⌐◨-◨ Noggles Make History: the Biggest Planting Day Ever Attempted

Requested: 14,900 USDC Proposed by: Jimi Cohen (Treegens, Guinness World Record breaker) with Creatress, Nouns community member and project liaison

TL;DR

• The GROWalition is supporting Ethiopia's Green Legacy Initiative to pull off the biggest tree planting day in human history: over 1 billion trees planted in 24 hours by uniting over 30M people. The day is aligned with Ethiopia's rainy season, which arrived late this year due to the El Niño drought. The date confirmed by the government is currently 3 August 2026, and the event will happen by end of August at the latest.
• Last July 31st, Jimi was in Ethiopia & helped the government unite 29M people & plant 714.7M trees in 24 hours, piloting the first GROWlympic Games. This year, Ethiopia is going for the full billion, and Treegens is supporting with tracking technology, prizes for top planters & an SMS campaign to the 90M Ethio Telecom users.
• The Treegens app is already live in multiple languages at treegens.app and greenlegacy.app, and it solves Ethiopia's verification problem. Until now, official counts could only cover pre-mapped "shapefile" areas. But when a national planting day is declared, people across the country are encouraged to plant instead of work, and planting happens at countless sites beyond those mapped areas. The Treegens app tracks all of them: timestamped GPS, AI tree counting & multiple verifiers.
• We're asking Nouns for 14,900 USDC to fund the permanent, verifiable, unmistakably Nounish pieces of the day:
  1. Noggles-shaped trophies awarded to the winning planting teams of the Growlympic Games, on camera, on the global livestream.
  2. A noggles-shaped microphone used for all event-day reporting and livestream coverage. Every interview, every check-in, every press moment happens through noggles.
  3. Noggles inside the Treegens Proof of Tree app, the open tree-tracking tool used by planting teams on event day and beyond.
  4. A Nounish News episode documenting the day, minted with all proceeds going back to the Nouns treasury.
  5. Noggles on the t-shirts of every GROWlympic Games participant.
• Public recap after the event, plus follow-up reports at 6, 12 & 18 months including survival data.
• Full line-item budget below. Not a sponsorship. Nounish proliferation, planted in living trees.

What is the Growlympics?

A one-day tree planting competition coordinated by Treegens alongside Ethiopia's Green Legacy Initiative, with an expected 30M+ participants. The government-confirmed date is currently 3 August 2026, aligned with the rainy season, with end of August as the latest window. The benchmark that makes the goal credible: Green Legacy planted 714.7 million trees in 12 hours on 31 July 2025 with 29 million participants (Ethiopian News Agency), after planting 353.6 million in a day in 2019. Ethiopia has already done seven tenths of the goal. Now the country is going for the full billion, and making history.

Treegens is gamifying tree planting & awarding prizes to the top tree planters. The reason 1B trees is so important is because of the 4 minute mile effect. For decades people tried to run 1 mile in under 4 minutes, but most didn't think it was possible. In 1954 when Roger Bannister finally broke the 4 minute barrier, dozens of others also did & today it is not uncommon. The same thing will happen once we cross the 1B Tree Day. It will keep on happening!

Jimi's team on the ground in Ethiopia with Addis Ababa Police College planting teams during Green Legacy's 700M+ seedling day.

With the lead of Ethiopia's Green Legacy Initiative, holder of the current single-day planting record (50B+ trees planted since 2019).

Documentation for the partnership and commitments is linked in the discussion thread and available on request. We would rather under-claim and over-deliver.

Creatress (Nouns community member and DAO liaison) with Jimi at NFT.NYC.

🎥 Watch: Creatress and Jimi talking about the initiative at NFT.NYC

The verification problem, solved

Until now, Ethiopia's official tree counts could only cover pre-mapped "shapefile" areas. That works for planned restoration sites, but it misses what actually happens on a national planting day. When the day is declared, people are encouraged to plant instead of work. Communities, schools, workplaces and families plant at thousands of sites that were never mapped in advance. Those trees were real, but uncountable.

The Treegens app changes that. It is already live in multiple languages at treegens.app and greenlegacy.app, and it lets any planting team, anywhere in the country, log their trees: videos filmed before & after, timestamped GPS, AI tree counting, multiple verifiers & a public leaderboard. Every planting site becomes countable, whether it was in a shapefile or not.

What Nouns gets

1. The Noggles Trophy 🏆⌐◨-◨

The official trophy of the Growlympic Games, awarded to the top planting teams on earth, is shaped as noggles. The moment the world's best tree planters lift their prize, they lift noggles, on the livestream, in the press photos, in the recap film, and in every retelling of the day. Trophies live on permanently with the winning teams and their communities.

🌀 Spin the 3D trophy render here

The Growlympics trophy: noggles, lifted by the best tree planters on earth. Explore the interactive 3D render at nouns-trophy.netlify.app.

2. The Noggles Mic 🎤⌐◨-◨

All event-day reporting and livestream coverage happens through a custom noggles-shaped microphone. Every check-in, every interview with planters, organizers, and officials puts noggles in frame. It's the visual signature of the entire broadcast.

The noggles mic: every event-day interview and livestream report happens through noggles. (This image is AI generated & an approximate design; we would love to collaborate with existing Nounish artists if any desire to share available CC0 3D files.)

3. Noggles in the Treegens app 📱

The open tree-tracking app, live now at treegens.app and greenlegacy.app in multiple languages, used by planting teams on event day. Noggles integrated natively into the app experience (not a banner ad), in front of every planter and every verifier, on the day and permanently after.

How every tree in this record is counted: videos are filmed before & after, AI counts the trees, verified & ranked on the leaderboard. This is where the noggles live.

4. A Nounish News episode, proceeds to the treasury 📺

A professionally produced episode covering the day, released as a mint with 100% of proceeds returned to the Nouns treasury. Nouns funds the story, and the story pays the DAO back.

Live from the mangroves: the event-day broadcast that the Nounish News episode will be cut from.

5. Noggles on the day itself 🥇

Noggles on the official Growlympics shirts worn by Jimi and team leads, on the livestream, and in the recap film. The Growlympics prize pool (part-funded by this proposal) is announced as supported by Nouns DAO.

The moment the world record broke. On event day, these shirts carry noggles.

Media: where the noggles will be seen

The Growlympics works with a professional publicist who has placed stories with all the major publications. The campaign has already been featured on BBC, CNBC ESG News, and more, and there is strong active interest from BBC journalists for event coverage. BBC alone reaches 313 million people weekly. To be clear on framing: Nouns funds are not paying for PR (see Transparency below). The media engine is already running. What this prop does is make sure that when the cameras roll, the trophy being lifted and the microphone doing the reporting are noggles.

Deliverables

1. Noggles trophies designed, fabricated, and awarded to winning teams on the event-day livestream, documented in photo and video.
2. Noggles microphone fabricated and used for all event-day reporting and livestream segments.
3. Noggles integration live in the Treegens app before event day.
4. Nounish News episode produced and minted, proceeds to the Nouns treasury.
5. Public recap report: trees logged, prize winners, media coverage links, all verification data links.
6. Follow-up reports at 6, 12 & 18 months with app data and survival tracking from partner planting teams, publicly available.

Success metrics

Judge this prop on Nounish proliferation, not just trees:

• Noggles trophies awarded on the global livestream, documented ✅
• Noggles mic in frame across event-day coverage and press clips ✅
• Treegens app noggles integration shipped and screenshotted ✅
• Event day recap with verifiable planting data published ✅
• Nounish News mint live, treasury receipt onchain ✅
• 6/12/18-month follow-up reports posted to this thread ✅

Everything above is public and checkable. If we miss a milestone, you'll see it.

Budget: where the 14,900 USDC goes

All costs in USDC. Nouns funds go only to the Nounish deliverables and the community prize pool, not general event overhead or PR. Global production, logistics, and publicity are funded separately (see Transparency below).

Transparency: other funding

The Growlympics as a whole is funded by a mix of corporate sponsors, in-kind partners, and country-level programs. Those funds cover global production, broadcast, logistics, and the professional publicist. This proposal is not asking Nouns to carry the event. It funds the specific, permanent, Nounish artifacts listed above, none of which are funded from any other source.

Team and track record

• Jimi Cohen, founder of Treegens: broke an official Guinness World Record for most mangroves planted by an individual in 24 hours (30,469, April 2024). Has delivered a record-scale planting operation before, with the same coordination team now running the Growlympics.
• Creatress: Nouns community member and environmental artist, serving as liaison to the DAO. She will present this proposal at Nouncil and post all updates to this thread.
• Franco Dubini: was the right hand man of Nas Daily filming & directing, generating tens of millions of views online. Franco is coordinating an epic GROWlympics video with fun & engaging games, engaging viewers & making tree planting a sport.
• Dr. Adefires: Leads the Green Legacy Initiative which has planted over 50B trees since 2019 in Ethiopia. A forestry expert coordinating over 11,000 sites across the country.
• Treegens has 56 ambassadors engaging governments, organising community tree planting events & onboarding people to get the trees verified.

Timing

The event is aligned with Ethiopia's kiremt rainy season, which arrived late this year due to the El Niño drought. A massive planting day only works when the rains are actually falling, so the date follows the rains, not the calendar. The date confirmed by the government is currently 3 August 2026, and the event will take place by end of August at the latest. Any change will be posted in this thread. Ethiopia is going for 1B trees across the single nation & Treegens is supporting them to do this in a variety of ways from prizes to tracking to an SMS campaign to the 90M Ethio Telecom users. Funds are needed promptly before execution to fabricate the trophies and mic, to print shirts & ship the app integration. Designs and fabricators are lined up; this prop is the trigger.

Why vote yes

Prop 1 planted coral. This prop puts noggles in the hands of the world's best tree planters, on the trophy, on the mic, and in the app, on the largest single day of tree planting ever attempted.

A lot of proposals promise reach. This one puts noggles at the center of the frame.

It's impactful. It's weird. It's good for the earth. It's Nounish.

Let's GROW! 🌳⌐◨-◨

Questions, source documents, and partnership records: reply in this thread or reach Creatress and Jimi directly. We'll answer everything before voting starts.