Decent is proud to announce that we have raised $3.5M led by Archetype, with participation from Y Combinator, Circle Ventures, Palm Tree Crypto, Road Capital, OrangeDAO, Stateless Ventures, Coinlist, AngelDAO, Soma Capital, and MAGIC Fund, as well as individuals from Kleiner Perkins, Uniswap, Sapphire, Loop Crypto, Delphi Digital, and Coop Records.

We are thankful to have such an experienced and helpful group of investors. We’re also proud to have Jason Flom and Jeff Kempler (CEO & COO of Lava Records), Ryan Hamilton (Creative Director, Autograph), and Jack Spallone (ex- Ujo Music, HIFI Labs) on our team as advisors. 

What is Decent?

Decent is a no-code contract builder and protocol for creators to easily construct highly customizable token-based projects. From feature-complete and gas-efficient standard NFT contracts to starter kits for customizable release pages and more, any creator or organization can start their web3 journey with Decent. 

Decent’s tools are designed to meet creators and developers wherever they are in their web3 journey. The Creator HQ, our no code contract builder, enables artists and non-technical users to launch highly customizable projects without prerequisite knowledge of blockchains. The JavaScript SDK is designed to onboard new developers into web3 by enabling them to easily deploy, interact, and link together Decent’s smart contracts, so even beginner developers can deploy sophisticated web3 applications without ever touching Solidity. Advanced developers can contribute to the protocol directly, and we are extremely excited by early contributions of EIP 5553 and zkEditions. All tools are permissionless and all deployments are owned 100% by creators.

Though the dashboard in Creator HQ, users can:

• Deploy projects to Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, or Optimism

• Easily manage live releases, all in one place

• Track revenue and withdraw funds with the click of a button

• Manage royalty splits and metadata

• Access their own bespoke release pages

• Create embeddable iFrames

• View analytics - coming very soon!

Decent’s modular protocol arms creators with highly customizable tools that they can truly make their own:

• ERC721A with splits functionality for creators

• Rentable tokens

• Dynamic pricing models

• NFT AMMs 

• NFT staking and community treasuries

• Airdrop, allowlisting, token-gating, and more

The core SDK enables developers to access the full set of protocol functionality via JavaScript hooks. Specifically for our music builders, we are also excited to unveil a second SDK for Decent UX components! With this tool, developers can create their own music player, minting site, and marketplace with Decent’s infrastructure. To get up and running with the SDK, we recommend beginning with the Start Decent starter repo.

Since launching the Creator HQ, Protocol and SDK in October, tens of thousands of NFTs have been created by musicians, creators, and organizations. The use cases have been broad and incredible — new monetization methods for art, access passes to gated content and DAOs, tickets for IRL events, token-gated audio and video live streams, and more. We are excited to power the next wave of individual markets, owned and controlled by their creators, that will be the future of culture and commerce. 

Markets are the new platform.

Native internet money enables cultural goods like memes, consumer sentiment, art, music, and more to be monetized in new ways. Previously, consumers relied on IP management companies and corporations to ascribe value to culture. You can’t put a price on subjective works, but that is the current state of the world. Recorded lyrics are offered at $9.99/mo.; a picture is worth 1,000 words and social media advertising teams will tell you the exact price of each.

Culture is under monetized because it is both emergent and ephemeral. Annual planning and pricing consultancies are not well suited to capture it, which means — to date — culture has also been woefully under monetized to the detriment of its creators. Art and music NFTs priced by the wisdom of the crowd are a glimpse as to what a new future might look like.

There might have been a time where culture was actually dictated: Vogue set the latest fashion, a label or primary music magazine picked the best song, etc. Limited distribution enabled this: labels picked the song everyone liked because they chose what pressings were available in physical stores. Unlimited distribution has made culture emergent: influencers dictate fashion, TikTok memes chart songs.

Cultural markets are a bazaar, not a corporate retailer. Platforms are united by a singular experience enforced by siloed data and financial infrastructure. Bazaars are an array of experiences united by shared space. On the internet, shared space is a common denominator for settlement, permissionless movement between applications, and the ability to launch new ones.  

Decent is building the space for cultural markets to bloom.

Where We’re Going

Alongside our investors and advisors, we are grateful to have built an incredible team that works day in and day out to further our vision for a creator owned, market based economy.

In the near future we will be continuing with:

• More features and functionalities within the Creator HQ

• Co-developments with other web2 and web3 platforms that will allow for exciting network effects and use cases 

• Website native social functions and identity layers that make it easy to connect between creator markets

• Expanding our team! If you believe in a future owned and controlled by creatives, join our innovation and mission-driven team — we are looking for a full stack dev to take up the cause.

Join us in the movement by following Decent on Twitter, joining our Discord, and hopping into our Telegram chats to connect with other artists and developers looking to collaborate and build!

Excited to keep innovating with you all.

Will C, Charlie, Will K, and Xander