SPP2 Decent Application
1. Applicant Information
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Company name: Decent Labs
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Website: https://decentdao.org
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Address: decentdao.eth
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Primary Contact(s)
- Parker McCurley, Founder and CEO, @themoondogshow on X, @moondog
- Aaron Ahmadi, Head of Community Marketing, @coldjeus on X, @jeus
- Rachel Brissenden, Head of Business Development, @RachelOnchain on X
- Company Overview
Decent enables ambitious onchain organizations to create structure and accountability so they can execute without sacrificing decentralization or legal compliance.
Our end-to-end operations platform allows core teams and communities to manage their onchain assets through an intuitive user interface that increases voter participation and keeps them focused on goals, not governance.
It’s a single platform for organizing DAOs and SubDAOs, managing token launches, drops, and payment streams, proposing and voting on measures, granting roles to contributors, and much more — with compliance built in and no code needed.
We’re built on top of the most popular smart contracts like OZ Governor and Safe, so organizations can use Decent as much or as little as they want to and remain compatible with their existing tools.
- Requested Amount:
- Single term. Requesting $300,000.
- Size of team and commitment
Decent is a full-time team of 15 committed to developing the most user-friendly DAO tooling on the market and proving that DAOs are the most effective way to collaborate towards goals.
We ship constantly and give personal, complete attention to our partners. We commit to our proposal and to the full support of ENS, the ENS contributors, and the ENS community as fellow decentralization maxis.
2. Eligibility Confirmation
- Company Age & Reputation
Decent exists to redefine how companies are built and run by making decentralization the obvious choice for human collaboration — we’re the only safe, user-friendly, and uncompromisingly onchain operations platform for DAOs.
But long before we were a DAO platform, we were founded in 2017 as a development agency for web3 projects. In over 8 years in crypto, we haven’t been hacked, rugged, or sued, a reputation we’re proud to maintain in this space 
We started with an initial investment of $1,000 from our co-founder, and over the following 5 years, scaled to $5M in revenue and 30 employees. Before building our own platform, we worked on over 30 crypto projects, including BRD, ShapeShift, and others who helped shape our belief in decentralization and building organizations onchain.
Starting in 2018, we helped launch one of the earliest DAOs, Sarcophagus — a permissionless, open source protocol that serves as a dead man’s switch to protect onchain assets in unpredictable circumstances. We built all the software, including a liquidity mining interface, and assisted the token distribution, which culminated in a ~$5.5M onchain tokenized raise. Sarcophagus was the project that inspired us first to be all-in on DAOs and onchain decentralization.
Then, in 2022, we decided to launch Decent DAO and align our company completely with our commitment to decentralization. We raised an investment round that was facilitated entirely onchain through tokens, and with those funds, created both Decent DAO and the Decent platform to support other onchain organizations/DAOs.
The Decent platform was built to help web3 organizations and projects more easily manage their treasuries/distribute tokens, and grow, inform, and include their communities. With the Decent platform, we’ve built a unified user experience for the wide range of decentralized and open source tools that exist, like ENS, OZGovernor, Safe, Sablier, and more.
In building the Decent platform and operating the DAO, we’ve been uncompromising in our commitment to and belief in the benefits of decentralization — relying on open source smart contracts and building safe, transparent, and compliant tools to support both on- and offchain contributions to decentralized organizations.
Agency is important to DAOs — that’s why we’re aiming to upgrade ENS operations one step at a time, where changes are most wanted. Decent is backwards compatible with existing stacks Safe, Sablier, Hats, OZGovernor, etc, so you can continue to use the platforms you love.
We provide an additional set of services that’s ethos aligned and you can choose the most effective implementation — everyone can continue to use what they’re already using, and we’ll help make transitions available where they’re most impactful.
We’ve also been longtime users and supporters of ENS, and we have a number of committed ENS holders at Decent who also use ENS domains.
In partnering with ENS, we’re aiming to help the decentralized community shape the Decent platform to its needs.
- Team Experience
As one of the first Ethereum development agencies, we’re as blockchain-native as it gets. As an agency, we’ve worked on hundreds of code repositories on the EVM, have helped our blockchain clients raise tens of millions of dollars, and today we ourselves operate completely onchain as we work toward our own vision of decentralization.
Notably, despite experimenting with many novel smart contract implementations in our work, our team has never had a security vulnerability revealed in any audit.
We’ve also implemented ENS on a wide variety of projects including our own platform, and several Decent team members are ENS token holders and domain hoarders <3
Leadership team:
Parker McCurley (parkermccurley.eth):
- 13 years in crypto
- Contributor to over 30 projects on Ethereum
- Boostrapped Decent Labs to 30 team members and $5M+ in revenue
Adam Gall (trainface.eth + too many ENS domains to list):
- Leads architecture and development for all Decent Labs projects
- Has never had a vulnerability revealed in a smart contract from any auditor
- Loves to collect ENS domains
John Huang (papercut.eth):
- 30 years of experience designing software and leading engineering teams
- Joined Decent from dYdX
Nicolaus Sherrill:
- Studied Graphic Communications at Clemson University
- Led brand and product design efforts for dozens of projects at Decent Labs venture studios
- Is currently making DAOs way more more usable
- ENS Token Endorsement Requirement
@5pence.eth has confirmed he is willing to attest that he will grant us the 50k ENS token endorsement delegation.
- OFAC Sanctions Compliance
We, Decent Labs, confirm that neither our organization nor any of our employees, contractors, or executive leadership is located in, or a resident of, an OFAC-sanctioned country. We further confirm that none of our business resources are derived from or routed through any country or entity that is subject to sanctions imposed by the United States (OFAC) or equivalent regulatory bodies. We pledge to remain compliant with all applicable sanctions laws and will promptly notify the ENS DAO if our status changes.
- Multi-Year Stream Eligibility
Decent is not eligible for a multi-year stream.
3. Open Source Commitment
Decent has been committed to open source development for its entire existence, and will remain so. Decent’s founder, Parker McCurley, got his start in software development thanks to open source tech — it was an accessible, equitable path forward when traditional institutions were out of reach — and as a team, even with incredibly diverse backgrounds, we all believe in the importance of open source tech to decentralization and accessibility.
We’ve built hundreds of repositories offered under the MIT license, including our current stack. Our current work can be explored in the Decent DAO GitHub.
For a look at some of our past work, you can head to the Decent Labs GitHub.
4. Scope of Work & Budget
Overview:
At Decent, we set DAOs free from the weight of their own governance, so they can focus on achieving their goals. We do this through both experienced, customized consulting and the Decent Platform, which consolidates everything decentralized orgs need for governance into a single, clean, mobile-friendly app.
We’re committed to creating solutions that are designed to fit perfectly with ENS operations. In partnering with Decent, ENS will gain choice above all — opportunities to improve efficiency, safety, and usability across all aspects of the governance process.
4.1 Basic Scope of Work
Requested amount: $300,000
Description:
We plan to onboard ENS to the Decent platform for a better governance experience and give the community and contributors the freedom of choice for all their governance needs. We’ll closely support before, during, and after the transition to build efficient governance practices that empower contributors and voters alike.
Key goals:
With our end-to-end platform, we’ll improve all aspects of governance for efficiency and engagement. We’ll:
- Reduce manual complexity — propose, discuss, temperature check and vote all in one UI. A single source of truth for the complete proposal lifecycle
- Improve transparency across voter information, financials, etc
- Boost voter engagement and reduce the logistical strain of governance
Through Decent, you have complete, configurable control over the ENS organization in ways that are more user-friendly, safe, and compliant. Here’s a look at a DAO setup in the Decent Platform:
SubDAOs for complete organizational modularity and control:
Fully composable roles and permissions:
Treasury management:
With Decent tooling and guidance, ENS DAO will:
- Consolidate onchain and offchain voting in one UI
- Enjoy gasless onchain voting for your token holders
- Gain administrative control over council multisigs
- Upgrade onchain contributor permissions and roles
- Manage streams, vesting, and payments in a single UI
- Soon: collaborate on drafts and discussions that turn into onchain proposals right from the Decent app
- Soon: maintain compliance for the DAO foundation with automated agreements attached to proposals
- Soon: onboard new users through DAO discoverability
And the whole way, we’ll guide you through transitions only where you want them. The process will be smooth and secure, with everyone retaining the agency to use the tools they like the most.
KPIs / Success Metrics:
Primary targets:
We’re evolving the Decent platform with our ENS partnership to meet the needs of ENS, consistently shipping and upgrading features to amplify governance through:
Q1 Targets
- Evolve group multisigs to a more secure setup as subDAOs
- Offer fine-grained control of permissions leveraging our Hats Protocol integration
- Bring on- and offchain governance into a single, mobile-friendly user interface
Q2 Targets
- Upgrade proposal lifecycle management with token-gated discussions drafts, temp checks, proposals, and voting, all in one UI
- Unify treasury management in a secure platform — drops, streams, vesting, contributor payments and more
Q3 Targets
- Begin the migration of governance conversations from Discourse to solve fragmentation between discussions and proposals
- Bring DAO discoverability to the Decent Platform to highlight ENS
Q4 Targets
- Consult the ENS foundation on legal and compliance needs and expenses to automate and reduce cost
- Anything else the community needs
Throughout SPP2, we also commit to:
- 99% uptime of the Decent platform
- 90%+ attendance in weekly MetaGov calls by a Decent team member
- Reporting on all work done and features shipped for ENS
- Consistent and available monitoring and support for bugs and troubleshooting
We drafted these KPIs with feedback and input from the ENS community, and if we’re selected for the SPP2, we’re also committed to a living partnership — adapting our KPIs to best suit the evolving needs of ENS and its community.
For a closer look at the Decent platform, watch this core feature introduction video.
Requested annual budget: $300k
5. Past Achievements & Additional Information
At Decent, we’re proud of how far we’ve come. Our story has unfolded over 8 years of all-in commitment to web3 and there’s too much to include in this application, but a useful summary could be:
- Decent’s platform is currently used to govern millions of dollars in onchain assets
- We bootstrapped an EVM smart contract development agency to $5M+ revenue and 30 team members
- We’ve helped launch dozens of projects on Ethereum
- We’ve worked with industry leaders like BRD, the first iOS Bitcoin wallet, and ShapeShift (where we helped build a wallet product)
- We helped launch one of the earliest DAOs, Sarcophagus, and were their software development team from the idea stage through their ~$5.5M seed round, which was facilitated fully onchain
- We launched ShutterDAO using the Decent platform
- We helped launch Vanta, a fully automated onchain venture fund
- We are the technology partner for the How to DAO e-learning program, onboarding 35+ new members of the DAO community per cohort
Decent itself operates entirely onchain using our own platform to onboard and pay contributors, distribute tokens, and facilitate decentralized governance. We’re funded through a $10M raise that we facilitated entirely onchain.
We also take care to build and nurture collaborative relationships with other decentralization maxis, and our list of friends is long. Whatever the result of the SPP2, we already count ENS DAO among them, and we look forward to strengthening this relationship.
To that end, Luis Bezzenberger of Shutter DAO said,
“The community’s decision to select Decent to manage the governance and treasury is a testament to their dedication to ensuring secure, reliable, and easily implementable standards.”
For more information about the Decent platform, head to https://decentdao.org.
6. Video Introduction (≤ 5 minutes)
Decent team introduction video
7. Conflict Of Interest Statement
As of today’s date, Decent Labs, Decent DAO, and their contributors and team members are free from any conflicts of interest relating to this proposal and ENS DAO. No members are Steward candidates nor do any have a compensated position at ENS Labs or other projects currently receiving funds from the DAO.
Decent DAO is self-sufficient and independent — all work for ENS DAO would be open source and a public good offered under the MIT license.
Thank you for reading this far!
Governance takes work, and being a contributor and voting member is critical to the success of decentralized organizations.
You’re making it possible to decentralize the world, and we’re grateful to be a part of that mission with you.
If you have any questions about us or feedback on our proposal, reply below — we’ll be here to chat!