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Previous Lil Nouns

You may also want to mint one of 3 Lil Nouns generated in previous blocks.

This video was commissioned in Prop 89

WTF?

Lil Nouns are just like Nouns, but Lil!

An expansion DAO based on Nouns DAO, Lil Nouns DAO works to create a new layer within the Nouns ecosystem; Nouns as kids. By expanding the ecosystem, Lil Nouns DAO aims at exposing more people to Nouns.

Learn more below, or start creating Lil Nouns off-chain using the Playground.

  • Lil Nouns artwork is in the public domain.
  • One Lil Noun is born and trustlessly auctioned every 15 minutes, forever.
  • 100% of Lil Noun auction proceeds are trustlessly sent to the Lil Nouns treasury.
  • Settlement of one auction kicks off the next.
  • All Lil Nouns are members of Lil Nouns DAO.
  • Lil Nouns DAO is backed by Nouns via Small Grants.
  • Lil Nouns DAO uses Nouns DAO’s fork of  Compound Governance.
  • One Lil Noun is equal to one vote.
  • The treasury is controlled exclusively by Lil Nouns via governance.
  • Artwork is generative and stored directly on-chain (not IPFS).
  • No explicit rules exist for attribute scarcity; all Lil Nouns are equally rare.
  • Lil Nounders receive rewards in the form of Lil Nouns (10% of supply for first 5 years).
  • Nouns DAO receives rewards in the form of Lil Nouns (10% of supply for first 5 years).

The Lil Nouns Auction Contract will act as a self-sufficient Lil Noun generation and distribution mechanism, auctioning one Lil Noun every 15 minutes, forever. 100% of auction proceeds (ETH) are automatically deposited in the Lil Nouns DAO treasury, where they are governed by Lil Noun owners.

Each time an auction is settled, the settlement transaction will also cause a new Lil Noun to be minted and a new 15 minute auction to begin.

While settlement is most heavily incentivized for the winning bidder, it can be triggered by anyone, allowing the system to trustlessly auction Lil Nouns as long as Ethereum is operational and there are interested bidders.

Bids

Once an auction starts, everyone has 15 minutes to bid. Anyone can bid an amount at/above 0.15 eth. The Amount bid is returned to bidder if they lose the auction (minus gas spent on bid transaction).

Bids at the very last minute increase the auction time by 1 and a half minutes. Sometimes, multiple bids are sent at the same time. This may result in bids coming in and winning an auction at the very last minute/seconds (irrespective of time increase).

Bid Refunds

Unsuccessful bids are refunded in full. The timing of refunds may be offset by 1 bidder. This means that a refund is processed for an unsuccessful bid, when a higher bid is submitted.

Settlement

When an auction ends, a gas-only transaction is required to mint the current Lil Noun to the winners wallet and start the next auction. Anyone can settle an auction. As gas price fluctuates, the cost of settlement also fluctuates.

Settlement gas price of every 9th Lil Noun is higher. This is due to the transaction also triggering 2 free Lil Noun mints: The Lil Nounders mint and The Nouns DAO mint.

Settling Auctions through Lil Block Party

Lil Nouns currently utilises a community built app called Lil Block Party to settle its auctions.

Lil Block Party gives prospective bidders the opportunity to select which Lil Noun they'd like to see auctioned next. It does this by monitoring Lil Noun seed changes per new ethereum block created. We recommend prospective bidders pick their favourite Lil Nouns pre-settlement via Lil Block Party.

Alternatively, auction winners that solely care to mint the current Lil Noun to their wallet, can settle manually.

Lil Nouns DAO utilizes Nouns DAO's fork of Compound Governance and is the main governing body of the Lil Nouns ecosystem. The Lil Nouns DAO treasury receives 100% of ETH proceeds from daily Lil Noun auctions. Each Lil Noun is an irrevocable member of Lil Nouns DAO and entitled to one vote in all governance matters. Lil Noun votes are non-transferable (if you sell your Lil Noun the vote goes with it) but delegatable, which means you can assign your vote to someone else as long as you own your Lil Noun.

The proposal veto right was initially envisioned as a temporary solution to the problem of ‘51% attacks’ on the Nouns DAO treasury and was copied over during the creation of Lil Nouns DAO. While Nounders initially believed that a healthy distribution of Nouns would be sufficient protection for the DAO, a more complete understanding of the incentives and risks has led to general consensus that a more robust solution should be implemented before the right is removed. Naturally, so is the case in Lil Nouns DAO.

The lil nounders will veto proposals that introduce non-trivial risks to Lil Nouns DAO, including (but not necessarily limited to) proposals that:

  • unequally withdraw the treasury for personal gain
  • bribe voters to facilitate withdraws of the treasury for personal gain
  • attempt to alter auction cadence for the purpose of maintaining or acquiring a voting majority
  • make upgrades to critical smart contracts without undergoing an audit

There are unfortunately no algorithmic solutions for making these determinations in advance (if there were, the veto would not be required), and proposals must be considered on a case by case basis.

Lil Nouns are generated randomly based Ethereum block hashes. There are no 'if' statements or other rules governing Lil Noun trait scarcity, which makes all Lil Nouns equally rare. As of this writing, Lil Nouns are made up of:

  • backgrounds (2)
  • bodies (30)
  • accessories (140)
  • heads (242)
  • glasses (23)
You can experiment with off-chain Lil Noun generation at the Playground.

Lil Nouns are stored directly on Ethereum and do not utilize pointers to other networks such as IPFS. This is possible because Lil Noun parts are compressed and stored on-chain using a custom run-length encoding (RLE), which is a form of lossless compression.

The compressed parts are efficiently converted into a single base64 encoded SVG image on-chain. To accomplish this, each part is decoded into an intermediate format before being converted into a series of SVG rects using batched, on-chain string concatenation. Once the entire SVG has been generated, it is base64 encoded.

The Lil Noun Seeder contract is used to determine Lil Noun traits during the minting process. The seeder contract can be replaced to allow for future trait generation algorithm upgrades. Additionally, it can be locked by the Lil Nouns DAO to prevent any future updates. Currently, Lil Noun traits are determined using pseudo-random number generation:

keccak256(abi.encodePacked(blockhash(block.number - 1), nounId))

Trait generation is not truly random. Traits can be predicted when minting a Lil Noun on the pending block.

'Lil Nounders' are the group of builders that initiated Lil Nouns. Here are the Lil Nounders:

Because 100% of Lil Noun auction proceeds are sent to Lil Nouns DAO, Lil Nounders have chosen to compensate themselves with Lil Nouns. Every 10th Lil Noun for the first 5 years of the project (Lil Noun ids #0, #10, #20, #30 and so on) will be automatically sent to the Lil Nounder's multisig to be vested and shared among the founding members of the project.

Lil Nounder distributions don't interfere with the cadence of 15 minute auctions. Lil Nouns are sent directly to the Lil Nounder's Multisig, and auctions continue on schedule with the next available Lil Noun ID.

For being selfless stewards of cc0, Lil Nounders have chosen to compensate the Nouns DAO with Lil Nouns. Every 11th Lil Noun for the first 5 years of the project (Lil Noun ids #1, #11, #21, #31 and so on) will be automatically sent to the Nouns DAO to be vested and shared among members of the project.

Nouns DAO distributions don't interfere with the cadence of 15 minute auctions. Lil Nouns are sent directly to the Nouns DAO Treasury, and auctions continue on schedule with the next available Lil Noun ID.

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