What Matters Lab does

Matters Lab is a privately held Web3 social media company founded in 2018 and headquartered in Hong Kong with operations in Taipei. The company operates a portfolio of interconnected products anchored by Matters.Town, a decentralized publishing platform built on IPFS, Ethereum, and Optimism that serves over 100,000 content creators — primarily Chinese-language writers, journalists, and novelists — generating approximately 6 million monthly page views. The platform provides censorship-resistant content storage, NFT-powered subscriptions, ENS-based identity, and DAO-style governance, and it survived a sustained 2-week DDoS attack in mid-2022 by upgrading firewall infrastructure within 48 hours. Surrounding the core publishing platform are sub-products including Traveloggers (1,500 dynamic NFT avatars with transferable logbooks, pre-order sold out in 10 minutes), The Space (a Draw-to-Earn pixel canvas combining Harberger Tax and Universal Basic Income, governed by SpaceDAO), Billboard (an on-chain advertising protocol on Optimism redistributing 80% of USDT revenue to creators via quadratic funding), Logbook (a co-creation protocol), and Frontline Fellowship (a grant program for independent writers and civil journalists).

Matters Lab's business model is platform-plus-projects with no upfront fees to users. The core publishing platform is free; monetization flows indirectly to the company through on-chain advertising matching funds (Billboard), a small share of NFT and secondary market activity (Traveloggers on OpenSea), and treasury allocations from creator grant programs funded by external backers. The most recent disclosed capital event was a USD 2 million Pre-A round in January 2022 from Web3-focused investors including Assembly Partners, CRUST, Mask Network, Incuba Alpha, Infinity Labs, LongLing Capital, and Protocol Labs. Since the Pre-A, the company has not announced additional funding, and revenue figures are not publicly disclosed, with cumulative creator donations since 2018 totaling over USD 100,000 equivalent.

The company pursues a community-led, product-led growth strategy anchored in open-source development, ecosystem partnerships (ENS, Optimism, Polygon, Meson Network, Numbers Protocol, Planet, Mask Network, Social Layer), and active participation in major Web3 events including Consensus, Devcon, FIL-Singapore, and ZuConnect. Geographic focus spans Greater China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia (Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Indonesia), with growing global reach via multilingual support and Web3-native identity layers.

Name

Matters Lab

Legal name

Matters Lab

Website

https://matters-lab.io

Company type

Private

Founded year

2018

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Matters Lab operates a Web3 social media ecosystem anchored by Matters.Town, a decentralized publishing platform on IPFS serving 100,000+ primarily Chinese-language creators with censorship-resistant content storage, NFT-powered subscriptions, and direct monetization via donations and on-chain advertising.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Decentralized Social Media / Web3 Publishing Platform

NAICS

Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers (516210), Software Publishers (5132), Media Streaming Distribution Services, Social Networks, and Other Media Networks and Content Providers (51621)

SIC

Services-Computer Programming, Data Processing, Etc. (7370)

akta.pro primary industry

Gaming & Virtual World Communities (BPAMABAE)

akta.pro secondary industries

NFT Storage & Media Delivery (IPFS/Arweave pinning, media optimization, DRM-like gating) (FSAPAFAI), NFT Commerce, Ticketing & Utility Enablement (token-gated access, memberships, passes, ticketing rails) (FSAPAFAJ), NFT Standards, Metadata & Interoperability (ERC standards, metadata hosting, portability) (FSAPAFAD), Consortium Networks & Governance (network setup, onboarding, rules, node operations) (FSAPAIAB)

Keywords

• Decentralized publishing platform
• Web3 creator economy
• On-chain advertising protocol
• NFT avatar collaboration
• IPFS censorship-resilient storage

Headquarters

HQ city

Hong Kong

HQ country

Hong Kong SAR China

HQ region

Asia

Offices2 records

Markets served

GTM type

B2C

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Technology or R&D, Personnel, Marketing or Sales, Infrastructure, Operations

Revenue model

1. On-Chain Advertising (Billboard): Matters Lab operates Billboard, a decentralized on-chain advertising protocol. Advertisers bid on NFT-based advertising spaces in perpetual Harberger Tax auctions. The tax revenue generated (paid by advertisers) is distributed to creators through quadratic funding matching — 80% of USDT ad revenue goes directly to qualifying creators. The remaining portion funds the treasury for community-governed distribution.
2. Content Donations and Support (USDT, HKD, LikeCoin): Creators on Matters.Town receive direct financial support from readers through USDT (on Optimism and Polygon), HKD, and LikeCoin. The platform acts as a conduit for micro-payments supporting independent writers and journalists, enabling creators to monetize content directly from their audience without intermediaries.
3. NFT Sales and Ecosystem (Traveloggers): Traveloggers is the first NFT social media avatar collection issued by Matters Lab. The 1,500 NFT avatars were sold via pre-order and are now traded on OpenSea secondary market. NFT sales and secondary trading generate revenue for the ecosystem and provide holders with governance access and airdrop benefits across the Matterverse.
4. Creator Grants and Fund Programs: Matters Lab operates multiple grant programs including Frontline Fellowship (for civil journalists), Million Matters Community Fund, Rocket Fund (for community), and Discord Matterverse Moderator Fund. These programs incubate the CreatorDAO and support ecosystem growth. Funding may come from platform treasury and external supporters.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion3 records

Distribution channels7 records

Marketing channels9 records

Core offering

Matters Lab operates Matters.Town, an open-source decentralized publishing platform built on IPFS, Ethereum, and Optimism that serves 100,000+ creators with censorship-resilient content storage, NFT-powered subscriptions, and DAO-based governance. The ecosystem extends to Billboard (on-chain Harberger Tax advertising with 80% of USDT revenue routed to creators via quadratic funding), The Space (a draw-to-earn NFT pixel canvas), Traveloggers (1,500 dynamic NFT avatars with an on-chain Logbook for collaborative co-creation), and Logbook (blockchain writing and ownership-transfer protocol).

Product overview

Matters Lab operates a Web3 social media ecosystem built around a platform-plus-projects architecture. The core product is Matters.Town, a decentralized publishing platform with over 100,000 creators that provides content creation, NFT-powered subscriptions, and DAO-based governance. Surrounding the core platform are several integrated projects: The Space (draw-to-earn pixel canvas NFT game), Traveloggers (dynamic NFT avatars with co-creation logbooks), Billboard (on-chain advertising protocol), Logbook (blockchain-based writing and co-creation protocol), and Frontline Fellowship (writer grant programs). The ecosystem is unified by shared Web3 infrastructure including IPFS storage, Optimism/Polygon blockchain integration, ENS domain support, and multi-cryptocurrency payment support (USDT, LikeCoin).

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Matters.Town Open-source decentralized publishing platform built on IPFS, Ethereum, and Optimism, providing censorship-resilient content creation, NFT-powered subscriptions, token-driven community features, and DAO-based governance for over 100,000 creators, primarily in the Chinese-speaking world.
• Billboard Decentralized on-chain advertising protocol that converts advertising slots into NFTs sold through perpetual Harberger Tax auctions; 80% of USDT ad revenue is redistributed to qualifying creators via quadratic funding matching, and the protocol can be embedded via API/SDK into third-party Web2/Web3 apps.
• The Space Everlasting draw-to-earn pixel canvas NFT product combining Harberger Tax and Universal Basic Income mechanics; functions as an open-source collaborative art platform and on-chain museum for Web3 culture, governed eventually by SpaceDAO.
• Traveloggers Collection of 1,500 dynamic NFT avatars that double as a collaboration protocol; each successive owner can record messages in an on-chain Logbook, enabling collective co-creation, governance access, and airdrop benefits across the Matterverse.
• Logbook Blockchain-based writing, transfer, and co-creation protocol that lets NFT owners collaboratively record content on-chain, with entries that persist across ownership transfers, used as the collaboration backbone of Traveloggers.

Quantifiable outcome

• Over 100,000 content creators have joined Matters.Town, making it the largest open-source decentralized publishing platform in the Web3 world.
• +6 more outcomes

Named customers3 records

Segments5 records

Ideal customer profiles3 records

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

Integration8 records

Feature9 records

Partnerships

13 partnerships are on record, tiered core and minor.

• OptimismcoreTechnology or Integration · 5 March 2024Optimism is an Ethereum-based Layer 2 scaling solution offering faster transaction speeds, reduced gas fees, and high security. Beginning March 5, 2024, Matters.Town migrated its donation and curation mechanism from Polygon to Optimism. The migration provides improved functionality and opportunities for creators, including access to Retroactive Public Goods Funding (RetroPGF) and integration with the broader Optimism ecosystem (Farcaster, Base chain, Gitcoin). Matters Town is among the earliest projects serving Chinese-speaking users to join this ecosystem.
• HackZuzalu / ETH GlobalminorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 8 November 2023HackZuzalu and ETH Global collaborated with ZuSocial Hacker House to provide hackathon infrastructure and judging for the 4 hackathon tracks. ETH Global Istanbul hosted the hackathon portion, with 1,350 hackers and 427 projects participating. 10 projects were showcased at the ZuSocial Demo Day.
• ZuzalucoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 5 November 2023Zuzalu is a community dedicated to fostering a global network of communities advancing humanity through free and open technology, science, health, and social innovation. Zuzalu co-organized ZuConnect Istanbul with Matters Lab, Mask Network, Social Layer, and DWeb. ZuConnect served as the parent event for the ZuSocial Hacker House Decentralized Social Day, featuring 9 panels, 30+ panelists, and 200+ participants, including a fireside chat between Vitalik Buterin and Juan Benet.
• Mask NetworkcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 25 October 2023Mask Network is a decentralized social protocol enabling users to send encrypted messages, create blockchain-based polls, and interact with Web3 services within existing social platforms. Matters Lab co-organized the ZuSocial Hacker House Istanbul (November 5–19, 2023) with Mask Network and Social Layer. The 2-week hacker house brought together 20 resident hackers and focused on decentralized social infrastructure innovation across 4 hackathon tracks.
• Social LayercoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 25 October 2023Social Layer is a platform for decentralized social coordination. Co-organizer of the ZuSocial Hacker House Istanbul alongside Matters Lab and Mask Network. The collaboration brings together decentralized social builders for workshops, hackathons, and discussions on the future of decentralized social networks.
• DWeb (Decentralized Web)minorStrategic or Co-development Partner · 25 October 2023DWeb (Decentralized Web) community was a co-organizer of the ZuSocial Hacker House Istanbul and ZuConnect Decentralized Social Day. The collaboration brought DWeb principles and infrastructure expertise to the event alongside Web3 social innovation from Matters Lab, Mask Network, and Social Layer.
• Numbers ProtocolcoreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 16 March 2023Numbers Protocol is a decentralized technology service provider that makes digital media traceable and verifiable using NFT technology. Matters Lab announced an ecosystem partnership with Numbers Protocol in March 2023 to co-develop and embed Web3 features extending the creator journey toward traceable digital assets and veracity. Both companies built their decentralized content ecosystems on IPFS. The partnership streamlines the content writing process from creation to monetization while emphasizing content authenticity.
• ENS (Ethereum Name Service)coreTechnology or Integration · 9 February 2023ENS is the largest blockchain domain name service, providing human-readable names for Ethereum addresses and content hashes. Matters Lab launched ENS integration on Matters.Town in February 2023, enabling users to display ENS domain names on their personal homepages. Creators can set IPFS CID as contenthash field for ENS via EIP-1577 standard, allowing over 100,000 Matters.Town content creators to use ENS as their personal domain.
• Polygon (Matic)coreTechnology or Integration · 25 October 2022Polygon is the leading Ethereum scaling and infrastructure platform. Matters Lab integrated Polygon support to launch Tether (USDT) on Polygon network as a payment method on Matters.Town in Q4 2022. This enabled fast, low-cost USDT transactions between supporters and creators. The integration was a milestone in on-chain content discovery and evaluation. Following migration to Optimism in March 2024, Polygon-USDT donations remain unaffected.
• Planet (planetable.xyz)coreStrategic or Co-development Partner · 11 October 2022Planet is an IPFS-based desktop application enabling peer-to-peer content distribution through IPNS and ENS, fully decentralized and server-independent. Matters Lab announced a strategic partnership with Planet in October 2022 to enable readers to subscribe to Matters.Town content in a fully decentralized manner. In subsequent phases, readers will be able to read, like, and comment on IPFS content published via Planet on Matters.Town, enabling true interoperability between the two platforms.
• Protocol LabscoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2022Protocol Labs is a key infrastructure partner for Matters Lab's decentralized storage strategy. Matters.Town uses IPFS (developed by Protocol Labs) as the protocol and peer-to-peer network for storing and sharing data in a distributed file system. The partnership supports the platform's censorship-resistant publishing infrastructure. Matters Lab builds strategic partnerships with Web3 entities like Protocol Labs as part of its expansion plan following the January 2022 Pre-A funding round.
• Crust NetworkcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2022Crust Network provides decentralized storage infrastructure integrated into the Matters ecosystem. As a Web3 entity partner announced in January 2022, Crust Network complements IPFS-based storage with incentive mechanisms for the platform's decentralized content publication. Crust Network was also present at Consensus 2022 as a good friend and investor of Matters Lab.
• Meson NetworkcoreTechnology or Integration · 1 January 2021Meson Network is a bandwidth marketplace on Web3 that integrates with Matters.Town's IPFS modal. The partnership solves the bandwidth sharing problem in decentralized storage — when users retrieve content from IPFS directly, Meson Network redirects to the nearest gateway for faster content retrieval. The partnership was established in 2021 and extended in 2022 with Meson Network's latest API version, allowing faster and easier node discovery.

Scale indicators8 records

Recent moves9 records

Expansion highlights6 records

Direct peers

• Farcaster: Farcaster is a decentralized social protocol with Frames, channels, and on-chain identity. It is a direct competitor in the Web3 social media category, targeting the same creator-first, censorship-resilient publishing thesis that Matters Lab pursues.
• Lens Protocol: Lens Protocol is an open social graph built on Polygon with NFT-based profiles and follow relationships. It competes directly with Matters.Town on portable, user-owned social identity and creator monetization.
• Mirror: Mirror is a Web3 publishing platform for writers and newsletters, with on-chain publishing and NFT-based monetization. It overlaps directly with Matters.Town's publishing-first creator economy.
• Paragraph: Paragraph is a Web3-native newsletter and publishing platform with token-gated content and on-chain monetization. It targets the same independent writer / newsletter use case as Matters.Town, particularly in English-speaking markets.
• Mask Network: Mask Network is a Web3 social protocol bridging Web2 social platforms with blockchain features. Matters Lab has co-organized events with Mask (ZuSocial Hacker House), and Mask is both a partner/investor and a peer in decentralized social infrastructure.

Broad incumbents

• Bluesky: Bluesky is a decentralized social network built on the AT Protocol. While not Web3-native (no token economics), it competes in the broader decentralized social space with substantially larger funding and user base than Matters Lab.
• Mastodon: Mastodon is a federated, open-source social network with millions of users. It is comparable to Matters Lab as an open-source alternative to centralized social platforms, though it lacks Web3/crypto-native monetization.
• Steemit: Steemit is an established blockchain-based publishing and social platform with token rewards for creators. It is a legacy comparable in the Web3 publishing category and a useful reference for creator monetization design.

Emerging players

• Zora: Zora is an on-chain creator economy protocol with NFT minting, auctions, and a creator coin model. It overlaps with Matters Lab on NFT-based creator monetization and on-chain social commerce.

Others

• Protocol Labs: Protocol Labs develops IPFS and Filecoin and is a core infrastructure partner to Matters Lab. Comparable as the underlying storage layer that matters.town is built on, rather than a direct competitor.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat5 records

Key risks1 record

Key highlights6 records

Customer concentration

• GitHubgithub.com/thematters/developer-resource
• LinkedInlinkedin.com/company/matters-lab
• Xx.com/Mattersw3b

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles2 records

Funding overview

Funding rounds1 record

Investors7 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Matters Lab