The Verdant Banjo · terms · version 2026-09-12
What happens to what you slide across.
What you are handing over
You are showing us a piece of work. You keep it. Submitting gives Scrypt LLC permission to look at it, to keep a copy while we consider it, and — if you tick the box — to print your name and its title on the stack.
What we might do with it
If we want to put your work on a product, we will write to you. Nothing happens until we both agree in writing. The standing offer for work we take is: ten per cent of net revenue on every product your work fits — one rate, whatever the product turns out to be — a non-exclusive licence for twenty-four months, and your name printed on or with the product. We do not pay up front, and we do not promise that any work will be chosen.
If you answered the schedule
The schedule on the wall lists work we are asking for. Answering one pays the same as everything else here: ten per cent of net revenue on every product the work becomes. We do not pay a fee up front. We would rather tell you that plainly than dress it up.
What is different about schedule work is that it is drawn from our own characters and world, so the licence is exclusive and runs for as long as the products stay in print — not the twenty-four months above. You keep your drawing and the right to show it in your portfolio, your name is printed with it, and we may add an element of our own to the work before it is produced. Where a piece becomes part of a larger set, your share of that set is agreed in writing before anything is printed, never assumed.
If we then want you for the tarot project as a whole — a suit, the frame, the back — that is a separate conversation with separate terms, and it is where a one-time fee or a different revenue split gets negotiated. The licence terms above do not apply to schedule work, and schedule terms do not apply to work you brought in on your own.
Your tools are your business
Any tool is welcome, including AI. We ask what you used so the credit line can be honest.
Who may slide something across
You must be eighteen or over, and the work must be yours or work you have the right to offer. Do not send us anyone else’s.
The card and the joke
They are a gift for the walk in. They are not payment, and they carry no promise.
If you brought us a job instead
Sliding a brief across the bar is an enquiry, not an engagement. We hold your brief in confidence, we do not publish it or your name anywhere, and nothing is agreed until Thomas Lanham, Curator, sends you a written proposal and you accept it in writing. The budget you tick is a range to help us answer honestly, not a price. When you need it is likewise a starting point: delivery is agreed in the proposal, not here.
You keep what you own. If we build something together, who owns it is written down before it is made, not after it succeeds.
What the house actually does
Plainly, and without the furniture. Scrypt LLC is an interactive entertainment and e-commerce company. We build original intellectual property and every system that carries it to a paying audience, and we take a small number of outside engagements each year.
Puzzle and contest systems. A public contest is an adversarial environment. We design the cipher and the machinery that has to survive it — answer custody as salted hashes, a submission form that never confirms correctness, one clock in UTC, a documented tiebreak published before anyone enters, and complete attempt logging. Integrity is invisible when it works. The failure is never the puzzle; it is a contested result you cannot prove.
AI production pipelines. Generative tools treated as production components rather than magic. Versioned parameters, so any asset can be reproduced six months later. Separated stages, so you approve source fidelity before paying to animate a mistake. Written rejection criteria, which can be handed to someone else in a way taste cannot. Automated QA that inspects output before a human does.
Virtual artist development. Position before personality. Voice identity as a versioned asset. A catalog that coheres, a release cadence an audience can attach to, and rights and provenance records from the first day rather than the day they are needed. We build these for ourselves and for others, and we disclose which is which.
Publishing and distribution. Distribution is a build, not an upload. Structured data, syndication configured per directory, and titles chosen partly for how they behave as a search query. One body of work rendered completely in a few formats beats one clip posted to six platforms.
How an enquiry goes
You slide it across. The form. Ten minutes.
We talk. Thirty minutes, running in both directions — we assess fit, you assess whether the machinery is real. Either of us can say no without awkwardness.
You get an answer within three working days: yes, no, or not yet, with the reason. We do not leave enquiries open.
Withdrawing
You can withdraw at any time before we have agreed anything by writing to banjo@satoshiscrypt.com. We will delete our copy and take your name off the stack. Work we have not taken is deleted twenty-four months after it arrives.
The house also keeps a very small management roster: position, voice, catalog. It is not a label and it does not buy your work, and it is small on purpose. There is no form for it. If that is the conversation you want, write to the Curator.
Scrypt LLC, Kentucky. Questions to the Curator: curator@satoshiscrypt.com.