Why Nouns Esports Is a Game Changer
One thing I love about Nouns is the collective’s willingness to fund a wide variety of things.
For example, the group has backed a float in the Rose Bowl Parade, free prescription glasses for kids, and research + conservation efforts around a new species of frog.
What many people in crypto don’t realize though is that Nouns also has its own competitive gaming arm: Nouns Esports.
The story here started in May 2022, when the DAO approved signing its first professional Dota 2 roster. Then in December 2023, the group approved expanding Nouns Esports into a full-time operation.
Why does this matter?
Just two years in, Nouns Esports is now fielding some of the most talented players in the world in some of the most popular games like Dota 2, Counter-Strike, and Smash Bros.
Indeed, Nouns’ Dota 2 and Counter-Strike teams are among the absolute best in the North America region, and with Aklo and Cody Schwab, their Smash roster boasts two of the best competitors to ever play Melee. Nouns Esports has world championship contenders literally across the board.
And of course, this advance into gaming has been nontraditional, with Nouns as a headless onchain brand spending ETH to muscle up here. At a time when mainstream esports funding avenues are dwindling, Nouns is showing that a transparent, community-first, grassroots approach can thrive.
It’s worth highlighting that people are loving this approach, too. One of the most impressive things I’ve noticed is how positive the response to Nouns Esports has been among gaming fans—a demographic that’s tended to be skeptical of anything crypto related in recent years.
No kidding, when I’ve gone onto mainstream gaming forums and Nouns comes up, instead of a deluge of the usual “it’s crypto/NFT junk” rhetoric, most of the fans are excited about the support and funding, and more than a few take time to explain to others why Nouns is different, good, legit, etc.
For example, some Smash fans follow the Nouns governance process, and they celebrated earlier this year when the collective voted to fund three top-tier Smash events in 2024, concluding with The Nounsvitational this December.
That’s pretty incredible when you think about it: non-crypto folks are following a DAO’s governance happenings because that DAO is helpful and meaningful to their fandom. There may now be more people outside of crypto that know and like Nouns than inside of crypto, a first for an NFT project!
In the very least, Nouns Esports is proving that there is a new, community-centric way to run an esports organization that isn’t beholden to “Big Money” like venture capital or dodgy sponsorships.
Will we see more approaches like this going forward? In time, surely. The gaming world will catch up as more players and fans opt for the bottom-up advantages that a DAO can offer.
That’s why the question “Are DAOs dead?” is off base to me. If you zoom in on the right places, like Noun Esports, they never died—they've thrived.
This reality makes me hopeful not just for the future of DAOs as an organizational model but also for their intersection with gaming. The possibilities are just beginning here, and Nouns Esports is pioneering the way.