DECENT: “Bringing Democracy to the World of Media”

DECENT is a peer-to-peer network that looks to solve the problems entertainers have in making a profit from their intellectual properties. Whether the loss of profits be from piracy or from fees taken by middlemen, DECENT plans to combat both by using the blockchain to ensure that creators receive the compensation they are due.

According to the DECENT whitepaper, this is made possible through the use of “asymmetric cryptography and advanced secret sharing algorithms” which are used for “proper encryption and decryption” of data. DECENT opens up a cost-effective platform that allows anyone to build applications on top of it, easily facilitating the distribution of media in all forms.

A recently released video, demonstrating step-by-step how to buy and sell content, rate the author, and check whether the transactions have been securely saved in the DECENT blockchain is here:

When asked about how DECENT will work and how each type of user plays their own significant role in the system, Matej Michalko, co-founder of DECENT told BTCMANAGER:

“DECENT incorporates a unique system of P2P digital content sharing with an intrinsic system of payments which requires no middleman in order to establish a one-to-many relationship between the author and his content consumers (readers, listeners, viewers, etc.). Content consumers will have a unique possibility to rate the author and his piece of content (e-book, video, music, software). Authors are thereby enabled to build a decentralized reputation secured by cryptography and the blockchain. Thus, DECENT is bringing democracy to the world of media.”

The DECENT network works by splitting all users into three roles: authors, content consumers, and publishers. Authors are responsible for making the content, and then setting a price for it. Content consumers are only able to access the content after paying the correct amount, and the author only receives payment after the user receives the content. The publisher acts as an escrow as well as a distributor, getting paid for distributing content to the consumers as well as storing the content of authors. While there may be some fees, the fees required to run the DECENT network are exponentially lower than ones seen in a traditional distribution channel.

“The world of media is dominated by oligopolies of big players. There is a lack of free publishing platforms that would transform the current market dominated by oligopolies into a perfectly competitive one. Currently, the biggest players in the market charge about 60% for e-book distribution, for example,” said Michalko.

DECENT right now is in the final steps of the alpha stage, with a crowdsale scheduled for Q1 of 2016, according to the DECENT website. In the crowdsale, users will be able to purchase DECENT tokens using bitcoin. These DCT tokens are the currency that run the platform. 

According to the website, “the miners are represented by the ‘publishers’ who verify all the transactions (including proof-of-retrievability and proof-of-delivery). When publishers generate the block using PoS, they distribute the payments and keep a part of the distributed tokens for themselves.”

DECENT determined that it would be necessary to build its own blockchain in order to implement the various types of transactions needed to secure the network and its content. DCT  is used as a reward for seeders/miners and it also acts as an anti-spam protection.

Full details about DECENT, its protocol, and its philosophy of freedom of expression are available on the DECENT website and in its whitepaper.