly were pushing to fork them; in the minds of some, understandably so.

Prop 162 (to escrow our Nouns and kick off a new fork) was put up by an anon wallet who had only recently purchased the 8 Lil Noun tokens required to do so. Prop 162 was supported by two known community members (~500 votes) and 5 anon wallets (~800 votes). This wallet was later discovered (admitted) to be holding an additional number of Nouns and was heavily relying on Lil Nouns to help them execute the arbitrage opportunity with haste.

  • Yes votes (1330): 2 active community members, 5 anon addresses.
  • No votes (1184): 36 addresses (~25 active community members).

Prop 163 was put up as a backup, (by a known community member and delegate of our resident whale) to join the fork, in case the escrow period was missed and we were now required to JoinFork directly. 

A few attempts have been made to fork our Nouns in the previous two forks, but this attempt had more support from anon wallets and seemed more coordinated than the past attempts.

Why We Vetoed

Conversation started to happen in the DAO, multiple scenarios were being talked about in VC chats pretty much non-stop and the passion of the community was more evident than ever over the past few days. It was established that if these anon wallets actually controlled our vote (they do), or if anyone coordinated and bought enough lils to capture in that time period, then potentially they could collude to not allow Lils to claim our eth from the fork. 

The discourse with the anon proposer went on for +48hrs in the private Discord channel and was honestly making the majority lean towards potential malicious intent. The only unknown still is whether or not we were part of a larger collusion to capture the forked DAO.

What Will End Up Happening

We will likely still be selling our Nouns OTC, or through a marketplace that can provide a secure transaction. The large voters are/will be continuing to push for this sale and as long as it doesn’t happen, it will put Lil Nouns DAO at non-trivial risk as an anon fork-participant. There are currently a number of discussions from the proposers, negotiation between community members, and multiple props onchain to sell our Nouns. 

It seems like the majority of our known community members don’t want to fork our Nouns, some community members want to sell some (talks of ½ etc.), and a  few community members are pushing to fork all and would like to see us funding our own builders and buying back Nouns if/when it makes sense. Intentions of the large anon wallets voting alongside these members is unknown.

The Future of Lil Nouns

Lil Nouns community is stronger than ever — We have two community calls each week (typically with 20+ attendees) and are working on some great props as a community. Our value prop of graduating builders up to Nouns has been successful — and we will continue to do as we have been doing with or without Nouns in our treasury. 

The recently formed Lil Nouncil (a small body of builders and true fans) are accepting delegations of Lils. Many of our community members are starting to vote-with-reason with zero-weight and provide feedback on Nouns props. I have faith that no matter what our holdings are in Nouns, we’ll continue to participate as a group in Nouns DAO. 

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