TLDR: Aggregating and organizing data from applications, and making it open source and composable. The aggregated data will be published in a decentralized database and accessible through a GraphQL API.

Goal: Our goal is to make it easier for people to use and control their data in the Nouniverse. We'll use Ceramic and decentralized identifiers (DIDs) to achieve this, allowing data to flow more easily between different applications in the network. This will help solve issues with scattered/fragmented data and make it more easily available to everyone. We'll also establish a universal identity system to make it easier for different applications to share the same user account. Ultimately, we're working to create a reliable and efficient decentralized network that provides a better experience for users.

• What is the platform's function? The platform can store and manage large amounts of data for decentralized protocols, allowing developers to easily create new applications that build upon existing data and contribute to the data graph.

• What are the key benefits of the platform? The platform enables innovative applications and user experiences, reduces data and application fragmentation, increases data sovereignty, facilitates integration and development, and improves interoperability and composability among participating applications.

• What problems are being addressed? Universal identity, data and application fragmentation, data availability, and data composability.

• Why can’t Ethereum be used to store the data? “Ethereum itself can be used as a decentralized storage system, and it is when it comes to code storage in all the smart contracts. However, when it comes to large amounts of data, that isn't what Ethereum was designed for. The chain is steadily growing, but at the time of writing, the Ethereum chain is around 500GB - 1TB (depending on the client), and every node on the network needs to be able to store all of the data. If the chain were to expand to large amounts of data (say 5TBs) it wouldn't be feasible for all nodes to continue to run. Also, the cost of deploying this much data to Mainnet would be prohibitively expensive due to gas fees.” - Ethereum.org

• Why is this platform preferable to IPFS, or similar solutions currently available in the market? We'll be using ComposeDB, which leverages Ceramic, a mutable layer for IPFS with anchoring on Ethereum for finality. By using Ceramic, the Nounish platform is able to provide faster data retrieval and processing, as well as advanced data management tools such as decentralized identifiers (DIDs) that enable greater control and ownership over data.

• Who are the team members? Baba: 1 of 5 Nouns DAO Governance Prop House Mandate Winners, Datapod Co-Lead for Lil Nouns, Lil Nouns grants committee multi-sig signer. Al409: 2x Lil Noun DAO resident, and Agora Nouner Delegate Winner. Ripe, Volky: Prop House Winners and BuilderDAO contributors. Brunes, Champion Score: Ex-Stripe, Ex-Google, and Nouns Governance Prop House Mandate Winners.

Problem Statement

As the DAO grows, people must navigate an environment that is increasingly fragmented. The data produced by many small and large applications are scattered, siloed and inconsistent in format and structure, making it difficult for users to access and utilize. This fragmentation lowers the accessibility, usability, and value of the data, and limits the potential insights and innovations that can be gained from it.

In addition, only a small subset of all data in the Nouniverse is stored on-chain, which can create challenges for developers and users who need to access and use this data. In a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO), data is a critical asset that drives decision-making, governance, and value creation. Therefore, it is important for a DAO to have a decentralized data network like Ceramic that provides users with greater control and ownership of their data, and enables interoperability and composability of data across different applications, including off-chain data.

Vision: In a future wherein permissionless data collaboration achieves critical mass within the DAO, users would have unprecedented control and ownership over their data, with the ability to easily share and reuse it across different participating applications. The decentralized nature of Ceramic would ensure that data is stored securely and efficiently, without the risk of censorship or centralization. The interoperability and composability enabled by Ceramic would lead to a proliferation of innovative and user-centric applications, breaking down the barriers that currently exist between different platforms and ecosystems. The benefits of this future would extend beyond just the technical members of the DAO, as all users would be able to take advantage of the seamless and intuitive interfaces enabled by the data network. The adoption of Ceramic would be a major step towards a more open and equitable internet, where data is treated as a commons to be shared and nurtured, rather than a commodity to be monetized and controlled.

Objectives

• To create a decentralized data network and database that can make it easier for people to access, understand and use data in the Nouniverse.
• To give people more control and ownership over their data through the use of decentralized identifiers (DIDs).
• To make it possible for different applications to share and use data, creating new possibilities for how data can be used.
• To provide developers with access to a permissionless data layer, which includes information on governance, funding, and user activity for the DAO.
• To make it easy for developers to integrate with and build on top of the data that the DAO has collected.
• To enable developers to tap into the network effects of the DAO by allowing their applications to connect and interact with each other.
• To enable a more open and equitable internet where data is treated as a shared resource rather than a commodity that can be controlled and monetized.

Deliverables - 3 Month Timeline

To achieve these objectives, we will deliver the following components: infrastructure, applications, and services.

Infrastructure: The infrastructure component involves deploying a Ceramic network node that runs an instance of ComposeDB, a decentralized, composable graph database. This node will serve the applications, which can read and write data permissionlessly (subject to data ownership constraints). The raw data backing this database is stored in IPFS. In order to bootstrap application use cases, relevant on-chain and off-chain data will be imported, processed and stored into ComposeDB. The data will be attributed with relationships for composability and made available via a GraphQL API.

Applications: Three applications will be deployed on the Ceramic network by the core team upon completion.

• NounsID - The identity interface for the Nouniverse. A user profile for participants of the Nouns ecosystem, composed of user-owned properties and relationships to data from sources such as on-chain proposals and votes, PropHouse, Snapshot and Discourse. The user-owned profile allows the user to control their represented identity, linking it to social media accounts, setting up their preferences and carrying them across application built atop the decentralized data layer.

• Builder Profile - Builder profiles (nounish cv) are meant to give a full picture of a nounish builder's contributions to the Nouniverse, leveraging data aggregated from NounID, stored on the decentralized data layer.

• Noundry - Will integrate with the Ceramic network, leveraging its decentralized datastore, and our universal identity (NounsID). Noundry Ceramic Integration may include but are not limited by the following features:

  • Upload your traits once, use it all across the ecosystem! - Create your artist profile and keep your own provenance records - Include metadata with your artwork. Give it name & context.
  • Remix & collab on everything, powered by CC0 Some ideas of integrations to harness this data:
  • Noundry contests, to sign up your traits and try to make them into official Nouns traits.
  • Builder DAO, to boot a new DAO with Nounish artwork using a collection of existing traits.
  • Noun DAO UIs, to show tooltips over the Nouns with more info about the traits and their artists
  • Other features to explore: cross-dao artwork compatibility by mapping out trait categories, templates, sizes & color palettes - Scraping of existing artwork and contacting artists to seed their profiles - Offering the artwork in multiple formats (svg, png) for better compatibility with different applications

Services:

• Throughout development, the team will provide weekly Q&A during office hours, hosted by The Noun Square.
• The team will provide a JavaScript library that makes it easy for front-end applications to query and deploy their own data.
• Finally, we will collaborate with AI Pod, providing the processed and formatted data relevant for training their models.

Deliverables:

Infrastructure Component:

• Nounish decentralized database: We'll run a Ceramic and ComposeDB node that serves the data through a GraphQL API.
• Scrape/ingest real Nouns data sources: Collect PropHouse, on-chain, Snapshot and Discourse data in near real-time, so that apps can query and compose them through our service.
• Client library for easy integration: Provide a JavaScript library that client applications can use to easily query and publish data.
• Nouner preferences: Deploy a Preferred proposal categories, optional social links, preferred Noun profile image and other .
• Support and/or integrate with partners and application developers: Work with the community to brainstorm on new and existing models and incorporate feedback.

Note: Part of this work has been started with 15k USD subsidized by the Ceramic builder grants.

Application Component:

• 1st Party, Core Applications: NounsID
• 3rd Party, Nounish Partner Integrations: Noundry Integration and Builder Profile

Services Component:

• Provide ingested, and formatted data for AI Pod
• Provide developers with APIs and a library to leverage permissionless, composable databases as a service.
• Q&A with developers during regularly scheduled office hours on The Noun Square.

Success Criteria

• Uptime: Functional network with availability on-par with centralized databases.
• Integrations: Successful integration with launch partner - Noundry.
• Composability: One or more demonstrable (ideally novel) composable and interoperable application use cases from pre-existing applications in the Nouns ecosystem.
• Partnerships: Number of pre-existing nounish applications that commit, and follow through with network integrations in the ecosystem that leverage the network.
• Data Sources: Amount of data sources integrated, and CRUD operations executed on Ceramic.

Future Work

• Expand data sources to eventually include all relevant data generated in the Nouniverse and make it permissionless and composable, along with publishing relevant metadata from applications running on the network.
• Create developer tools, documentation, and examples to make development easier for developers.
• Partnerships: Coordinate with Voters.wtf, Federation, Lil Nouns mainsite, and Apache SuperSet(Nouns Metrics), for potential network integration.

Team Structure & Budget

• Infrastructure, NounsID development:
  • Brunes: 7.75 ETH/Month
  • Champion Score: 7.5 ETH/Month
• Technical Program & Partnership Management:
  • Al409: 3 ETH/Month
  • Baba: 7 ETH/Month
• Integration Partners:
  • Volky: 3 ETH/Month
  • Ripe: 3 ETH/Month
• Builder Grants: ETH allocation to be used for Prop House rounds, and/or direct developer/builder integrations with Ceramic in order to bootstrap the network effects of our Nounish dataverse. Builder funds that are not used will be returned to NounsDAO treasury.
  • 7.5 ETH/Month

Amount/Time: 39 ETH/Month Duration: 3 months Total: 117 ETH