Prop House is public infrastructure funded by Nouns DAO. It is an experimental approach for communities to deploy capital. Through funding rounds, communities auction off fixed amounts of capital to builders with the best ideas.
Communities hold funding rounds in their community houses. In these funding rounds, builders can propose ideas to get funded. The flow is as follows:
A funding round is put up by a community. Each funding round has fixed amount of capital to be won (e.g. 1 ETH for 5 winners each) and is composed of a proposing and a voting period.
Proposing period begins. Builders can now propose ideas that they'd like to get funded for.
Proposing period ends and the voting period starts. Community token holders vote on their favorite proposals.
Voting period ends. The top proposals get funded!
Community houses are the places where communities host their funding rounds. Inside a house, you can view all active and inactive funding rounds.
Funding rounds aim to build up the ecosystem for the community that hosts it. Generally, there are two types of funding rounds - open and mandated rounds. Open funding rounds are those where builders are encouraged to propose any idea that they may have. You can view an example of an open round [here]. Mandated funding rounds are those where builders are encouraged to propose ideas that abide by a specific ask from the community. For example, a community may host a “Governance Apps” round where builders are expected to propose ideas to build governance related apps. You can view an example of a mandated round [here].
Length of funding rounds (proposing and voting periods) are determined by the community house. While they can be any length of time, the most common periods are 7 days for proposing and 5 days for voting.
Anyone with an Ethereum address can submit a proposal to any funding round.
Currently, Prop House runs entirely off-chain. As such, submitting proposals and votes is free!
Yes! Resubmission of ideas are highly encouraged. Better yet, iterate on your idea to increase the chance of getting funded.
Proposals that further the goals of the community hosting the funding round. Since the community members are the ones voting on the proposals that will get funded, it follows that proposals that best align with the community will win.
Voters are determined by the house the funding round is hosted in. For example, if a funding round is hosted in the Nouns House, then the Nouns token holders will be the ones voting on the proposals for their funding rounds.
In order to vote your wallet needs to have held the relevant NFT before the snapshot block that was taken at the beginning of the round.
The rule of thumb to follow is to make a proposal that you yourself would vote for over competing proposals. Besides that, below are some tips that may help as well! Pre-submission:
Community signals:
Review prior funding rounds within the community house. These previous rounds serve as a good signal for what type of proposals the community is voting for.
Clarity:
Make sure your proposal is articulated in a way that is easy and simple to read. We've laid out a rough template for you to follow in the proposal editor - follow it!
Reputation:
Social reputation and relevant experience is what voters rely on as assurance for to execute on your proposal. Be sure to include plenty of relevant information to who you are and why you are someone that can be relied on.
Post-submission:
Campaign for your prop. Use all channels available to you (discord, twitter, etc) to give voters a taste of what funding your prop would enable. This might mean sharing sneak peeks of what you are building or making media content better explaining your prop. Just remember to do so with etiquette - nobody likes a spammer.
Congrats! As the winner of a funding round, you'll be receiving the round's funding amount. The corresponding community house is responsible for distributing the funds. Next, you are expected to execute on your proposed idea. Make sure to reach out to your community for support - make ‘em proud! Note: builders are encouraged to build in public by being active via social media in order to build up their reputation. In this new world, a good reputation is worth its weight in gold!
No worries. There will always be another funding round! Builders should gather feedback form the community if possible and iterate on their ideas to resubmit in another funding round. It may just be the case that the idea wasn't articulated clearly enough.
Prop House aims to reduce friction for communities to deploy capital in order to build up their ecosystems. To that end, removing the logistics and subjective group judgement of whether or not a builder merits the award upon completion allows for communities to move faster. Put another way, awarding the winners of a funding round up front is a trade-off between speed and execution against a sense of assurance from the community. We believe that for a meaningful amount of work-to-be-done, the trade-off is worth it.
While there is no way to guarantee that a proposer does not rug, communities that have relied on social reputation, relevant experience and thorough due-diligence during voting have successfully minimized fraudulent props to it being a rare occurrence. Given good voting practices, communities can assume that a majority of percentage of proposals will be successful while expecting a small percentage to fail.
Communities have seen a significant increase in engagement. More than getting specific things built - Prop House is about onboarding new builders to your community while at the same time giving all members something to actively contribute - allocating capital via voting. You can think of your community house as complementary hub for your community.
Prop House was born inside Nouns DAO. Over the course of three proposals to the DAO, nounish builders have been pushing the idea forward to become what it is today — public infrastructure for all communities to build up their ecosystems.
Yes, you can edit or delete a proposal you've submitted during the "Accepting Proposals" stage of a round. You can find the edit and delete button at the bottom-right of your prop (make sure you are connected).
Once voting begins the proposals are locked. Both updating & deleting a proposal will require a wallet signature for confirmation.