Hey HN!

We’re a small team of artists, developers, and coffee lovers who’ve watched a lot of websites we love shut down over the years. We’ve been looking for a way to support them with income and exposure.

We see that more people are interacting with the web through AI instead of visiting sites directly, so the ad-based model is breaking. The open web needs a new business model.

Our take is to incentivize people (and, in the future, AI agents) to find and share valuable content (links), with both the finder and the original creator rewarded.

Along the way we were inspired by discussions like:

Pocket shut down: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44063662

x402 protocol: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45347335

“To survive the AI age, the web needs a new business model”: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44598248

Key features

Social bookmarking It’s like a decentralized Digg or a Pinterest-for-websites. You can share (curate) any URI (URL) through the site or the browser extension. Others can collect and build on your collections.

Pay-to-visit Finding valuable content is valuable. You can set a stablecoin price for visiting a link you shared. Payments are powered by the x402 protocol.

Support sites/content you love Half of the pay-to-visit revenue goes to the author of the original content, claimable after they opt into x402 or register a Copus account.

Permanent storage Your collections (bookmarks) are automatically stored on the Arweave blockchain. We pay the storage fees so you’ll never lose them.

Other features we have in mind

Spaces Like Pinterest boards, to organize your collections and collaborate with others.

Weave If a link reminds you of another link, you can “weave” them together in a “you may also like” section. It’s a bit like a collective Obsidian graph where standalone websites become a connected map and every site is a rabbit hole.

AI agent support You can train agents to curate and purchase for you.

Social features Follow accounts with great taste.

Who we imagine this is for

If you’ve been bookmarking over the years, you already have tons of internet gems in hand! Please pick the best ones to share with the world. They’re valuable for both readers and original creators.

Were you a Pocket user? Save your best bookmarks here and never lose them. (We plan to support putting a copy of the whole website on-chain once the project scales. Right now we put the link, category info, and your recommendation notes on-chain for free.)

Some other things

Copus is open source, with the frontend built using Claude Code.

We plan to launch a governance token to put ownership of the project into the hands of the people who use it.

We don’t mess with rights and privacy. Aside from some essential terms needed to keep the project running, your rights remain yours.

Copus has a Chinese version (Copus.io), which is a haven for around 150k Chinese fan-fiction lovers rn. We might merge the two sites once the English content reaches scale or we might not.

How we plan to make money

We’re still figuring it out. The first idea is:

Take a 10% fee on each payment.

Put unclaimed creator earnings into low-risk investments (similar to how stablecoins earn yield).

Hope you enjoy Copus, and thank you in advance for trying it out early!

Show HN: Copus – Internet gem marketplace for bookmark collectors (x402-powered)