CreatorFi is in full swing. In addition to the popular Lens, Nostr, Mirror, etc., I prefer to go to universities to discover interesting new projects. This time, I found Utopic AI, which is made by a Berkeley team and wants to become the next "Quora/Zhihu", in a Harvard Web3 Pitch. I would like to share it with readers.
Utopic's "Utopia": Becoming the Quora of Web3
Utopic started building today's product about 8 months ago. It relies on Use to Earn, a Web3 shared knowledge platform where users can create and discover various content to earn cryptocurrency, mint it into NFTs, and sell it with one click.
On Utopic, users can quickly earn cryptocurrencies by simply asking and answering questions, reading and writing, minting them into NFTs, selling them to fans, etc. Participating in Utopic's core actions can earn platform currency rewards, and the final withdrawal is Bitcoin.
In the field of Web2 content creation, it is normal for ordinary creators to not make money except for top creators and platforms. Utopic claims that about 80% of creators are dissatisfied with the income from their creations, and 99% of users are excluded from the economic reward cycle. At this point, Utopic believes that it can use the Web3 model to allow users in the content community to earn money from content production and interaction.
Utopic uses a dual token model. Utopic Point (UP) measures the efforts of users to contribute to the Utopic ecosystem. The core behaviors and activities performed by users in Utopic, such as reading, posting, voting, commenting, sharing, recommending, etc., are similar to user contribution points, and UP can be obtained. Utopic Token (UTOP) is the decentralized utility token of Utopic. It acts like a legal currency in society. It is an external symbol of supply in the financial reward system. It will be controlled by an open source smart contract and can run on its own.
User attention is a very stable and valuable resource. Each user can only get a limited supply per day. Their attention also tells the product what kind of content is more valuable (worthy of attention) than other content. Many social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Tiktok, etc. run their business models based on it. The more users and attention their product gets, the more valuable the product is. 1 UP is equivalent to 1 minute of attention time of an average user. Users do not only get UP by reading, but just use it to measure the effort/contribution to get UP.
In general, the core rules are:
- For every minute a user reads content, the user will receive 1 UP.
- The author will receive a certain amount of initial UP as a reward for publishing articles or answers. But the main reward should come from other users who consume the content. -
- For many interactions such as liking, commenting, bookmarking content, and many more, both users and authors will be rewarded with UP.
The current Utopic token distribution plan is as follows:
45% to all Utopic users, including content creators and content consumers.
30% will be reserved for the growth of blockchain-related infrastructure and ecosystem, including but not limited to on-chain infrastructure and data costs, marketing and operations, etc.
10% will be reserved for investors, advisors and key partners.
15% goes to the Utopic team for product development and improvement.
Utopic's revenue can mainly come from the following aspects:
contextually relevant and personalized advertising;
15% of UTOP is released daily;
NFT asset transaction fees;
any other future business opportunities and monetization.
In addition, creators can also obtain token monetization by owning and selling NFTs, obtaining UTOP released directly to users by the Utopic smart contract, etc.
Since the Utopic smart contract was officially launched, 100K, which is the same amount of UTOP, will be released every day until the end of 2023 (the first year). Then it will gradually decrease by 5% every year, that is, 95K per day in 2024. Therefore, by limiting the supply, it is possible for the future value of UTOP to increase. The total amount of UTOP will be fixed like Bitcoin.
UTOP release from January 1, 2023 is expected to be at = 730,512,147 upper level.
At the same time, there will be an initial distribution of 2 regular years of tokens to the Utopic team for product development and operations. That is = 73,000,000 UTOP.
The total supply of UTOP is capped at: 822 million UTOP.
Utopic will be tested in 2022, and the Utopic App for iOS and Android is expected to be launched in Q1/Q2 2023. NFT minting and sales mechanism will be released in Q2/Q3 2023. Utopic DAO will be organized from 2023 to Q1 2024.
The team behind Utopic is composed of technical leaders from companies such as Airbnb, Google, LinkedIn and Uber. They are a group of Silicon Valley technology veterans and experts in blockchain, artificial intelligence and machine learning, web applications and mobile development.
The author chatted with the founders Harvey and Y (pseudonym). Harvey previously did a PhD in machine learning at Berkeley and previously had a bachelor's and master's degree in CS. Y is responsible for the engineering of Utopic and is currently a senior software engineer at Uber. He previously worked at Google for 5 years and has been participating in related interest groups/study groups at Google since 2017.
The idea of creating Utopic came about 1.5 years ago, and we started testing the products of SocialFi and CreatorFi in June last year.
The team was initially accepted by Berkeley's startup accelerator SkyDeck, which provided a software development package worth $700,000. In addition, it won the second place in the GCEA Web3 track of the Global Chinese Entrepreneurship Competition and received an infrastructure reward worth $10,000. After that, the team began to develop MVP.
Since the project started in elite schools in North America, the team also demonstrated it in several Ivy League circles. Currently, most of the users are similar elite working-class people.
postscript
I found the team's pitch very interesting when I first saw it, and I also tried using Utopic's products. I was quite attracted to it. Utopic's logic is simple, and it does not have complicated DeFi functions. It is also much simpler than Lens, and it has not yet been connected to the wallet API.
I understand that the Utopic team is currently focusing on development and has very few resources for BD, which I think is a pity. If Utopic can find the right VC and BD resources, I believe it will also shine in the take-off CreatorFi, and even have a chance to surpass Mirror. After all, CreatorFi cannot and will not always rely on Web3 giants to drive traffic, and good products also need the opportunity to compete fairly for user resources.