I decided that in order to learn more about Nouns DAO, I need to go through the next step: buying a Noun.

If you don’t know what a Noun is, I recommend this video explainer:

Going through this journey to me is a great way to get a sense of the current state of web3. It’s a journey through Decentralized Finance, DAOs, NFTs, Open Source development and building in public.

But first things first: how do you buy a Noun?

There are two ways to buy a Noun: on the primary market through the daily auction and on secondary, in marketplaces like OpenSea and Blur.

Nouns are minted every day and sold in an auction. The minting process has been turned into a game with Proposal #8, aka FOMO Nouns. Anyone can go to the website and help to vote and choose which Noun is going to be minted next.

As I’m trying to keep my ETH exposure fixed and use USDC to buy this Noun, I did an extra step: used USDC as collateral to borrow ETH on the Aave protocol. That way I’m effectively short the ETH I’m using to buy this NFT.

I would prefer to buy directly from the daily auction, but my goal is to optimize for the lowest price possible. So I’ll leaving a collection offer to buy on secondary for a price lower that the current 14-day average for the auction.

I’ll also try to monitor the daily auction, but it’s currently settling at 3AM in my timezone, so it’s not exactly easy.

See you tomorrow!