Polychain leads with $8 million! OpenLedger OPEN Mainnet solves AI copyright crisis

OpenLedger has launched the OPEN Mainnet, introducing an attribution-driven infrastructure for tracking the lineage of AI data and compensating contributors. This Web3 company previously raised $8 million in seed funding from investors such as Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital.

Polychain Capital Bets on the AI Data Attribution Revolution

(Source: OpenLedger)

According to a report by The Block, OpenLedger has previously completed a $8 million seed round financing led by Polychain Capital and Borderless Capital. As one of the most influential investment firms in the cryptocurrency space, Polychain Capital's portfolio includes star projects such as Solana, Dfinity, and Filecoin. The choice to lead the investment in OpenLedger demonstrates top institutions' strategic judgment on the intersection of AI and blockchain.

Borderless Capital focuses on investments in web3 infrastructure, particularly those protocol-layer projects that address real business problems. The collaboration of the two institutions provides funding support and industry resources for OpenLedger and validates the feasibility of its technological roadmap. Thereafter, the company positions itself as one of the rapidly growing web3 artificial intelligence infrastructure projects, committed to integrating crypto verification with machine learning workflows.

The official launch on Tuesday marks the rollout of this Web3 company's so-called “Payable AI.” Users can upload datasets to the shared “datanets,” where developers can train models and automatically conduct payments through smart contracts. OpenLedger states that this model aims to replicate the economic model of creator platforms like YouTube while enhancing the income of researchers, writers, and domain experts who provide training for AI systems.

This analogy is very persuasive. YouTube allows content creators to continuously profit from the videos they upload through its advertising revenue-sharing mechanism, forming a vast creator economy ecosystem. OpenLedger attempts to apply the same logic to the field of AI training data: data contributors upload datasets, AI developers use this data to train models, and usage is converted into automatic payments to contributors. If this model succeeds, it will fundamentally change the controversial practice of “free scraping of publicly available data” in the current AI industry.

OPEN Mainnet How to Solve AI Copyright Crisis

The agreement team believes that this release comes at a time when one of the most controversial issues in the field of artificial intelligence—attribution—has garnered significant attention. AI companies are facing increasingly stringent scrutiny for scraping public data without compensation. Over the past five years, public trust in artificial intelligence in the United States has sharply declined, and multiple pending lawsuits against companies like OpenAI and Google highlight the legal and structural flaws present in data sourcing practices.

OpenAI is facing a collective lawsuit from The New York Times, several bestselling authors, and visual artists, accusing it of using copyrighted content to train ChatGPT without authorization. Google’s Bard and other AI products are similarly under scrutiny. These lawsuits could not only lead to exorbitant damages but, more importantly, reveal the current lack of transparent and fair data usage mechanisms in the AI industry. The European Union's Artificial Intelligence Act (AI Act) and various AI regulatory bills proposed in multiple states in the United States explicitly require AI systems to disclose the sources of their training data.

The core of OPEN Mainnet is the “Proof of Attribution” system, which records the origin of every dataset, model, and agent on the blockchain. Each AI output can be traced back to its contributors, enabling verifiable credit and automatic payments based on actual usage. This technological architecture provides the transparency and traceability that traditional AI systems lack.

Core Mechanism of the Ownership Proof System

On-chain data fingerprint: Each uploaded dataset generates a unique cryptographic hash value, recorded on the blockchain as proof of origin.

Usage Tracking: The AI model automatically records the usage frequency and scope each time it accesses the dataset via the smart contract.

Automatic Payment Distribution: According to on-chain tracking data, OPEN tokens are automatically distributed proportionally to all contributors.

Verifiable Attribution: Anyone can verify which data sources were used by a certain AI model or output.

OpenLedger states that developers integrating with the network can create AI agents without having to manage infrastructure or data hosting. This “data as a shared service” model lowers the barrier to entry for developers while providing data producers with tools to connect to the artificial intelligence supply chain and profit passively when their data is used by models.

The Integration of Creator Economy and Web3 Infrastructure

Contributions are handled by the OPEN token of the agreement, which distributes rewards based on the results of on-chain attribution tracking. This token economic model is the core incentive mechanism of the OPEN Mainnet ecosystem. Unlike traditional one-time authorization fees, OPEN token payments are continuous and automatic; as long as the AI model continues to use a certain dataset, contributors will continuously receive rewards.

This model is attractive to multiple participants. For researchers and domain experts, they can monetize completed research data without additional sales or negotiation costs. For writers and creators, their works can be used by AI legally and transparently, while receiving fair compensation. For AI developers, they can access high-quality and legally licensed datasets, avoiding the risk of copyright disputes.

The Block highlights OpenLedger in its podcast series “At the Intersection of Cryptocurrency and Artificial Intelligence.” The team emphasizes that as artificial intelligence becomes more prevalent, transparent sourcing may become an important regulatory and business requirement. This forward-looking perspective has gained recognition from institutions like Polychain, which believe that regulatory pressure will ultimately force the AI industry to adopt more transparent data sourcing mechanisms.

From a business model perspective, OpenLedger can serve both enterprise-level AI developers and individual creators. Enterprises can establish private or semi-private datanets on the OPEN Mainnet, ensuring that data is not misused through blockchain while using data internally in compliance. Individual creators can upload small-scale but high-quality datasets and accumulate revenue through the long-tail effect.

Challenges and Prospects of OPEN Token Plummeting 70%

(Source: CoinMarketCap)

At the same time, the OPEN token has been trading on Binance since September. Like the broader AI-themed altcoin sector, OPEN is also facing significant downward pressure, with current trading prices down over 70% from the issuance price, according to CoinGecko data. This crash reflects the overall bear market atmosphere in the current crypto market, especially as AI concept tokens are generally experiencing sell-offs.

The decline in token prices does not necessarily reflect a deterioration in the project's fundamentals. Many technically promising Web3 projects have experienced a phase where token prices were disconnected from project progress in their early stages. The official launch of the OPEN Mainnet occurred during a period of low token prices, which means that when the technological product truly begins to attract users, there may be significant room for token price increases.

From the perspective of token economics, the value of the OPEN token is directly linked to network usage. As more datasets are uploaded to Data Net and more AI developers train models on the platform, the demand for OPEN tokens for payment will increase. This usage-driven value model is more sustainable in the long term than purely speculative tokens. However, this also means that the recovery of token prices will take time, as the network effects must genuinely form.

The challenge lies in how to maintain development momentum and community engagement during a bear market. The $8 million seed round funding provides the team with enough runway, but attracting new users and developers is not easy when token prices are sluggish. OpenLedger needs to prove that its technology can indeed solve real business problems, rather than just being a conceptual Web3 narrative.