Stuff_io Founders Detail Enterprise Contract, Token Utility and Digital Ownership Roadmap

The update covered a recently closed multimillion dollar contract, future infrastructure options, print book expansion, consume to earn, AI publishing tools, patents and the continued role of $STUFF in blockchain verified media ownership.

Enterprise Revenue and Product Market Fit Shape the Roadmap

The company said it remains active through a difficult crypto market and has recently closed a multimillion dollar contract. Josh Stone said the agreement is subject to non disclosure restrictions, but described it as a positive development for the company’s longevity and for additional business opportunities already in progress.

Ben Illian said the comment was not aimed at other projects that have struggled or shut down. He said the pressure has affected companies across the wider crypto industry, including large projects and organizations that previously raised significant capital. The founders framed the current roadmap around operating discipline, enterprise conversations and product market fit rather than rapid public announcements.

According to the discussion, the team is also holding conversations with large companies, including media related organizations and nonprofit entities. Illian said those discussions influence technical planning because the company does not want to commit too early to an infrastructure model that may need to change later.

Stone said the company is focused on customer needs rather than building technology only because it is technically interesting. That approach also shaped the discussion around several earlier initiatives. The founders said the secondary marketplace is not blocked by the L2 roadmap, but it is not the current priority because mainstream users are more likely to understand digital ownership through fiat first experiences than through crypto first secondary trading.

The ambassador program and Mint and Print were also addressed. The founders said the ambassador program began but did not become a major active initiative, partly because the team is attending fewer crypto conferences than in earlier cycles. Mint and Print was described as paused rather than cancelled. Stone said printable files were prepared for a number of books and that work was done on international shipping, but other priorities moved ahead of that product line.

The same prioritization applies to Launch.stuff and the creator portal. Stone said the company still wants a more automated self publishing system that reduces manual work from the team and allows creators to launch content more directly. He said weekly minting may slow while tools are rebuilt for a more scalable creator workflow.

L2 Remains Open as Faster and Cheaper Distribution Models Are Reviewed

The AMA returned several times to the question of the L2 plan. Stone said the need for an L2 comes from the economics of digital media distribution. If a book, video or other media item is sold at a low price, blockchain fees can take up a large portion of the transaction cost. The same issue becomes more important for giveaways, promotional campaigns and token rewards.

The company previously hired and paid a team to work on an L2 solution, but that team later dissolved. The founders said the original work did not continue on the planned path, and several possible structures are now being reviewed. Stone said those options include an L2, a media focused L1, an L1 with its own L2 instances, a fork of an existing network or another hybrid model.

The target remains consistent across those options. The system needs to be fast, inexpensive and able to control transaction costs. That requirement is linked to future products, including high volume token distribution, consume to earn rewards and lower cost delivery of digital media.

Stone also discussed Base in the context of token distribution experiments. He said one of his side projects tested daily token payments to a large number of agents and used Base because it was cheap and efficient for that use case. He said the token already exists on Base through a bridge built earlier, and that more liquidity and distribution activity may move toward faster and cheaper infrastructure over time.

The founders did not present that as a departure from Cardano. The discussion described it as an operational decision about distribution cost and user experience. The project remains historically connected to the Cardano ecosystem, but the AMA made clear that future technical choices will be evaluated through speed, cost and scalability.

Token utility was also discussed in that context. Stone said the core utility has not materially changed, but the public narrative may lean more toward loyalty because mainstream users already understand reward points from airlines, credit cards and consumer programs. Illian said the company wants to add more utility while simplifying how it is presented to users.

The founders said token burn is not dependent on the L2 release and continues through an epoch based model. They also said a buyback program is being prepared, but the timing of purchases will not be announced in advance because that could allow market participants to trade around the information.

Illian said the company will need tokens for future user rewards, including physical book purchases and later digital consume to earn activity. The company did not provide a public schedule for buybacks, but said purchases may become visible after they occur. The discussion placed $STUFF utility inside a wider loyalty and distribution model rather than a standalone crypto incentive.

Print Books, AI Publishing and Blockchain Authentication Move Into Focus

The most detailed product update centered on print books and publishing infrastructure. The founders said the company is working with a catalog of approximately 12 million print books. Illian said the current arrangement is focused on physical books, while work is also underway toward digital books and audiobooks.

Stone said traditional publishers still place major commercial value on printed books. He said many publishers are not ready to immediately adopt true digital ownership for eBooks, while independent authors have generally been more open to the model. Because of that, the company is approaching publishers first through a format they already understand, selling physical books.

The strategy is to build a large bookstore, support product pages, customer reviews, catalog infrastructure and print book sales, then introduce digital ownership options after the platform becomes a useful revenue channel. Illian described this as a Trojan horse approach. Some titles may remain licensed digital products, while others may use a digital ownership structure depending on publisher rights and approval.

Consume to earn remains part of the roadmap, but the founders did not give a firm launch date. Stone said recent analytics work could support the model, but frequent token rewards to large numbers of users still create infrastructure and cost questions. He also said the model becomes more useful when the platform has enough inventory for users to find books they actually want to read.

AI was another major part of the discussion. Stone said older code from 2021 and 2022 is being refactored with help from AI agent workflows. The goal is to improve infrastructure, security and system architecture. Illian said the team can now build some products much faster than before because of new AI tools and internal workflows.

The founders also described Galley Forecast, an AI publishing product for authors. Stone said the tool allows an author to upload a manuscript and have multiple AI agents analyze it from different angles. The system can identify where readers may stop reading, find inconsistencies, suggest positioning and support marketing decisions before publication.

The AI discussion also connected to copyright authentication. Stone said large organizations are increasingly concerned about proving originality as AI makes it easier to copy, alter and counterfeit creative work. He said blockchain verification can provide timestamped proof of authenticity when content is recorded on a decentralized network.

Patents remain part of the defensive strategy. Stone said the company has active patent work in progress and has submitted a large additional application that may lead to more individual filings. He said the purpose is to protect the company’s ability to keep building digital ownership systems, not to operate as a patent enforcement business against other builders.

The founders also addressed video games, but described the category as more complex than books, music or video. Illian said the challenge is not only storing a game asset, but supporting gameplay. Stone added that emulators, licensed SDKs and closed gaming ecosystems create additional technical and commercial barriers.

Near the end of the AMA, the founders answered a question about investors. Stone said Mark Cuban remains an active investor and confirmed that Charles Hoskinson is still part of the investor group. He said the largest investor by dollar amount may be Hoskinson or Ingram, but that the exact comparison would require checking company paperwork.

The AMA presented the company as moving from early crypto native media ownership toward a broader publishing, AI and enterprise infrastructure model. Several items remain open, including the final L2 or L1 architecture, the consume to earn timeline, the future of earlier community programs and the pace at which traditional publishers adopt digital ownership. The operating roadmap described by the founders now connects enterprise contracts, print book inventory, AI assisted publishing, lower cost token distribution and a loyalty based role for $STUFF.