Nouns, a highly influential and well-funded NFT project, has been cleaved in half, with many large holders opting to leave the project completely after a series of governance maneuvers.<\/p>\n
First came a fork, which was completed on Friday \u2014 472 Nouns<\/a>, NFTs which grant membership to the NounsDAO, voted to split off and create a new decentralized organization with a pro-rata share of the project\u2019s nearly $50M treasury.<\/p>\n Then, over the last three days, over 60% of the defectors redeemed<\/a> their NFTs for nearly $50,000 worth of assets per token. That\u2019s well over $14M in total which left the new fork\u2019s treasury<\/a>, leaving it with nearly $11M.<\/p>\n The original DAO\u2019s treasury<\/a> is worth $22.8M as of Sept. 19. It also holds the original Nouns NFTs. Holders who opted to leave were required to leave the tokens in the treasury in exchange for a new Nouns token. Unlike the new DAO, NounsDAO doesn\u2019t offer a \u2018rage quit,\u2019 option.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a confusing shuffle.<\/p>\n At the end of the day, however, this could be considered a favorable outcome for most stakeholders, Maria Shen, general partner at venture firm Electric Capital<\/a>, told The Defiant.<\/p>\n \u201cAllowing people to fork is really kind of beautiful,\u201d she said. \u201cNo one\u2019s being held hostage.\u201d The investor added that the fork functionality makes it so those who chose to stick around the original DAO are likely to be more aligned in terms of the organization\u2019s direction.<\/p>\n It\u2019s also noteworthy that the majority of members chose to stick with the original DAO, with the fork pushed forward by a few large Nouns holders. Indeed, just five people redeemed 152 Nouns, representing over half the defections.<\/p>\n Toady Hawk<\/a>, another Noun who decided to stick with the original DAO, said they were optimistic about the organization\u2019s post-fork direction. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great opportunity for the DAO,\u201d they said on friend.tech. <\/p>\n \u201cThe clickbait titles say \u201850% of the DAO left,\u2019 but that\u2019s not really the truth of the matter. 50% of the Nouns tokens did get forked, but two-thirds of original holders remain.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Nouns launched<\/a> in 2021 with distinct mechanics \u2014 instead of a drop of 10,000 tokens as was typical at the time, one Noun would become available for bidding each day. The ETH from the winning bid would go into the NounsDAO treasury and the auction winner would gain voting rights over that treasury.<\/p>\n The Nouns treasury has been one of the most active in crypto \u2014 NounsDAO has funded 158 initiatives, according to Nouns.center<\/a>. These projects range from an episodic movie<\/a> to an analytics dashboard<\/a> and augmented reality filters<\/a>.<\/p>\nProfligacy Concerns<\/h2>\n
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