NFT infrastructure protocol Decent raises $3.5 million from Y Combinator and others: Exclusive

Decent, an NFT infrastructure protocol that helps artists monetize their work, raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round.

Crypto-focused venture capital firm Archetype led the round, with Y Combinator, Circle Ventures, Palm Tree Crew Crypto and its co-founder Kyrre Gorvell-Dahll (aka Kygo, a Norwegian DJ and music producer) also participating.

Angel investors, including Ilya Fushman of Kleiner Perkins and Ian Lapham of Uniswap Labs, also joined the round, Decent co-founder Will Collier told The Block on Thursday.

The funding was secured via an equity and token warrant arrangement, Collier said.

Decent was established last year as a curated NFT marketplace for artist releases. It launched the protocol last month, consisting of Creator HQ and a javascript SDK. "Creator HQ is a no-code creation and management hub for artists to customize and build unique NFT projects and manage their revenue, splits, metadata and more," Collier said. "The SDK allows any developer to build on top of and customize our smart contracts and infrastructure with just a few lines of javascript — a far more globally known language than Solidity (which is what smart contracts are written in)."

Collier likened the Decent protocol with what Squarespace does for websites and Canva does for design.

With fresh capital in hand, Decent will expand its team of six by hiring one more full-stack engineer, Collier said.

The NFT/gaming vertical of the crypto sector continues to grab the most venture capital at the seed stage amid the so-called crypto winter, The Block Research wrote recently. The overall percentage of deals in this vertical also increased to 47% last month from 37% in October.