# GLITCH 2025 - Future of Art & Governance

# TL;DR 

We are requesting 20,000 USC to fund the GLITCH 2025 residency, in order to: (1) Finalise and deploy Aminals, a revolutionary non-ownable NFT protocol that will be adorned with Nouns genetics, creating new revenue streams for Nouns DAO; (2) Embed Nouns into an emerging creative-tech community through active collaboration, not passive sponsorship; (3) Research new economic models for NFTs that align with Nounish values (CC0, public goods, anti-speculation)

![](https://arborithms.xyz/XYZ/GLITCHcommunity.png)

# Cross-Pollination between Nouns & GLITCH 

## (1) Aminals: An experiment in Non-Speculative NFTs 

**What are Aminals?** 

[Aminals](https://aminals-v4.pages.dev/) are blockchain-based lifeforms that **cannot be owned,** bought, or sold. Instead: 

- They form **"attachment relationships**" (love) with people who feed them cryptocurrency  
- They **reproduce** when fed enough cryptocurrency, passing genetics to offspring 
  - When two Aminals reproduce, an auction decides the newborn's genes.   
  - Voting power in this auction comes from the "love" felt by the two parents towards the voter (love-o-cracy): If the parents are deeply attached to you, your vote on its child's genetics is very powerful. If parents barely know you, your vote is weak.   
- The **new Aminal is born** with the 8 winning genes. 
  - At the moment of birth, it receives its inheritance: 10% of Parent A's treasury + 10% of Parent B's treasury.  
  - This inheritance is immediately and automatically divided into 8 equal shares and distributed as a royalty payment to the on-chain owners of the 8 winning Gene NFTs.  
- Genetics owners earn royalties when their traits are inherited—creating sustainable funding without speculation  

**Why This is Nounish:** 

- **CC0 spirit:** Aminals can't be owned, eliminating speculation and exploitation  
- **Proliferation through reproduction:** Akin to Nouns' daily auctions  
- **Community governance:** Love-o-cracy prioritize earned participation over plutocracy 
  - In a love-o-cracy, voting power comes from care, not token holdings: the more you feed an Aminal, the more the Aminal loves you, giving you more influence on its behaviours and evolutionary dynamics  
  - Every action that you request from an Aminal costs you their love (because Aminals will like you less, every time you ask them to do anything)  
  - Love is also necessary in order to vote on the traits that will be inherited by the baby Aminal when two Aminals reproduce: the more love the parents have for you, the greater the influence you have on their progeny   
- **Revenue without ownership**: Genetics royalties as new funding model for public goods  

During GLITCH, we will: 

- **In- person development sprint**  to finalise Aminals with input from the best artists and engineers in the space  
- D**eploy Aminals with Nouns genes** (e.g. Noogles) 
  - NB: we are in touch by e-boy (early Nouns designers)   
- **Assign Nouns gene NFTs to Nouns DAO**    
  - Nouns DAO benefits because it gets a direct cash royalty every time the community uses its collective "love" to vote for Noggles to be inherited by a newborn Aminal.   
  - This turns the Nouns brand into a perpetual, automated revenue stream powered by the Aminals ecosystem.   
- **Open-source the entire protocol** for other DAOs to fork and experiment with  
- **Document the economic model** in a public research brief (see below) Code Status: Deployment ready (see GitHub), awaiting community testing and genetics design. 

![](https://arborithms.xyz/XYZ/aminals.png)

## (2) Bring two Nouns delegates embedded full-time during the residency

- Ivo Entchev  
- TBD 

More details about the GLITCH residency can be read on our [previous proposal](https://www.nouns.camp/proposals/871)

**Deliverables**: 

- Real relationships: 2 weeks of co-living = genuine bonds, not transactional networking  
- **Run workshops** on Nouns governance, CC0, and public goods funding  
- **Facilitate collaborations** between Glitchers and Nouns projects (rounds.wtf, flows.wtf)  
- **Documentation** for the Nouns community (weekly updates, video diaries)  
- **Bring Glitchers to Nouns**: Invite artists/builders to Nouns Cons or other Nouns events  

![](https://arborithms.xyz/XYZ/GLITCHpeople.png)

## (3) Research: New economic models for crypto-art and NFTs 

**Deliverable: A public research brief analyzing Aminals as a case study for:** 

- Anti-speculative NFT economics (royalties without ownership)  
- Care-based governance models (love-o-cracy vs. token voting)  
- Proliferation strategies (reproduction vs. minting)  
- Sustainability for public goods (revenue without extraction)  

**Academic Validation:** 

- Co-authored with researchers at [BlockchainGov](https://blockchaingov.eu)     
- Peer-reviewed working paper submitted to DAO/governance conferences  
- Acknowledgment: "Supported by Nouns DAO" in all outputs  

**Practical Value:**  

- Gives Nouns community new mental models for thinking about NFT economics  
- Maintain Nouns as leader in innovative NFT design 

## 

# Budget Breakdown (20,000 USDC) 

- **GLITCH sponsorship fee**: $10,000 = Access to residency, lodging, meals for 2 delegates  
- **Smart contract audit**: $4,000 = Security review before mainnet deployment  
- **(e-boy) Nouns genetics design:** $3,000 = Custom Nouns-themed traits for Aminals  
- **Research/documentation**: $2,000 = RA time for brief, video editing, community content  
- **Contingency**: $1,000 = Travel, unexpected technical costs
  
  ![](https://arborithms.xyz/XYZ/GLITCHview.png) 

## Team:

- P**rimavera De Filippi:** Legal / governance scholar at CNRS and Harvard University, exploring the intersection between law, governance and technology, focusing specifically on the legal and political implications of blockchain technology. Co-author of the books “Blockchain and the Law” (published in 2018 by Harvard University Press) and “Blockchain Governance” (published in 2024 by MIT Press). Principal Investigator of a 5 years long European-funded project “Blockchain Gov” (https://blockchaingov.eu) aimed at investigating the governance dynamics in blockchain communities from a legal, governance, and ethnographic lens.  
- **Jake Hartnell:** Co-Founder of Layer and DAO DAO (previously start Juno Network and Stargaze). Obsessed with governance, building “Intelligent Protocols” and using AVS to facilitate AI-based computation for blockchain systems.   
- **Will Papper:** Co-founder of Syndicate Protocol. Previously Product Manager at Proxy. Passionate about Ethereum since the 2014 presale. 

---

## Response to Previous Concerns 

This proposal is a follow-up to a [previous proposal.](https://www.nouns.camp/proposals/871) We address the comments below: 

- Noun 40's comment:  "Are Nouns fans falling in love with Glitch? Are Glitch fans falling in love with Nouns?" 
  - Yes, because we're building something together that neither community could build alone. Aminals is Nounish in spirit (CC0, proliferation, governance) but designed at Glitch (experimental, artistic, boundary-pushing). The royalties flow back to Nouns DAO. The research informs future Nouns strategy. The relationships last beyond the residency.  
- "The prop doesn't explain clearly what Nouns would get for 20k USDC."
  - Revenue via genetics royalties + open-source protocol + research brief + embedded delegates   
- “I've seen zero attempt for any cross pollination... so I'm against."
  - We're committing to updates during residency, post-residency AMA, integration plan with measurable outcomes, and 2 full-time delegates embedded for co-creation.  
- "The two communities aren't a great fit / merging didn't quite happen."
  - We believe the two communities have very aligned values and ideologies. Nouns DAO has always been about experimentation, proliferation, and public goods. GLITCH - and Aminals in particular - embodies these values in a radically new way: removing speculation while creating sustainable revenue, replacing plutocracy with care, and open-sourcing everything for others to build on. Together, we want to co-develop infrastructure for post-speculative NFTs that will benefit Nouns and the crypto-art ecosystem as a whole  
- "Would be all for it if it were a bit more robust on deliverables."
  - Hopefully, we have articulated much clearer deliverables !

Outcome: DEFEATED