I'm Chao. I'm the CEO and also the co-founder of Copus. I have a background as a producer and also a musician. I write music and produce sound for animation and films. Actually, all of our team members, including our founder and CEO Hando, who is a film director, have creative backgrounds.
The reason we founded Fractopus and Copus is because, as a creator myself, I found that new or grassroots content creators often struggle to define their content. Even their music and other works aren't always owned by them — sometimes they can't distribute their content themselves, or even display it on their own websites, because the ownership has been sold to other platforms.
That's why we came up with the founding vision of Copus: to build a product that helps everyone better understand and access the content that creators have made. It should also deepen the connection between creators and audiences. These two core beliefs drove the creation of Copus and our protocol, Fractopus.
Just like I said, the ownership is a big part. But if we look at it from a more specific, problem-to-solution point of view, there are three main problems we've seen.
First is the issue of information cocoons. Every platform gatekeeps its own content. For example, many crypto people are active on Twitter, but if you're only on YouTube, you might miss or receive information days later.
Second, there's algorithmic bias. Whether it’s a search engine or just a platform's own search function, they are often biased. You need to meet specific requirements to show up. For example, on Twitter, replies might carry more weight than likes in how content is ranked. So it's hard for content creators to get real reactions, and also hard for users to find the content they want.
Third, you might think that in the AI age, it's enough to ask a question and get an answer. But discovery isn’t always about asking and answer the right question — sometimes you don’t even know what to ask or what keywords to search, just know like a very draft idea. And with AI, the results can vary a lot depending on how you phrase your question.
So we think AI lacks the human touch. The ask-and-answer model isn't always suitable for content discovery. That’s why our goal is to eliminate information cocoons, or we want to be more open. We are open-source, and anyone can contribute to the system or build their own version of how to use Copus and Fractopus. We're not tied to a single platform. We have a browser extension that allows users to link any URL to a specific page, creating connections between different types of content. We use AI to make initial recommendations, but the links that remain are human-verified and centered around what the community has engaged with.
The whole concept — or core concept — is community-driven internet discovery. The "comedy" part represents real people, real humans. We allow each website to be recommended or have a list of curated related links. These lists are curated by actual users who click, vote, and interact with the content — similar to how you'd like a YouTube video.
AI helps organize and make initial connections, especially when users don't know what they’re looking for. On our Copus platform, users can also see how all their content connections form visually — especially if they're doing personal research using the extension. They can see where they started, where they ended, and how everything is connected.
Unlike traditional platforms, we can do this platform less, this works everywhere — personal blogs, tweets, YouTube videos. There's no central platform or information cocoon. Compared to search engines, there’s no biased algorithm. You'll see what others have linked and discovered. You will see what if you visit a certain page, it already has links that's the record of the other people's recognition between this certain page and other links and it's all proved by human. The AI makes initial suggestions, but it’s a seamless experience — just one click shows you all related content.
Fanfiction is an interesting topic. Most fanfics and secondary IP creations live in a kind of gray area. Platforms like AO3, Pixiv, and even Twitter or YouTube are used to share fan content.
The problem is discovering and accessing this content across platforms. Our users love that they can use just one extension to find all this content. Another one is we are open source and also decentralized basically like all of our content are on chain, so a lot of fan fictions and especially any like secondary IP created contents. They are usually in a very dangerous situation because they can get taken down very easily by platforms. But through us, it's your own content they store it on chain and it's all decentralized.
We also allow decentralized payments. A lot of fans will purchase while just doing donations and other stuff to their favorite content writers and if you are on like Patreon, you can do it, but just like what I said, you can still get in troubles with the legal risks. But through us, we provide a decentralized way to do the decentralized payments, and it's safer for both content creators and also the fanfiction lovers themselves. So, those are the three main points that we solved, what's the specific users group need, and that's how we make our own like product market fits recently.
Previously, we raised an angel round. Our lead investor was AO Ventures, which powers our storage infrastructure, they have their ecosystem fund to support us. We also partnered with Sea DAO, a Chinese content DAO.
Fundraising was helpful for building our MVP and identifying product-market fit. But what makes us different from many other Web3 products is that we actually have a path to self-sustainability. It's very good for starting and even before you figuring out your actual product market fit because it's a very very early stage and nobody can guarantee any product market fit. So, it's very good for you to be like an MVP and then go out to reach those ecosystem, and also funds with lots of resources that they can actually help you find certain users to try to test.
And since then, I think we're quite different with many other products especially in web3 products, that we actually have ways to be self-sustainable. Most of our users are coming from the Web2 side, and they are willing to pay content creators. They've even asked us when they can start doing that. Creators also keep asking how they can receive support. So we’re not under heavy pressure to monetize quickly. So, it gives us a little bit more relief on doing a fundraising for next round, and that's basically I think it's very different make us pretty different from other product as we know.
Let me pull out the actual numbers we've been achieved:
We now have around 4,000 registered users and about 30,000 monthly visits. Before April, we had only 1,800 users and 1,500 monthly visits. So, we have way more monthly visit after we found our product market fit. Right now, have over 600 active creators who’ve published more than 3,600 works, they are not only just registered users, they are actual creators. There are 21,000 content links between posts — so on average, each post has 6–7 different connections. That shows our idea of connecting the contents between each other have been already proved that everyone really needed as a creator's mind, and also as a fan of the creators. They would love to figure out what's the connections between different contents posed by different creators, and even in different platforms.
0G, I would say it comes in with us in a very very good timing. Now, with 0G we can store larger files — images, even videos. Also provides us with another layer of safety and permanence. If creators ever face legal threats or have to take down their work, they can have a permanent storage or like a memory all of their content. They can still have very straightforward access to everything — their posts, files, and even all the connections between them.
As an open-source platform, users can even build their own versions or personal knowledge libraries using 0G’s infrastructure.
We’re looking forward to 0G’s support for large language models and on-chain computation. Much of our content discovery is powered by AI, and doing that computation on-chain with 0G because there's nowhere else better to do it, especially as a web3 perspective and what is more important is we want to see if we can do more computation on chain instead of using the server currently at. It would bring more transparency and trust.
We’d also love to move more of our infrastructure on-chain. That would make our system even more decentralized and trustworthy for our users.
One major takeaway is that, as a small team with limited resources, we have very limited energy to do a lot of important things and it takes a longer time to do. OnePiece Labs make us determine to be more self sustainable than to fully chase on the fundraising. I know many funders like us, are very good at building product and have very cool product, but we might not be the best person to fully commit our whole energy and time to do the fundraising. Because that part is very time consuming.
Also 0G and OnePiece Labs gave us the confidence say if our product is good enough, if we have found a true user base, especially for part of market fit, we should have the confidence of doing turn to self sustainable business. This will also definitely give you a way more confidence when you're talking about certain details with some investors.
OnePiece Labs taught us that if your product is strong and your user base is real, you can survive without constantly chasing funding. That realization gave us confidence — and flexibility — to grow at our own pace and negotiate better when needed.
Before joining the program, we explored a lot — build in Web3, AI content creators, Twitter communities, etc., they also ship lots of platforms. Then we have locked down into these fan fictions. Because throughout the whole program with OnePiece Labs, we've been told we really need to do very grounded because we are content creators. From traditional content creation industry, we should reach out to more people we know, no matter if they're Web 2 or Web 3. We shouldn't be only limiting us to Web 3 even though our infrastructure is built on decentralized technology, or we're using AI doesn't mean we only need to reach out to AI content creators or the AI lovers. Everyone will need AI no matter if it's question based AI chatbots, or discovery tools like us. It helped us to be more open minded.
We were encouraged to go back to our roots as creators.
We focused on the kinds of users who were most like us — fan fiction writers, grassroots storytellers — and that supported us find strong product-market fit. It also expanded our user bases in, led to faster, more organic growth.
We want to keep supporting our creator community — what we call "Weavers." They both create and connect content, weaving the web together.
And we'll launch our $WEB token to reward their contributions. We’re also planning a new kind of advertisement system: instead of centralized revenue distribution, advertisers will directly pay page owners and Weavers who help connect content. Like what I said we're a browser extension, it can be used on any website. So, it's a perfect way and a new way of doing Ads. Previously, the advertisement company just basically collect the money all together and then distribute them separately, but since then as we're making a new model, the advertisers will directly pay the page owner and also the web viewers for connecting their content together, and this is a more direct way that we are never seen in any platform or even from big companies. We're pretty confident that we'll bring a lot of real benefits to our web viewers.
Also, we’re also keeping a close eye on 0G’s next updates — like on-chain LLMs and more scalable storage, so we can store more, we can link more, we can use even AI fully on chain.
Whole digital content. A trend we have been see from the past, from the actual purchases and buyings like from Amazon to those individual websites which craps created a lot of famous brand.
We believe content creators will increasingly move away from centralized platforms like YouTube and Twitter. People are building their own websites, newsletters, and communities. Fans are more willing to pay directly for content — rather than watch ads and hope that revenue trickles back to the creator. Compared to previously way, it is a very indirect way and we're trying to change it. Right now, they have way more willing to pay for content directly because they have all the fans and all the users really value. Think that, the content itself is valuable enough for them to do the purchase though. I think it's a very good timing for us to dive in.
Like to fully committed to the digital content creators. also as a decentralized platform, we're gonna treat them better because we're not like centralized platform which can take down the content, take down the income. No, that's not what we want. We're decentralized in the open source, like crypto payments have provided everyone a safer way in many places in the world. They have regulations about certain content and payments. So, it provides a better and safer way for both creators and the content consumers.
The first one is focus on real value. We’re confident in being self-sustainable because we’re solving a problem we understand. We’re both content creators and consumers, we know what they want. And it's easier to find product market fit than to find investors sometimes. There's lots of actual pain points which inside of Web2 that can only solve by Web3 just like what I said decentralized storage, decentralized payment for certain content, and this kind of area is actually not a lot of people are touching because many of us are focusing on DeFi or Coin stuff, which is more direct, but there are lots of existing pain points which you can fully discover.
Don’t over-rely on tokenomics or instant incentives. Your product should work on its own. Incentives are just the cherry on top. The community is the key, especially for a project like us. You need your users to be more active, to provide valuable content and connections. So, do not get any solicitation instant incentive, do not incentivize them, and just basically test. If your product itself can solve their pain points, if they already have retaining, you're kind of already rewarding them. And you give them isn't reward, if you want extra, to do more collaboration. If you want to focus a stronger group or span yourself and your existing users to advertise for you, that's what I will say, just really really use your own products to satisfy them, to make them willing to pay first. And if you have confidence of they will to pay to use, I think it will be a lot easier than to try, to solve your token price and something like that.
For AI startups, explore diverse use cases. Keep your product open and transparent. There’s more than one way to use AI chatbots— I love using chatbots, but they shouldn’t be the only way, and definitely not the sustainable way. For Web3 projects, it’s common to do token launches and airdrops, but it has to be done sustainably. You need to help the community understand that each new reward or incentive will be more valuable as your product and community continue to grow. And most importantly, never forget your most loyal product-market-fit users. They’re your best supporters — they helped promote you from zero to one alongside your team. Don’t forget them, and don’t let them disappointed.
Treat your loyal users well. They are your earliest advocates and biggest champions. As a decentralized product, more openness is usually what sets us apart from the big Web2 giants. We're very open — for example, we’re open source, and we're also very transparent with our development. We do weekly reports for all of our users, so they can see a summarized version of our team meetings. I’d just say: prioritize openness. Let your users and your fan base know that you’re actively building. Let them see what you’ve achieved — it’s actually a great thing to share. Some early-stage users may even see their content, or the entire platform, as their own child in a way — because they’ve spent countless time on it, they have provided very good contents or attention to the product. They’ll genuinely be happy for your progress. It’s like me and my parents — if I don’t call them every week, they get worried about me. It’s kind of the same thing.
