tl;dr: the Nouns DAO and the future of marketing

I was reading Nick Tomaino’s post about the Nouns DAO which, crazy as it may seem, auctions off a different noun every 24 hours (forever) as an NFT.

That’s right, you can own the word “orange” or “blanket” or “platypus” as an NFT. While it most likely won’t give you royalties on the word, what it does give you is membership in the Nouns DAO.

It’s one of those innovations that, on the face, is incredibly ridiculous, but if you think about it, you have to ask yourself “what’s going on here?” Why are people willing to spend money on “owning” a noun?

The answer, I believe, is “belief.”

As Nick writes:

But outside of those [basic] needs isn’t the rest of the value in the world just in our head and determined by what we collectively believe?

I think the answer has always been yes, but the last decade has really brought this into focus.

Prior to the advent of blockchains, ownership was solely something that existed in the physical world.

Ownership of anything digital (like code) was a relatively new phenomenon and proving ownership was something that ALWAYS happened in the physical world.

If you had a patent or copyright, you would need to adjudicate any ownership claims in a “meatspace” court.

That changed in 2009 with the release of Bitcoin and its ability to remove the so-called “double spend” probably, thereby changing the game on the concept of digital ownership.

It could completely exist (including proof of ownership) in a purely digital world, with no need for adjudication, since the blockchain is the court.

At the same time, though we had seen Internet behemoths like Facebook, Google, etc. rise up in the wake of Internet 1.0 boom with the bulk of their value derived from “ownership” (or maybe “control”) of digital assets, they were still companies with headquarters, CEOs, employees, and lawyers.

So, those companies represented a bridge between the “belief in the value based on physical” to the “belief in value based on digital.”

But it was always about belief. Gold is a belief. The dollar is a belief. The Picasso is a belief.

Meme stocks are about belief. So are beanie babies.

And belief has been, and presumably always will be, subjective.

The example that a businesswoman flying to London to close a $100 mm deal values the last seat on a plane more than a tourist (and thus, it’s ok to charge different prices to each) is one that always works for me, but admittedly isn’t always convincing to others.

What Nouns DAO is doing, and presumably what all NFTs are about, is an exploration and expansion of the idea of belief as the source of value.

Which plays into the hands of the next generation of marketers, I suppose. Those who provide reasons to believe that go above and beyond the competition, will win.

I wonder how much it will cost to buy the noun “value”?