An introduction to Network Services

On-chain governed blockchains such as those faciliated by the Substrate SDK open up exciting new design space for imagining digital communities that can maintain sovereignity over their economic, cultural and organisational infrastructure.

They are an evolutionary leap from today’s incumbent social networks that exist to extract and monetise the creative contributions of ‘users’ - who gain access to free services in return for their attention becoming the product.

In on-chain governed networks, people have the potential to form decentralised and emergent associations of members without the need for a central authority such as a corporation, or even a country to keep affairs things in order.

Members of these networks are able to collectively maintain and upgrade the shared infrastructure on which they all depend, enabling interesting new organisational, funding and value accrual models.

The rise of sovereign, on-chain governed social networks present many novel opportunities for experimentation, however their decentralised governance can also present major challenges when it comes to coordinating development.

A network service provider (NSP) such as Decent Partners exists to address this challenge.

NSPs onboard external talent, teams and projects to networks - curating, communicating and formalising proposals that are then voted on by a decentralised network of token holders, before ensuring the careful deployment and management of approved funds, the successful delivery of agreed milestones alongside the timely reporting of issues, progress and lessons learned through the project.

Through this evolving process the NSP gains deep experience in the challenges of decentralised governance, grant funding, value capture and community development, which in turn then informs the recruitment of the next wave of talent, the establishment of new processes and the iteration of governance technologies in a positive feed back loop.

Our expectation is that the many manually executed roles of an NSP will be gradually automated away as systems become easier to use and experience grows.

With this said, we also think the role of a NSP will evolve as new challenges emerge, therefore ensuring the long term viability and necessity to the role.

To encourage collective intelligence and to avoid centralisation, our intention is that Decent Partners will gradually decentralise by becoming a digital cooperative of members and a core part of the protocol.

You cannot purchase membership, the only way to join the collective is through the successful development and delivery of projects.

At the heart of Decent is the dUSD stablecoin that is issued by our partners Brale.

Unlike Circle's USDC or Tether's USDT, decent is managed cooperatively whilst profits are directed into a global creative fund managed by members.

Groups who make dUSD their preferred payment rails get a seat at the table, whilst creators can propose to the fund in return for assigning genesis rights in their projects.

Decent Partners also retains genesis assets that represent the cultural collateral put forward by its partners as part of the funding process.

These creative assets represent the earliest ideas, concepts or forms of a creative idea and can become valuable in the future through their emerging cultural impact, utility or access functions.

Decent Partners holds these assets in a reserve as an emergent exhibition of the creative potential of connected minds.

Decent Partners puts forward proposals for on-chain governed networks to fund applied research and development within its own organisation and on behalf of partner groups.

It also coordinates the development of new blockchain networks that faciliate some key function for its emerging collective of projects.

Decent Partners currently leverages its commercial income to offer teams it is incubating development loans fixed at 0% interest.
These loans are repayable first in line from revenues derived from successful projects.

This improves upon the standard terms set by startup incubators who generally take between 6% and 20% of a team's initial shares.

It also sets a path to creating ventures that deliver positive cashflows generating, rather than looking to exit, ensuring teams can stay aligned to their long term goals.

Decent Partners offers Auto Fabrica (AF) support and funding in the form of a repayable 0% loan to develop a project.

Decent provides R&D funding in dUSD for the creation of a decentralised creator collective who will make use of the underling on-chain organisational infrastructure and tools.

AF’s R&D is focused on a feasibility study for an Electric Concept vehicle that enables their large community to add their talents, have their contributions credited on-chain, be paid for their effort and become members of a potentially valuable on-chain organisation.

The R&D is successfully delivered and advances to the development of a more ambitious project that will require larger funding and may also involve partnerships with existing corporations.

Decent negotiates with outside patrons who are interested in collaborating with AF and the creator collective who brought it to life.

The income is shared with those who contributed to the project, with returns automated depending on the assigned credit to a contributors Seed which also appends their relative contributions, leading to the further evolution of their on chain identity.