Smart Contract Upgrades and Platform Maintenance at Reduced Capacity Through June 2026

Summary

At the end of March, our first Builderversary is coming up and we will have successfully managed the technical infrastructure of Nouns Builder for a year. In that time we closed over 125 issues and reduced the backlog to around 20 issues from over 70 when we started. We also delivered the much desired Coining upgrade, reinstated the Droposal functionality, and contributed the feed as new user experience to the Nouns Builder platform.

More importantly, we have grown close to the community – all of you – by co-organising the Builder House in Buenos Aires, hosting regular product sessions, and supporting builders at the ETH Denver hackathon championed by Swarthy Hatter. Having come this far, we want to continue to support Builder DAO evolving and see it succeed. Although software will always require maintenance and upkeep, we think this is a good point to start tapering our engagement from 100% to 50% to preserve the treasury and provide support and maintenance through June 2026 for technical certainty.

In this spirit, we plan on delivering much requested smart contract upgrades DAOs can choose to adopt ahead of planning for a potential audit, such as additional DAO links, improved delegation, and Nouns-style draft proposals. We will also fix the Farcaster bot and provide ongoing support, as well as implement community feedback on Coining and the platform UX. A material shift in this residency is that we are now not only delivering work, but also decentralising contributions by overseeing the technical community through reviewing community PRs, such as potentially from Gnars, and providing mentorship to new builders.

Thus, this proposal funds continued technical development, documentation, and community support, with the launch of Builder Coining as the next major primary milestone. We will ensure accountability through monthly reporting, office hours, and structured governance updates as consistently provided during our prior terms.

Context

The previous Tech Pod Residency under Prop #54 has been successfully completed, with all deliverables met. Our work has been key in maintaining and enhancing the Builder Protocol as DAO-governed open-source software. We value our community ties and aim to keep offering essential support, expertise, and vision for Nouns Builder's success.

For a detailed overview of priorities, see the Github boards for Resident Cycle and Feature Roadmap. For a full changelog, check closed PRs or Builder Buzz Newsletter. We have delivered as follows from the prior proposal.

• All issues listed under “Prioritised Issues in the Resident Cycle Backlog” of the previous proposal were completed
• Defined community roadmap was delivered as promised
  • Streams proposal type (#463) was completed, following community discussions on Sablier revenue share
  • Droposal support (#626) was completed, including staging deployment and frontend integration
  • Coining integration (#223) was completed
    • Clanker for DAO coins and Zora for content coins, including testnet previews and bug resolutions
    • Finalised Coining Design Document v.1.1
  • Basename support (#603) was prioritised and delivered, including hierarchy corrections and delegation fixes
• Beyond Prop #54, we also authored a technical proposal for Lisk DAO integration, supported ETH Denver activation, launched the updated Nouns Builder Dune Dashboard for analytics, provided technical support for minting and asset recovery, introduced a Playground page for DAO artwork, refined Propdates through migrating to a self-hosted EAS subgraph, and resolved various bugs related to performance, identity, and feeds.

Proposal

This proposal consists of three main parts, which are elaborated on in the Section Accountability of this proposal, namely, documentation and reporting, communication and support, as well as technical development.

Documentation and Reporting

• Continue maintaining a prioritised roadmap here and agile development sprint planning here
• Updating the documentation to include recent protocol and platform updates, such as Coining, Sablier streams, and Droposals
• Active engagement in the OPs working group’s organisational structuring and strategic initiatives
• Share monthly roadmap/features to be worked on

Communication and Support

• Provide direct troubleshooting support for DAO members with the service level agreement outlined in the Section Status Updates.
• Maintain weekly office hours and monitor Discord to proactively identify and resolve issues, as defined in the section Status Updates of this proposal
• Attend Ops Group and BuilderDAO meetings to stay aligned with operational needs

Technical Development

• Prioritisation of the backlog with the community and ongoing refinement of the roadmap for the residency, including the engagement of community resources through RFPs or call for proposals for applicable initiatives, such as design support and a template website
• Continue agile development cycles according to the prioritised backlog for resolving existing and new issues

North Star Alignment

This proposal supports Builder DAO’s mission to develop DAO infrastructure as a public good, ensuring ongoing accessibility, robustness, and user experience improvements for decentralised communities. Completing the current backlog and enhancing key features directly benefits the Builder Protocol ecosystem’s long-term viability.

Accountability

Timeline

The proposed timeline for the extension of the residency is 4 months, running from March 2026 through June 2026. Payouts are tied to a steady delivery according to monthly milestones.

Deliverables

We continue to follow a community-driven and agile development structure, focused on protocol maintenance and feature development. Accordingly, tentative deliverables are provided below, which MAY shift in response to new community feedback or severe to medium bugs that need immediate addressing. Highest priority is the implementation of strongly requested smart contract updates, resolving the outage of the Farcaster bot, and addressing community feedback on the platform UX and Coining features.

We are determined to deliver on revenue generating initiatives, which previously onboarded Sablier streams, but has since evolved into:

• The Tech Pod continues to provide technical support to the Community and Events Residents for the targeted onboarding of existing DAOs, interested in migrating to Builder, as well as builders entering the ecosystem. This includes, but is not limited to:
  • Our ongoing conversation with Lisk DAO
  • Leads and builders generated at events, e.g. Nouns Stack, Kayden
• Potentially interesting RFPs for revenue generation like this EF tender

Community Feedback on Coining

The recent changes to product strategy at Zora and Base created uncertainty, resentment, and migration considerations in the community. It is becoming evident that some Builder communities may prefer a fully clanker-based coining set up, including “Content Coins” and Ethereum Mainnet availability.

Although these ideas are not factored into the roadmap as of yet, they have repeatedly come up during Tech Office and DAO-internal conversations. As we are dedicated to continuing supporting Nouns Builder in its mission, it is important for us to make these changing technical scopes visible.

Continuation of the Roadmap as Defined in the Community Product Session

Anticipated Issues and Roadmap

This roadmap has been developed in collaboration with the community, but we remain mindful that priorities can shift. Moving to a four-month term provides the necessary runway to manage the backlog more strategically. Should our focus need to pivot, we have identified the following issues as high-priority alternatives or natural successors to our current scope:

• Customisation features using EAS (#778, #860)
• Farcaster username support (#718)
• Enhancements to the Sablier integration (#874)
• Documentation updates

Should the opportunity arise that we can procure additional external stakeholder funding or subsidies for a UX overhaul, the requested UX features, such as trait rarity visualisations (#596) and the ongoing UX discussion and backlog can be found here.

Community RFPs

Through our continuous work and availability to the community at Tech Office Hours and Community Product Sessions, as well as IRL, we managed to encourage sustained community contributions. Most notably, Gnars has signalled its interest in contributing more actively to the community development of Nouns Builder.

Specifically, Gnars MAY deliver features for the main application through opening PRs and is interested to contribute their community-owned website features to the Nouns Builder template site repository. These change requests will have to be accompanied by tech support, must be reviewed, and tested. We will take on this responsibility to contribute to the progressive decentralisation of the Nouns Builder platform.

Builder Onboarding

Combined efforts from Devconnect to ETH Denver have led to an increasing number of Builders interested in building on top of the Builder Protocol. This requires visibility, technical support, and mentorship of the newly won community contributors. The Tech Residents will support these initiatives by providing relevant ecosystem tooling support, availability for 1:1 meetings, and project-specific guidance or troubleshooting.

Status Updates

As introduced during the first residency cycle of the proposers, the residents will update the community as follows:

1. In monthly delivery reports given as Propdates to the respective milestone
2. During the bi-weekly DAO-wide community meeting
3. As Tech Pod updates in every Builder Buzz Newsletter
4. In regular posts to the /builder channel on Farcaster
5. Through monthly community product sessions (justified by community attendance)
   • Provision of dedicated invite link for attendance and agenda
   • A FigJam board (or similar)
   • A set agenda for community members to prepare their attendance
   • Revival of the Github Discussions
6. In regular, prompt, and structured responses in the community Discord server
   • 48 hour response time on tickets raised
   • Issues raised through tickets are prioritised
7. Documentation and dissemination of outcomes of community product sessions
8. Updated documentation, as done in the past (see PR #10)
9. Reports and roadmaps as specified above
10. Availability for questions during weekly office hours and public channels

Treasury Impact

Compensation

In continuation of previous Protocol Technology Lead compensation, we are requesting a monthly retainer of ~12,500 USDC per month at 100% engagement, which is adjusted pro-rata according to the schedule below:

1. Months 1 at 100% (21,265 OP payable in ETH and 4.78 ETH)
2. Months 2 at 75% (4.495 ETH)
3. Months 3 at 75% (4.495 ETH)
4. Months 4 at 50% (3.03 ETH)

For the entire duration of the 4 months residency total compensation is 16.8 ETH and 21,265 OP (payable in ETH), released monthly according to milestones. The compensation is split between the residents as follows:

• 60% to Resident Protocol Technology Lead
• 40% to Resident Protocol Product Lead

Impact

The treasury impact of this proposal is estimated to be 64.56%. We are aware that this is a significant portion of the treasury, which is one of the reasons for us scaling back while maintaining the technical viability of the platform.

Transparency

Disclosure

• Work under this proposal is non-exclusive
• No personal financial interests outside the DAO scope are attached to the execution of this work

Prior Funding

Dan and Ben took over the role of Tech Residents at the end of March 2025 (Prop #42). Their residency was renewed twice through Prop #45 and Prop #54.

Authors

• Resident Protocol Product Lead: benedictvs.eth
• Resident Protocol Technology Lead: dan13ram.eth

Tax Information

The proposers will provide necessary tax reporting information in accordance with DAO administrative requirements.

About the Authors

benedictvs.eth

Ben is a RaidGuild member and an expert on decentralised identity and Web3 infrastructure, who also reads for a PhD in DLT-based decentralised 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.

dan13ram.eth

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.