Face-to-Face Interview Arweave Ecosystem Project——“Decent Land Labs”
Face-to-Face Interview Arweave Ecosystem Project——“Decent Land Labs”
💡 Web3 is booming, and Arweave is becoming a popular infrastructure choice for developers. PermaDAO is a community where everyone can contribute to the Arweave ecosystem. It's a place to propose and tackle tasks related to Arweave, with the support and feedback of the entire community. Join PermaDAO and help shape Web3!
Author：Xiaosong HU @ Contributor of PermaDAO
Translator: Xiaosong HU @ Contributor of PermaDAO
Reviewer: Decent Land Labs
Recently, many friends around me (even Web3 practitioners) have asked me: What is Arweave, and what are the major benefits of Arweave recently? I think for most people, the term Arweave is still very unfamiliar to them. Even if they have heard of "Arweave", they only know that they are doing distributed storage. The author attended the Arweave in Asia ecological conference in September this year. Compared with other branch venues, our place is quite "halal". European and American projects, developers, crew-neck shirts, shorts, and discussions on purely technical topics are the common tags of Arweave, which are obviously different from the "pool" parties held by projects in exchanges and currency circles. PermaDAO hopes that through interviews with Arweave eco-projects, it can try its best to "disenchant" and introduce to readers the most real state of everyone in the Arweave ecosystem.
At the same time, we hope that the PermaDAO division of labor and collaboration model, everPay, and future everVision-related products will allow ecological European and American project parties to start logging into PermaDAO. They are also trying to deeply understand our collaboration tools, including submission, review, and commissioning PermaDAO Assist in developing some project tasks. It is hoped that PermaDAO can provide a complete set of underlying infrastructure services for the Arweave ecosystem before the next bull market arrives.
With the recovery of market conditions, Arweave's Token market performance has increased by more than 60% in the past week (as of the editing date). So, what kind of work are the project parties and developers in the Arweave ecosystem currently doing? With such curiosity, our Arweave ecosystem project interview has entered the sixth issue. Today we are interviewing Benjamin, the co-founder and CEO of Decent Land Labs. Before that, I would like to briefly introduce the background of the Decent Land Labs project to you:
About Decent Land Labs’ Project Profile
In August 2023, decent.land — the Arweave-based project which set out to built social and identity primitives — underwent a rebrand and became Decent Land Labs. It now has a completely new mission and flagship protocol aimed at breaking down barriers between different blockchain networks and protocols.
At the same time, Decent Land Labs has introduced the Molecular Execution Machine (MEM), a developer platform that supports Web3 serverless functionality. MEM is designed to simplify the construction, testing, and deployment of serverless functions based on blockchain technology. It provides developers with high scalability and rapid execution capabilities while abstracting complex encryption concepts and the need for a deep understanding of smart contracts, transactions, wallets, or blocks. This platform can assist developers in building and deploying trustless DApps in a shorter amount of time. Protocols like ANS, Ark, Permacast, and namespace.gg are all built on top of MEM. Additionally, Decent Land Labs is currently in the process of raising seed funding led by LD Capital, Longhash, and Foresight Ventures to further the development of its core protocol.
（Source: Decent Land Labs Homepage）
The following is the official content of the interview:
Part I: Regarding Decent Land Labs
Q1: Hello Mr. Benjamin! I'm glad you can accept our interview today, Could you please introduce the background of Decent Land Labs and how it was established?
A: decent.land was established in 2021 with the mission of building social and identity primitives on Arweave. We built a public square social protocol and a username layer back when SmartWeave was very early – before any kind of scaling solutions went live.
Since Arweave is a relatively niche chain, we set about building Ark Protocol to make it possible to attest to your Arweave identity’s ownership from addresses on other chains like Ethereum, NEAR and Solana. We saw this as a necessary step towards Arweave social – while Arweave’s permanent storage model lends itself well to social, there’s no denying that the assets and activity relevant to identity and reputation are elsewhere, on bigger chains.
We wrote Ark Protocol on EXM, a fast execution environment for SmartWeave which we extended via our own molecule.sh library to enable multichain functionality. When EXM shut down, we built an equivalent that combines the open-source elements of EXM with the molecule.sh library – Molecular Execution Machine, or MEM.
Since August, our main focus has been on building features and adoption for MEM, as well as a chain-agnostic identity framework on MEM called namespace.gg.
Q2: Can you give us an update on the project? Any scoop?
A: A few big pieces of recent news and upcoming launches:
namespace.gg will be the username layer for HackerNoon’s 50,000-strong contributor base
Akord will deploy MEM to power token-gated access to vaults using Ethereum assets
MEM just launched support for key-value storage, enabling super fast read/write from the state up to the standards of what a decentralized database would need
We are working on a private-by-default version of MEM called xMEM with support for encryption and secrets
Q3: Why would you want to name the project “Decent Land”?
A: It was chosen by our CTO, Darwin. I think it is a play on decentralization and decency (a user-first attitude), and because the .land TLD was available!
Q4: What are some significant milestones in the history of Decent Land Labs?
A: We launched our first iteration – decent.land usernames and the public square – in May 2021. By 2022, we had received a grant from Arweave and started seriously building. In the summer of 2022, we launched Ark Protocol. In February 2023, we launched Arweave Name Service and abstracted its architecture into namespace.gg. In August 2023, we launched MEM – the backend that now powers all Decent Land Labs protocols.
Q5: What is the future vision and plan for Decent Land Labs?
A: For MEM, the endgame is an appchain. To get us there, we’re exploring the best models for fraud proofs, building a custom gateway, and researching how to pull it all together into a node that can be run by anyone. A shorter-term goal is full EVM compatibility in MEM, and pushing for the adoption of namespace.gg.
Q6: Is there a specific timeline currently in place, and what additional resources are needed for its implementation?
A: We have a tentative timeframe of 12 months for MEM’s appchain evolution. There are a lot of moving parts and research still to be done. In the run-up, we’re looking to close our seed round, hire another backend developer, and ramp up marketing.
Q7. How many full-time staff members are currently working at Decent Land Labs, and what are the ways for others to get involved? How do you incentivize participation?
A: We currently have a CEO, CTO, fullstack developer, head of marketing & BD, and a part-time devrel engineer. Right now, we’re just salarying contributors. However, there are opportunities to get paid to build on MEM via hackathons like Permahacks!
Q8: Have you ever planned to create a DAO?
A: I’m of the opinion that very early-stage projects like Decent Land Labs need clear direction and momentum before transitioning into DAOs. We’re working more like a traditional startup for that reason – to avoid the chaos that can come with diffuse responsibilities. I think that more mature web3 organizations could benefit more from the DAO model because of network effects. At this small scale, it only adds confusion and coordination challenges to the mix.
Part II: Regarding Benjamin
（Benjamin, co-founder and CEO of Decent Land Labs）
Q9: Could you please share your educational background and professional experience?
A: Oddly enough, I studied music at university! However, having a degree in the humanities and an inclination towards writing meant I was able to get marketing roles. I was the first hire at a B2B SaaS startup in 2015 and grew in the role to become head of marketing. In my next role (at another B2B SaaS startup), I was head of growth but spent a good chunk of time on the technical side – implementing analytics tracking and growth experiments on the front-end side. I learned to code and obsessively studied everything from low-level systems programming to distributed networks. I left my job as head of growth to join as a founder in the Arweave ecosystem, and quickly met Darwin, who had just recently founded decent.land.
Q10: How did you become familiar with Arweave?
A: I can’t remember the exact first encounter, but at the time I was running a small magazine that covered internet art and culture, and found the permanent archiving angle of Arweave fascinating. My office was basically a home server farm and I was obsessed with preserving media, ripping VHS tapes, that sort of stuff. I reached out to Sam Williams to get an interview with him to talk about how Arweave can help archivists. This was even before Arweave’s Genesis block, so I guess they’d talk to just about anyone that’d write a story! We ended up chatting for hours, and later I followed up with him to find if there were opportunities to work in the ecosystem. I joined a team with Abdallah, the original founder of arweave.news, and helped scale it as an unofficial satellite org of Arweave’s marketing team.
Q11: In such a bear market environment, what advice do you have for those who want to enter web3?
A: We’re builders, so the only real impact a bear market has on us is the ability to secure funding. Thankfully we timed decent.land quite well and were able to secure a good chunk of our seed when the market was hot, and use it to build through the bear. My advice would be to align yourself with the tech you believe in, not charts.
Q12: Are you under a lot of pressure in life and work right now? Have you ever regretted it?
A: There’s a ton of pressure. I have investors, users, a wife, and a little daughter to support and answer to. But somehow it isn’t as exhausting as my old 9-5s. In no way do I regret leaving that stability to try and make it in an unfamiliar world. On paper, it’s vastly more difficult and much more pressure, but unlike before my mind is calm knowing I’m doing what I love.
Part III: Regarding PermaDAO and everVision
Q13: How do you perceive the team and business development of everVision?
A: We see everVision as one of our most valuable partners. The team is building amazing tech that complements ours and is full of smart and capable people that share our mission.
Q14: In your view, how should PermaDAO and Decent Land Labs collaborate in the future? （please give us some specific suggestions）
A: We're excited to collaborate on content and research. Actually, PermaDAO is already working on publishing in-depth technical research related to MEM, which I can't wait to see!
Q15: If we invited you to come to PermaDAO on board, would you be interested in participating?
A: (Answer very seriously) My schedule is packed these days, but I'm always willing to help with anything specific that might need my input!
Q16: Lastly, is there anything else you would like to say to the audience?
A: Thanks again to PermaDAO for the invitation. If there is only one sentence: Install Gentoo
Summary
While I've been hearing the name Decent Land Labs since I entered the Arweave ecosystem, and I often came across the distinctive name @xylophonez on Permaweb News' news page, it was this interview with our guest that provided a true opportunity for me to get in touch. I also learned that @xylophonez is, in fact, Benjamin. What struck me most during this interview was Benjamin's candor and sincerity. Whether addressing issues related to life's pressures or discussing the development of DAO organizations, he openly shared real-life situations with everyone. This completely overturned the traditional impression we had of Web3 founders and CEOs, which often portrayed them as glamorous figures without ordinary life concerns. I would like to express my gratitude once again to Permaweb News for making this connection. In you, I see the common traits of Arweave ecosystem project participants: inclusivity, a commitment to development, and purity. It's these characteristics that attract a group of outstanding and dedicated individuals working together for the betterment of the Web3 vision!
After the interview, we also introduced Decent Land Labs to the collaborative tools of PermaDAO and invited Decent Land Labs onboard PermaDAO and experience it, contributing to receiving incentives. At the same time, we look forward to PermaDAO providing high-quality services to more ecosystem project teams. Ecosystem leaders, please feel free to get in touch with us!
