Summary

This project focuses on enabling escrowing milestones in the Nouns Builder DAO proposal builder flow, enhancing all Nouns Builder DAOs ability to manage and release funds through a milestone-based approach. The use of escrowed milestones in Nouns Builder proposals will allow the respective DAOs to be more lenient in reserving funds for efforts without sacrificing the ability to ensure deliverability of proposal goals.

The Vercel test deployment of the application is live at:
https://nouns-builder-gamma.vercel.app
Pending PR merge and assets migration

This proposal is viewable with its escrow on the preview deployment
https://nouns-builder-gamma.vercel.app/dao/base/0xe8af882f2f5c79580230710ac0e2344070099432/vote/23

Context

Nouns Builder has excelled at retroactively supporting builders within and around the Nouns community, however, retroactive grants limit the ability of Nouns Builder DAO to proactive direct and steer development activity. For builders to complete larger scopes of work, a roadmap and milestones are needed to reassure the contributors and provide Nouns Builder the power to intervene, should milestones not be delivered.

To that end, we’ve added an alternative proposal type for the Nouns Builder proposal creator, where proposers can choose to escrow milestones using SmartInvoice. The pull request with the initial features are pending review and deployment. These will be made available as Builder DAO takes over the nouns.build domain and this becomes the primary deploy.

Proposal

We seek a total of 12 ETH for the entire project comprising retroactive funding of the built and version 1 integration, two further milestones for a customized feature set, and a one year long support and maintenance contract.

1. Built milestone proposal type described under the section Features – 7 ETH
2. Documentation of features and technical documentation – 1 ETH
   1. Extended network support and delegator safe deployment
3. Milestone-based scope for customized feature set – 3 ETH
   1. Similar reporting functionality to https://www.propdates.wtf/
   2. Notifications for updates
4. One year (1 year) maintenance and support contract – 1 ETH

TOTAL: 12 ETH

North Star Check

Escrowed milestones allow Nouns Builder DAOs to level up their ability to attract and retain service providers by getting service providers and the DAO on the same page. Proposals become more granular, ensuring everyone involved knows what’s being proposed.

By unlocking the ability of Nouns Builder DAOs to take on larger, long-lived, and complex proposals, the integration will allow the ecosystem of DAOs to proliferate their causes and bring in additional revenues and community members.

Roadmap

• 01/2025: Integration of version 1 integration with Nouns Builder frontend
• 03/2025: Delivery of final milestone for budget item 2
• ~03/2026: Completion of maintenance and support contract (starting from integration into nouns.build)

Accountability

Milestone 0: Escrow Proposal type

Add another proposal type for escrowing milestones for proposals. DAOs will be able to nominate a designated release entity (multisig) or create proposals to release milestones.

• Extended Smart Invoice Core Functionality for Full Feature Compatibility
• Proposal Milestone Wireframes & Designs
• Milestone-Based Transaction Bundling & Metadata
• Milestone Management Interface
• Proposal Submission & Community Engagement
• Deployment Support

Milestone I: Proposal Updates

Allow service providers to comment on proposal milestones to notify releasing parties of their completion status.

• Additional ability to create updates pertaining to milestones
• Indicate number of updates for a milestone
• Inline most recent update with option to view any additional updates
• Notifications for new updates to subscribers

Milestone II & III: Support Contract

Nouns Builder can contact Smart Invoice any time over the next year, while Smart Invoice agrees to be actively supporting the functionality provided to Nouns Builder and auxiliary to Nouns Builder’s mission for the same period. Nouns Builder DAO receives a dedicated Discord channel for support requests with 24 hour response time. Extending enhancements to the features won’t be included.

• Milestones 2 & 3 to be released after 180 and 365 days, respectively

Treasury Impact

The proposal will have a treasury impact of 8%.

With escrow proposals, Nouns Builder DAOs will be empowered to reach to the heights of their ability to execute by holding service providers accountable to delivering on intended goals. No more will proposals go uncompleted and fall to the wayside. It will enable bigger and better proposals with accountability.

Team

Smart Invoice is an open-source, non-custodial escrow protocol designed to address payment insecurity in the Web3 ecosystem.

Developed initially for RaidGuild, Smart Invoice emerged from countless stories of freelancers left unpaid, despite completed work. Smart Invoice has been battle tested over the last 3 years with over 1 million dollars escrowed for clients and service providers.

benedictvs – Project Management

Ben is a RaidGuild member and an expert on decentralized identity and Web3 infrastructure, who also reads for a PhD in DLT-based decentralized governance of small jurisdictions. As an entrepreneur, he successfully launched two Web3 consultancies in the past three years and received funding backed by the European Union on multiple occasions. His overarching objective is to bring DLT networks and society closer together.

Sayonara – Full-Stack Developer

Sayonara is a designer turned full-stack developer, hailing from India. He is specialised in user experience software development in Web3. His passions are decentralised finance (DeFi) applications, while he successfully drove development for a wide range of decentralised applications. As an active participant of RaidGuild, he currently focuses on stakeholder-driven development in the ever changing landscape of decentralised digital technologies.

Dan13Ram – Full-Stack Developer

Dan (Dhanwanthari) OneTree is a software developer focused on Web3 technologies, leading development at Smart Invoice and contributing to open-source projects. Passionate about blockchain, DAOs, and NFTs, he aims to drive positive change through technology.

Ian – UI/UX

Ian is a product designer focused on building delightful interface experiences. Currently, he runs Space Pirate Labs, a design agency designing Web3 and other verticals. In addition to his work, he sits on the faculty at University of Iowa, where he talks at the intersection of UI/UX & product led growth.

Scottrepreneur – Advisor

Scott is a builder, and advisor, building at the intersection of coordination and incentives. He has fostered ecosystem growth through contributions at Hats Protocol, Raid Guild, and Purple, among others.

Transparency

At the time of writing no conflicts of interests are foreseen. The proposing team will be working on the implementation and is going to be remunerated accordingly.

Transactions

Proposed Release Schedule

We propose to unlock the proposed amount over a release period of one year and through four milestones. DAO proposals will be created to release the future milestones.

1. Milestone 0 – is released immediately for work-done upon acceptance of proposal
2. Milestone I – is released upon completion of the milestone update features being implemented. A tentative date of completion is January 2025.
3. Milestone II – the first payment tranche for the support contract is due 90 days after the contract commenced. This will begin after the Zora transition is completed and this feature is live on nouns.build.
4. Milestone III – the last payment tranche for the support contract is Milestone 3 – the last support contract payment is due 180 days after the contract commenced.